Goal-driven approach to open-ended dialogue management using BDI agents

We describe a BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) approach and architecture for a conversational virtual companion embodied as a child's Toy. Our aim is to support both structured conversation-based activities (e.g., story-telling, collaborative games) as well as more free-flowing, engaging dialogue with variation and some unpredictability. We argue that a goal-oriented approach to the agent's conversational capabilities provides these competing capabilities.