This application claims priority to and the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 2006-122319, filed Dec. 5, 2006, No. 2007-74287, filed Jul. 25, 2007, and No. 2007-119262, filed Nov. 21, 2007, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing information according to a user's request, and more particularly, to an interactive information providing service method and apparatus for analyzing a user's request and providing information corresponding to the request on the basis of a dialog input received from the user.
This work was supported by the IT R&D program of MIC/IITA. [2006-S-036-01, Development of large vocabulary/interactive distributed VUI for new growth engine industries].
2. Discussion of Related Art
With development of technology, information providing systems for efficiently providing needed information to users have been researched and developed by many developers.
In general, conventional information providing service apparatuses provide users with an inconvenient interface such as a multi-step search that supports an input based on a keyword search method or a menu-driven method and retrieves again needed information from the searched result. Thus, the conventional information providing service apparatuses cause inconvenience to users.
In addition, conventional information providing service apparatuses using dialog input support limited functions only, such as simple application control.
The present invention is directed to an interactive information providing service apparatus and method enabling a user to more conveniently obtain desired information through dialog input.
One aspect of the present invention provides an interactive information providing service method, comprising the steps of: analyzing an input sentence received from a user; analyzing the user's request on the basis of the analyzed input sentence; extracting daily information in real time and storing the daily information in a daily information database; extracting information corresponding to the analyzed user's request from the daily information database; and outputting the extracted information to the user.
Another aspect of the present invention provides an interactive information providing service apparatus, comprising: a conversation sentence analyzer for analyzing an input sentence received from a user; a conversation manager for analyzing the user's request using an analysis result of the conversation sentence analyzer; a real-time automatic knowledge builder for extracting in real time daily information updated on the web and storing the information in a daily information database when there is a real-time information update request from the conversation manager; a response generator for generating a response to the user's request analyzed by the conversation manager and providing the response to the user; and an exception handler for allowing the user to cancel his/her request and restoring the system when it is not possible to respond to the user's request, or when there is an error in the response to the user's request.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art by describing in detail exemplary embodiments thereof with reference to the attached drawings, in which:
Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail. However, the present invention is not limited to the embodiments disclosed below, but can be implemented in various forms. The following embodiments are described in order to enable those of ordinary skill in the art to embody and practice the present invention.
The interactive information providing service apparatus according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention may be included in a terminal, such as a personal computer, a mobile device, e.g., a cellular phone and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and a home appliance, e.g., a digital television (TV), and perform an interactive information providing service for a user.
Referring to
The user input unit 10 receives an input signal having the form of a voice signal or a text string signal from a user, and transfers the signal to the conversation sentence analyzer 20. The conversation sentence analyzer 20 performs language analysis of the input signal and transfers the analysis result to the conversation manager 30. The conversation manager 30 recognizes the user's request using the analysis result of the conversation sentence analyzer 20 and then requests the question answerer 50 for information. The question answerer 50 searches a daily information database 60, retrieves the information requested by the user, and transfers the information to the conversation manager 30. The conversation manager 30 provides the information to the user through the response generator 40.
When it is not possible to respond to an input sentence input by the user, the exception handler 80 verifies the input sentence by requesting the user to check the input sentence. When an error occurs during the operation of the system, the exception handler 80 allows the user to cancel the operation or an order and restores the system.
When a real-time information update request is received from the conversation manager 30, the real-time automatic knowledge builder 70 extracts in real time daily information updated on the web and transfers the updated information to the conversation manager 30 and the conversation sentence analyzer 20. The daily information may include information on Electronic Program Guide (EPG), weather, news, stocks, and Point of Interest (POI).
The updated information is stored in the daily information database 60 according to respective fields, such as TV guide, weather, news, personal schedule, stocks, and POI, and is used for the question answerer 50 to retrieve information. Here, the POI is a location-based service providing information on a region that a user is interested in.
Operation of the conversation sentence analyzer 20 will be described in detail with reference to
When there is an error in the input sentence, e.g., a chatting-like speech manner, an emoticon, a typographical error, an expletive, a contraction and an error in spacing words, an error handler 202 corrects the error and generates a corrected input sentence. When the error handler 202 fails in error correction, the user is informed of the error and induced to input a voice signal or a text signal again. A language analyzer 203 performs language analysis, such as morphological analysis, named entity recognition, syntactic analysis, etc., of the input sentence. A speech act and concept sequence analyzer 204 analyzes a speech act and a concept sequence of the linguistically analyzed input sentence, which are information that the user wants, on the basis of a database having previously stored speech act and concept sequence knowledge. The analysis result of the input sentence is transferred to the conversation manager 30. Examples of a speech act and a concept sequence of an input sentence analyzed on the basis of previously stored speech act and concept sequence knowledge data are given below.
Operation of the conversation manager 30 will be described in detail with reference to
A user request recognizer 304 recognizes the user's request using the speech act, the concept sequence, the field information, the substitute word, and the omitted words obtained by speech act and concept sequence analysis and speech analysis. The user's request is analyzed in the form of a frame and is transferred to an operation director 305. An example of a final speech analysis result transferred to the operation director 305 is given below.
When the user wants to obtain information, the operation director 305 calls the question answerer 50 and retrieves the corresponding information using the final analysis result of the input sentence. When it is verified whether the user's request is available, or an error has occurred in the system, the operation director 305 calls the exception handler 80. In addition, the operation director 305 transfers a final result obtained by performing the operation that the user wants to the user through the response generator 40, and performs feedback to the real-time automatic knowledge builder 70 to update daily information in real time.
Operation of the response generator 40 will be described in detail with reference to
In addition, when the user makes a conversation to control the terminal to guide the user to a destination, simulate driving, etc., a control signal generator 404 may transfer a terminal control signal. For example, the response generator 40 may answer through the screen response generator 402, the voice response generator 403 or the control signal generator 404 according to a conversation sentence input by a user, as given below.
Example 1)—User input: What channel is the baseball on today?
Example 2)—User input: Show me today's Business News.
Example 3)—User input: Let's go to 63 building.
Operation of the real-time automatic knowledge builder 70 will be described in detail with reference to
The daily information collected from the web document or the personal terminal is extracted by a field-specific knowledge extractor 705, and structured and stored by a field-specific knowledge storage 706. The information is stored in the daily information database 60 according to respective fields, such as TV guide, weather, news, personal schedule, stocks, POI, etc., and is used for the question answerer 50 to retrieve information.
Updated information is fed back by the conversation manager 30 to the input signal recognizer 201 of the conversation sentence analyzer 20, and thereby is known to the entire system.
The daily information database 60 has an expandable structure, and thus can cope with a request for the addition and expansion of new field services other than existing fields.
Operation of the exception handler 80 will be described in detail with reference to
When the apparatus malfunctions, a system restorer 803 allows the user to cancel the user's request and restores the system. Then, the system is restored by the system restorer 803 to a state in which the user has not yet made the current speech. Examples of verification of an operation requested by the user and system restoration are given below.
Example 1)—User input 1: Closing prices of stocks of “Samsung eletro”.
Example 2)—User input 1: Guide me to 63 building.
Meanwhile, the above-described exemplary embodiments can be written as a program that can be executed by computers, and can be implemented in general-purpose computers executing the program using a computer-readable recording medium. The computer-readable recording medium may be a magnetic storage medium, e.g., a read-only memory (ROM), a floppy disk, a hard disk, etc., an optical reading medium, e.g., a compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disc (DVD), etc., and carrier waves, e.g., transmission over the Internet.
As described above, the present invention analyzes a user's request and provides information corresponding to the request on the basis of dialog input, thereby enabling the user to conveniently obtain needed information.
In addition, the present invention collects in real time a variety of new information updated every day on the web and thereby can rapidly provide a user with new information.
Furthermore, according to the present invention, a control signal is transmitted to a terminal including an interactive information providing service apparatus while information is provided based on dialog input. Thus, a user can conveniently control the terminal to perform an operation needed according to retrieved information.
While the invention has been shown and described with reference to certain exemplary embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
10-2006-122319 | Dec 2006 | KR | national |
10-2007-74287 | Jul 2007 | KR | national |
10-2007-119262 | Nov 2007 | KR | national |