Multi-Lingual Market Information Interactive Voice Response System
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Date
2014-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In this paper, we address the issue of how to design and implement multilingual market
information interactive voice response system (MMI-IVR) for the low literacy target groups.
Thus, we propose a three tier multilingual market information interactive voice response
(IVR) system utilizing text to speech (TTS) technology. It is especially designed to help
farmers to obtain the market information they seek in a timely manner and is reliable, scalable
and user-friendly operating on a 24 hour by 7 weak bases. With MMI-IVR system, farmers
can obtain real time market information using just their telephone set or mobile phone via a
DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency). To reduce the complexity of the system, it is
decomposed into two sub systems (speech synthesis and voice interface subsystem). From the
developer point of view, MMI-IVR system has three major components, user, asterisk server
and MMI-IVR application. In this system user interacts by using telephone keypad with the
asterisk server and then the asterisk server has dial plan which is used to define how calls flow
into and out of the system. When messages are received on this channel to asterisk server, the
message is sent to the MMI-IVR application for processing using Asterisk’s Application
Gateway Interface (AGI). Finally, the MMI-IVR will interact with the user on the channel
based on predefined IVR process tree on MMI-IVR application. In this thesis, speech
synthesis and multilingual interactive voice response system are designed and implemented.
Firstly, unit selection voice has been built on Festival speech synthesis framework using
phrase as basic unit. Secondly multilingual IVR system is designed and implemented based on
multilingual IVR tree structure. MMI-IVR is developed using PHP programming language
and PHPAGI script is used to interface with PBX as software (i.e. Asterisk server). To
emulate telephone X-lite soft phone is used as phone interface to communicate with MMIIVR
system. Finally, evaluation of MMI-IVR and speech synthesis is conducted by involving
37 people who are speakers of each language (15 from Amharic, 13 from Afaan-Oromo and 9
from Tigrigna). MMI-IVR systems evaluation results have shown that the system provide
good quality speech in terms of naturalness, is easy to navigate and functional in terms of
designed menu structure, and it gives customer satisfaction.
Keywords: Speech synthesis, interactive voice response system, Asterisk server, Market information,
Dial plan, Asterisk Gateway Interface.
Description
Keywords
Speech Synthesis; Interactive Voice Response System; Asterisk Server; Market Information, Dial Plan; Asterisk Gateway Interface