Let's Go Lab

Let's Go Lab is a research project on speech interfaces and dialog systems conducted by researchers from the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. Funding for Let's Go Lab comes from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

For additional information contact Maxine Eskenazi (max(at)cs(dot)cmu(dot)edu) or Alan W Black.

System statistics (December 1st, 2008 -January 23, 2009 )

* A significant amount of calls contain no speech directed to the system (e.g. the user hangs up before saying anything). The number of calls with 4 user turns or more is a simple estimate of the number of valid dialogues.

Project overview

Although many recent systems have achieved effective spoken interaction with a computer, they tend to target the "average" portions of the population, those whose speech and hearing fall within the norm. Systems capable of finding and presenting useful information for the average user have been developed, but these systems cannot be used by everyone. People who are, for some reason, considered to be outliers in the general population cannot yet access the information these systems provide. This project is working on providing a system that can be used by everyone, including the extremes found in the general public.

The Let's Go! project is working in the domain of bus information, providing information such as schedules and route information for the Port Authority of Allegheny County buses in and around Pittsburgh. You can interact with a version of this system right now by calling 412-268-3526 (requires some knowledge of Pittsburgh's transit system).

This system is connected to the Port Authority's main phone line during non-business hours (M-F 7pm-6am, Weekends/Holidays 4:30pm-7am), providing schedule information over the phone to Allegheny County bus riders when they would otherwise be unable to get it.

An example interaction with this system is also available.