Mobile Intelligence

20.2 RELATED WORK

This section briefly describes some of the research topics, technologies, existing projects, and applications closely related to VOICE.

20.2.1 VoiceXML

VoiceXML was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium [24]; it is a domain-specific application of XML that describes a voice-based interface between the human users and computer systems. VoiceXML-enabled applications typically interact with the user by playing pre-recorded audio fragments and converting text to speech; these applications can accept user input by recognizing or recording their voice input and accepting touch-tone input produced by a telephone. VoiceXML appeals to the developers of applications with a voice-based interface because a VoiceXML service isolates the application from many complexities, which include provisioning of resources, concurrent threads of control, and platform-specific APIs [5].

A VoiceXML-based application includes one or more VoiceXML documents that specify the structure of the dialog between the application and its user and a set of actions that need to be taken in response to different inputs of the user. VoiceXML documents along with all objects they use (audio files, input grammars, and custom scripts) are Web-based and are specified by URLs.

Today, there are a very large number of commercially deployed VoiceXML applications, which include customer relationship management, refilling of medical prescriptions, providing driving directions, flight tracking, and many others. ...