Proactive dialogue systems, related to a wide range of real-world conversational applications, equip the conversational agent with the capability of leading the conversation direction towards achieving pre-defined targets or fulfilling certain goals from the system side. It is empowered by advanced techniques to progress to more complicated tasks that require strategical and motivational interactions. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive overview of the prominent problems and advanced designs for conversational agent's proactivity in different types of dialogues. Furthermore, we discuss challenges that meet the real-world application needs but require a greater research focus in the future. We hope that this first survey of proactive dialogue systems can provide the community with a quick access and an overall picture to this practical problem, and stimulate more progresses on conversational AI to the next level.

翻译：主动对话系统涉及广泛的实际对话应用，它赋予对话智能体引导对话方向的能力，以实现系统预设目标或达成特定目的。通过先进技术的赋能，该系统能够处理需要策略性和动机性交互的复杂任务。本文全面综述了各类对话中对话智能体主动性所面临的核心问题与前沿设计方案，并进一步探讨了契合实际应用需求但未来仍需加大研究力度的挑战。我们期望作为主动对话系统的首篇综述，能够为学界快速了解这一实用问题提供整体框架，并推动对话式人工智能迈向更高水平。