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The Text Generator
Homer's text generator outputs English sentences to convey his actions to
the user and to provide immmediate feedback to the user's input.
The level of detail in Homer's descriptions of his actions is on par with
that used by people in relaying very simple activities. For example, in
one scenario provided by Vere and Bickmore Homer tells where he is going,
when he has reached his destination, and that he is picking up an item
at that location.[1]
Homer gives three kinds of feedback. He acknowledges commands by responding
"OK". For assertions he responds "OH". In response to questions, he
provides his answer to the question (or answers "I don't know" if he cannot
find an another answer). The feedback is quite terse.
( see sample dialogs
for examples. )
The text generator produces sentences from
state transition representations
in the
reflective processes , the
episodic memory , and the
dynamic plan.
Vere and Bickmore describe this procedure as follows:
"Mapping from the state-transition informalism to sentence specifications
is currently performed by a pattern matcher, which uses declarative
production-rule style translations."[1]