phaidra.ustp.at o:7210 DOI 10.60522/o:7211 Robust Dialog Design for Emergency Situations with AI-Based Voice Assistants With rising life expectancy and seniors seeking to live independently for as long as possible, automated emergency detection and communication will play a vital role in ensuring quick emergency responses in the future. Voice assistants enable a quick and hands-free reaction by the users and can also take their feedback into account. This paper presents the methods employed by the Smart Companion project to improve the dialogue and technical structures of a voice assistant system for emergency situations. We propose a dialogue structure, guided by a user centered design process, that issues concise and closed-ended questions while being able to process a wide range of possible user responses. This structure can handle any verbal user input, including non-responses and unintelligible utterances, through feedback and fallback mechanisms. To avoid technical errors or unresponsive users prematurely terminating an emergency call, conversations can be restarted at any point in the dialogue structure, by working in tandem with the other Smart Companion components. This also enables the emergency system to proactively ascertain if the user needs help. The technical implementation provides an easy dialogue configuration, adaptation, and expansion, with a custom state machine design supervising the dialogue flow. eng Voice Assistants Human Machine Communication AI Dialogue Design State Machine Design 2025-07-09T12:14:23.692Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Feilacher;David; FN:David Feilacher X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2390-0191 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Lehner;Sabine; FN:Sabine Lehner X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2953-4183 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Heller;Mario; FN:Mario Heller X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2750-5634 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Girsule;Berhard; FN:Berhard Girsule END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Jakl;Andreas; FN:Andreas Jakl X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5594-8494 END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 application/pdf 1238776 https://phaidra.ustp.at/o:7210 https://phaidra.ustp.at/api/object/o:7210/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012 https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/2 TECHNICAL SCIENCES TECHNISCHE WISSENSCHAFTEN https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/202 Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Information Engineering Elektrotechnik, Elektronik, Informationstechnik https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/2020 Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Information Engineering Elektrotechnik, Elektronik, Informationstechnik https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/202002 Audiovisual media Audiovisuelle Medien https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012 https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/2 TECHNICAL SCIENCES TECHNISCHE WISSENSCHAFTEN https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/202 Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Information Engineering Elektrotechnik, Elektronik, Informationstechnik https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/2020 Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Information Engineering Elektrotechnik, Elektronik, Informationstechnik https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/202022 Information technology Informationstechnik https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012 https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/5 SOCIAL SCIENCES SOZIALWISSENSCHAFTEN https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/508 Media and Communication Sciences Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/5080 Media and Communication Sciences Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012 https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/6 HUMANITIES GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/604 Arts Kunstwissenschaften https://w3id.org/oerbase/vocabs/oefos2012/6040 Arts Kunstwissenschaften