Text to talk: foundations of interactive language modeling for conversational AI and talking robots – Andreas Liesenfeld, Ada Lopez, Mark Dingemanse. Center for Language Studies, Radboud University.

At the intersection of language theory and tech, this tutorial introduces strands of both the
language sciences and technological fields that share an interest in understanding how
language is used in interaction. Drawing on linguistics, cognitive science and the study of
human interaction, we review the theoretical and empirical foundations necessary for
progress in technological fields such as voice user interfaces (VUI), social robots, and
conversational AI. More information here.

Retico – An Introduction to Building Incremental Dialogue Systems in Python – Thilo Michael, Dr. Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann, Dr. Jana Götze, Prof. Dr. David Schlangen. colab Potsdam, University of Potsdam.

In our tutorial, we will cover basic questions related to incremental processing by introducing retico, a Python-based framework for designing incremental dialogue system. Retico is open source and available for anyone to download. The framework is modularised, with the parts being developed in different repositories: In the core repository, users find all the modules that are needed to build a basic incremental dialogue system from scratch. This will also be the focus of our tutorial. However, we will give an additional brief introduction to the more advanced repositories that allow researchers to reuse a number of previously developed modules for retico, including several ASR systems, Text-To-Speech systems, as well as bindings for the Robot Operating System (ROS), and the Microsoft Platform for Situated Intelligence (PSI).