This paper challenges the received wisdom that template-based approaches to the generation of language are necessarily inferior to other approaches as regards their maintainability, linguistic well-foundedness and quality of output. Some recent NLG systems that call themselves `templatebased' will illustrate our claim

Work on expressive speech synthesis has long focused on the expression of basic emotions. In recent years, however, interest in other expressive styles has been increasing. The research presented in this paper aims at the generation of a storytelling speaking style, which is suitable for storytelling applications and more in general, for applications aimed at children. Based on an analysis of human storytellers' speech, we designed and implemented a set of prosodic rules for converting "neutral" speech, as produced by a text-to-speech system, into storytelling speech. An evaluation of our storytelling speech generation system showed encouraging results

Local danger warning is an important function of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to improve the safety of driving. The user interface (the warning presentation) is particularly crucial to a successful danger avoidance. We present a user study investigating various warning presentations using a scenario of emergent road obstacles. Two presentation factors were selected: modality and level of assistance. The modality factor had 4 variants: speech warning, visual and speech warning, visual warning with blinking cue, and visual warning with sound cue. The level of assistance varied between with or without action suggestions (AS). In accordance with the ISO usability model, a total of 6 measurements were derived to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the warnings and the drivers’ satisfaction. Results indicate that the combination of speech and visual modality leads to the best performance as well as the highest satisfaction. In contrast, purely auditory and purely visual modalities were both insufficient for presenting high-priority warnings. AS generally improved the usability of the warnings especially when they were accompanied by supporting information so that drivers could validate the suggestions

As in-vehicle information systems are increasingly able to obtain and deliver information, driver distraction becomes a larger concern. In this paper we propose that informative interruption cues (IIC) can be an effective means to support drivers’ attention management. As a first step, we investigated the design and presentation modality of IIC that conveyed not only the arrival but also the priority level of a message. Both sound and vibration cues were created for four different priority levels and tested in 5 task conditions that simulated possible perceptional and cognitive load in real driving situations. Results showed that the cues were quickly learned, reliably detected, and quickly and accurately identified. Vibration was found to be a promising alternative for sound to deliver IIC, as vibration cues were identified more accurately and interfered less with driving. Sound cues also had advantages in terms of shorter response time and more (reported) physical comfort