With the CityTalk spoken dialogue system, robots give information to tourists about local places of interest such as hotels and restaurants. CityTalk was developed by CDM Interact, a Finnish startup company founded by Graham Wilcock and Kristiina Jokinen in 2016.
CityTalk is the first robot dialogue system to use PyDial, a research toolkit from University of Cambridge that uses deep learning, including deep reinforcement learning. PyDial enables the robots to switch domains smoothly during the dialogue, for example, first telling about hotels and then telling about restaurants.
This video shows the first demo of CityTalk. The robot gives information about hotels and restaurants in Cambridge. When the person asks about hotels, the robot clarifies which part of town and what price range is suitable, then suggests a hotel using a local hotel database. When the person asks about a restaurant, the robot switches domains and asks which part of town and what kind of food they would like, then suggests two restaurants using a local restaurant database.