EAGER: The REAL Challenge

当世界发现苹果的SIRI时，语音和口语对话社区饶有兴趣地关注着。这是先进的口语对话系统第一次应用于现实世界的问题，它抓住了潜在用户的想象力；通过对一个物体说话来获取信息或指导行动的想法已经进入公众的脑海，而且可能性似乎无穷无尽。然而，尽管有潜在的优势，学术界迄今为止还没有创造出能够服务于实际用户和实际应用的语音对话系统。在向研究界开放的头三年里，PI和她的团队开发的Let's Go系统被用于150多篇出版物，其中包括18篇在其主办机构以外的论文。演讲和口语对话社区显然需要更多真实世界的系统来提供数据、免费架构和研究平台。PI在这个项目中的目标是培育这样的新的现实世界系统，这将为语音和口语对话社区提供稳定的数据流以及他们可以用来进行研究的研究平台。该项目将吸引经验丰富的研究人员（他们知道什么可行，什么不可行），以及高中生和本科生（他们年轻的头脑可以自由地想象语音应用程序可以变成什么，不受研究结果或资金问题的影响），努力寻找下一个伟大的语音应用程序。更广泛的影响：真正的挑战将是点燃创造新颖真实语音应用的火花。该项目将面向范围广泛的学生，并以一种可用于自然语言研究其他领域的方式激发研究活力。它将激励新一代的研究人员，并为年轻学生提供与经验丰富的研究人员合作的独特机会。这些将被发现的新应用最终将对公众有所帮助，无论是为了更好地获取信息，与机器人助手互动，还是通过社交网络与他人交流的新方式。

The speech and spoken dialog communities watched with interest as the world discovered Apple's SIRI. One of the first applications of an advanced spoken dialog system to a real world problem, it captured the imagination of potential users; the idea of speaking to an object to obtain information or direct an action has entered into the public mind, and the possibilities seem endless. Yet despite the potential advantages, academia has so far created few spoken dialog systems that serve real users and real applications. In the first three years of being open to the research community, the Let's Go system developed by the PI and her team was used for over 150 publications, including 18 theses outside of its host institution. The speech and spoken dialog communities clearly need more real world systems that furnish data, free architectures and research platforms. The PI's goal in this project is to foster such new real world systems, which will give the speech and spoken dialog communities steady streams of data as well as research platforms that they can use to run studies. The project will engage seasoned researchers (who know what will work and what will not), along with high school and undergraduate students (whose younger minds are free to imagine what speech applications can become, uninfluenced by research results or funding concerns), in an effort to find the next great speech applications. Broader Impacts: The REAL Challenge will be the spark that ignites the creation of novel real speech applications. The project will address a broad range of students and invigorate research in a way that can be used in other areas of natural language research. It will inspire a new generation of researchers and provide a unique opportunity for young students to work with seasoned researchers. The novel applications that will be found will ultimately be of help to the general public, whether it be for better access to information, for interaction with a robotic helpmate, or perhaps for a new way of communicating with others using social networks.