Computing Dialogues with Membranes

Human-computer interfaces require models of dialogue structure that capture the variability and unpredictability within dialogue. In this paper we propose to use a computing paradigm –P systems– in order to define such a dialogue model. We introduce Dialogue P Systems (shortly, DPS) as a biological computing model that computes pragmatic minimal units –speech acts– for constructing dialogues. We claim that DpS provide a simple model where the passage from the real dialogue to the P systems model can be achieved in a highly formalized way.