By Anne Watzman

Using an automated telephone information system can be a major hassle for the young and old alike. You push button after button to navigate through the many different menus and options and you often end up back where you started. “Can’t I talk to a real person,” you think to yourself. Language technology experts at Carnegie Mellon may soon put an end to your frustrations.


This spring, Maxine Eskenazi (HS’73) and her research team in Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technologies Institute (LTI) in the School of Computer Science, and the Port Authority of Allegheny County launched a voice-activated, spoken dialogue system to make bus-scheduling information more accessible to elderly and non-native speakers.

The system, initially scheduled to run for two weeks in March, offered information on 10 bus routes in the East End section of Pittsburgh during the evening and nighttime hours when the customer service line is not staffed.

Eskenazi says there were no “serious complaints” and the Port Authority “plans to keep the system up and running for some time.” She says she looks forward to receiving feedback and data from the Port Authority to make the system better.

Eskenazi, an associate teaching professor in the LTI, says while all Pittsburghers used the system, it was specifically designed to understand and communicate with the elderly and non-native speakers. To develop the system Eskenazi and her research team interviewed and surveyed Carnegie Mellon alumni who attended their 50th Class Reunion several years ago.

“If we respond to what we feel are some of the more extreme speaker populations, then everybody benefits,” Eskenazi told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Eskenazi and LTI Research Scientist Alan Black received a $650,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation's Universal Access Program in 2002 to fund the "Let's Go" project to study the use of phone dialogue systems by elderly and non-native speakers, and to work with the Port Authority to make its phone-based information services more user friendly to these groups of people.

They have been working with co-principal investigator Lorraine Levin, associate research professor in the Language Technologies Institute, and LTI graduate students Antoine Raux and Brian Langer.

"We are pleased to partner with Carnegie Mellon University and excited about the potential for this project to increase our customers' accessibility to information that helps them make transportation decisions," said Maureen Bertocci, Port Authority chief technology officer.

Eskenazi and her team hope to gain additional funding to run more tests this June, when thousands of elderly folks descend on Pittsburgh for the Senior Olympics.


Related Links:
Let’s Go Project