VERFAHREN ZUM BETRIEB EINES UNTERBRECHNUNGS- DIALOGSYSTEMS

A method is described for multi-user operation of a barge-in dialogue system (1). The dialogue system comprises a front-end computer unit (2) with a plurality of access channels (6) for the users and a plurality of servers (18, 19, 20, 21) having each a number of speech processing units (22). Each of the speech processing units (22) comprises a speech activity detector (23) and a speech recognition unit (24). During a dialogue between the system and a user, a new speech processing unit (22) is repeatedly assigned at various specific times to the user-deployed access channel (6) so as to achieve as uniform a utilization of the servers (18, 19, 20, 21) as possible. The speech activity detector (23) detects an in-coming speech signal on the access channel (6) to which channel the speech processing unit (22) is assigned at this time, and activates the speech recognition unit (24). It addition, a corresponding barge-in dialogue system (1) is described.