Principal Investigator Victor Zue
Co-investigator Stephanie Seneff
Project Website http://groups.csail.mit.edu/sls/research/mercury.shtml
MERCURY is a telephone-based conversational interface that provides information about flight schedules and pricing, Mercury enables users to book and price complex multi-leg travel itineraries to over 200 cities with the United States and around the world. The information used by Mercury is obtained over the web from Travelocity.
Created in June 1999, Mercury offers information on over 200 major cities worldwide, and recognizes a vocabulary of approximately 1,000 words. SLS members have used the system to make actual travel arrangements using naturally spoken English -- eighteen group members all successfully completed a variety of three city travel problems in a recent evaluation. The successful transactions took an average of 36 queries and 12.5 minutes to complete.
What does Mercury know? -- The initial version of Mercury has been constrained to know only the 150 top airports worldwide, plus another 50 cities within the United States. The system is also limited to 23 major airlines. Given these constraints however, Mercury can provide information about flights travelling to and from these cities. If the user `books' an actual itinerary (the system cannot issue tickets or charge users), Mercury is also able to price the itinerary for the user.
How do I talk to Mercury? -- When talking with Mercury, users must pay attention to speaking style, noise, and correcting mistakes. Please consult the JUPITER homepage for further information.
Mercury converses with the user until sufficient information is available to obtain information from the flight database. Here is an example dialogue, taken from an actual Mercury interaction.
Mercury: Welcome to Mercury, the MIT air travel planning system. I can help plan your air travel itinerary. Please tell me your user name. If you do not have a user name, please say new user.
USER: NEW USER
Mercury: Welcome. You have successfully logged onto Mercury as a new user. How may I help you?
USER: I WOULD LIKE TO FLY FROM BOSTON TO LONDON
Mercury: Flights from Boston to London. What date will you be travelling?
USER: NEXT FRIDAY IN THE EVENING
Mercury: Okay. flights from Boston to London departing between 5:00 pm and midnight o n June 25. Can you provide a departure or arrival time? The earliest nonstop flight from Boston to L ondon departing between 5:00 pm and midnight on June 25 leaves at 5:30 p.m. and arrives at 4:55 a.m. on British Airways. You arrive one day later.
USER: IS THERE A UNITED FLIGHT
Mercury: Okay. United flights from Boston to London departing between 5:00 pm and mid night on June 25. One moment please... I have a nonstop United flight leaving at 6:40 p.m. and arriving at 6:25 a.m.?
USER: BOOK THAT FLIGHT
Mercury: United flight 998 has been added to your itinerary. You depart Boston at 6:40 pm and arri ve in London Heathrow at 6:25 am. You arrive one day later. Where would you like to go next?
USER: I WOULD LIKE TO RETURN TO J F K THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY
Mercury: Okay. United flights from London Heathrow to New York's Kennedy on June 29. One moment please... I have a flight departing at 1:55 p.m., a flight departing at 9:00 a.m., and a flight dep arting at 6:00 p.m. Please select one.
USER: BOOK THE EARLIEST FLIGHT
Mercury: United flight 957 has been added to your itinerary. You depart London Heathrow at 9:00 am and arrive in New York's Kennedy at 11:50 am. Where would you like to go next?
USER: I WOULD LIKE TO RETURN TO BOSTON THAT SAME EVENING
Mercury: Okay. United flights from New York's Kennedy to Boston departing between 5:0 0 pm and midnight on June 29. One moment please... I have a flight departing at 8:55 p.m., and a flight departing at 7:00 p.m. Please select one.
USER: I WOULD LIKE THE SEVEN O+CLOCK FLIGHT
Mercury: United Airlines flight 7282 leaves New York's Kennedy at 7:00 pm and arrives in Boston at 8:31 pm. The total flight time is 1 hours and 31 minutes. The aircraft is a Jetstream 41 Turbo. Shall I book t his flight for you?
USER: YES PLEASE
Mercury: United flight 7282 has been added to your itinerary. You depart New York's Kennedy at 7:0 0 pm and arrive in Boston at 8:31 pm. Shall I price your itinerary?
USER: YES
Mercury: The price for your itinerary is $2065.40. Is there anything else I can do for you?
USER: NO THANK YOU GOOD BYE
Mercury: Thanks for using mercury. Have a nice day!
How can I enroll and use Mercury? -- If you would like to enroll as a user, you can be of great help to improve the system capabilities. Enrolling as a regular user of the system will allow Mercury to learn and remember your preferences and to send you e-mails containing the itineraries you create. To create an account, you will need to provide us information such as your name, email address, and a password in the form of a month and day. Your account will be activated as soon as we provide this information to the system. We will send you a confirmation email when this is done.
When you call Mercury we will first ask you for your name and month/day password. You can then get schedule and pricing information for your flight. At the end of your call, please answer the two yes/no questions (was this a real flight?, were you able to get the information you wanted?). You can also suggest improvements to the system as a final comment, or send email to bug-mercury@sls.lcs.mit.edu.
If you don't wish to be an enrolled user, you can still test out the system by calling its toll free number at 1-877-648-8255 (or 1-877-MIT-TALK).