The use of domain ontologies for improving the adaptability and collaborative ability of a web dialogue system

Dialogue systems can be used for guiding the users accessing web services, enhancing the web usability. However, they are expensive to develop and difficult to adapt to different types of web services. The knowledge model of a web service can be seen as the basis to define the semantics of the information to be exchanged among the components of a dialogue system. This approach facilitates the integration of the different types of knowledge involved in human-machine communication and provides a unified framework easier to apply to new web services. Furthermore, the representation of the web service knowledge according to an ontology can enhance the reasoning capabilities of the underlying system. This article describes the use of domain ontologies in a mixed-initiative web dialogue system for improving both its adaptability and its collaborative ability.