Title: The VERA System: Voice-Enabled Reminding Assistant
Speakers: Scott Judy and Ulas Bardak

Abstract:
  People often miss important appointments and other items in their schedules
  because they simply forget to look at their planners or PDAs at the right
  moment.  Or, how often do meetings not get scheduled and other important
  communications not made just because it is so hard to catch busy people and
  coordinate their schedules?
     
  We introduce VERA (Voice-Enabled Reminding Assistant), our project for the
  Spring 2005 Dialog Lab (11-754) and our approach to this problem.  VERA is a
  dialog system based on the Ravenclaw architecture, that allows registered
  users to set up alarms and reminders for themselves and other registered
  users.  The system incorporates the VoIP application Skype in the place of a
  conventional phone line connection, and then calls users at the right time
  to deliver information to them.  VERA can use multiple contacts while
  attempting to reach someone, such as cell phone, office phone, and Skype
  running on the user's computer. There is no limit as to how many contacts
  can be listed for a given user as long as each contact is a phone number or
  valid Skype ID. Once a connection is established VERA attempts to confirm
  the identity of the person she is speaking to using several strategies. 
  Daily, weekly, and monthly recurring events are supported, as well as urgent
  messages, in which a receipt confirming the success or failure of the
  delivery is sent by VERA to the originator.  
     
  The system is divided into two separate modules, VERA-IN and VERA-OUT, which
  handle ingoing and outgoing calls, respectively.  In other words, VERA-IN is
  used for getting from the user the piece of information to be relayed to
  which user and at which time, while VERA-OUT is responsible for actually
  delivering that information to the right user at the right time.  VERA-OUT
  also has a web-based interface which allows users to directly enter tasks
  without the need for calling in. In our talk we explain VERA-OUT and our
  plans for developing it further.