Dialog supporting apparatus

• US 20060129409A1
• Filed: 02/09/2006
• Published: 06/15/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/08/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intertrust Technologies Corporation (Fidelio Acquisition Co LLC)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Mizutani, Kenji, Okimoto, Yoshiyuki
• Granted Patent: US 7,752,051 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/275
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue

Abstract

To provide a dialog supporting apparatus which can support an on-going dialog so that the dialog is smoothly completed irrespective of the other party in the dialog. The dialog supporting apparatus 100 includes: an utterance receiving unit 101 and an utterance receiving unit 103 which respectively receive the utterances of the dialog participants and output the utterance information for identifying an utterance; an utterance outputting unit 102 and an utterance outputting unit 104 which respectively output the utterance information from the other participant in the dialog as an utterance; an utterance processing unit 105 which transforms the utterance identified by the utterance information into the other utterance form; a dialog history selection unit 107 which selects the optimum dialog history in the dialog history database 201; and an utterance prediction unit 106 which predicts utterances in the dialog based on the selected dialog history.

Claims

1. A dialog supporting apparatus which supports an on-going dialog made by dialog participants, said apparatus comprising:

a dialog history selection unit operable to select a dialog history from a dialog history database, based on information identifying the dialog participants and a situation of the dialog, the dialog history database storing dialog histories of the dialog participants and people other than the dialog participants; and

an utterance prediction unit operable to predict a next utterance of one of the dialog participants in the dialog, based on the dialog history selected by said dialog history selection unit.

2. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein said dialog history selection unit is operable to extract, as a standard dialog history, a dialog history which is most similar in the situation of the dialog from among dialog histories of each dialog participant, and operable to select a dialog history having a high degree of similarity with respect to each standard dialog history.

3. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 2,

wherein said dialog history selection unit is operable to calculate the degree of similarity, based on an assembly which corresponds to successive utterances and is commonly included in the selected two dialog histories of the dialog participants.

4. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein said dialog history selection unit is operable to calculate the degree of similarity which is inversely proportional to the number of the assemblies.

5. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein said dialog history selection unit is operable to calculate the degree of similarity which is proportional to a mean of the numbers of utterances included in the respective assemblies.

6. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein said dialog history selection unit is operable to adjust, the numbers of utterances in the selected two dialog histories to the same number using a dynamic programming, based on the dialog histories the degree of similarity being calculated.

7. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein said dialog history selection unit is operable to judge whether or not an utterance is commonly included in the selected two dialog histories by performing at least one of the following matchings:

a matching based on utterance information for identifying the utterance;

a matching based on a surface expression; and

a matching based on a content word.

8. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein said utterance prediction unit is operable to predict that a next utterance of one of the dialog participants in the dialog is an utterance in the dialog history which is stored next to an utterance in the dialog history corresponding to an utterance in the dialog, the dialog history being selected by said dialog history selection unit.

9. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

an utterance receiving unit operable to receive an utterance of one of the dialog participants;

an utterance processing unit operable to transform the utterance received by said utterance receiving unit into the other utterance form; and

an utterance outputting unit operable to output the utterance of the other utterance form transformed by said utterance processing unit.

10. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 9,

wherein said utterance receiving unit is operable to perform speech recognition of a speech to be inputted, after narrowing down a speech recognition dictionary to one of the followings:

prediction utterances predicted by said utterance prediction unit;

sentences which are similar to the prediction utterances;

words included in the prediction utterances; and

words associated with the prediction utterances, and operable to receive a result of the speech recognition which is the utterance.

11. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 9, said apparatus further comprising

a display unit,

wherein said utterance prediction unit is operable to display the prediction utterance on said display unit;

and

said utterance receiving unit is operable to receive the prediction utterance which is the utterance, when the prediction utterance is selected by one of the dialog participant.

12. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 9, said apparatus further comprising

a display unit,

wherein said utterance prediction unit is operable to predict a development of utterances made by the dialog participants in the dialog, based on the dialog history selected by said dialog history selection unit, and operable to display the predicted development of the utterances on said display unit.

13. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1, said apparatus further comprising

a history registration unit operable to register a history of the dialog made by the dialog participants in the dialog history database.

14. A dialog supporting system comprising a dialog supporting apparatus and a server apparatus which support an on-going dialog made by dialog participants,

wherein said server apparatus includes:

a dialog history database in which dialog histories of the dialog participants and people other than the dialog participants are stored; and

a dialog history selection unit operable to select a dialog history from the dialog history database, based on information identifying the dialog participants and a situation of the dialog which have been sent by said dialog supporting apparatus, and

said dialog supporting apparatus includes

an utterance prediction unit operable to request said server apparatus for a dialog history by sending, to said server apparatus, the information identifying the dialog participants and the situation of the dialog, and operable to predict a next utterance of one of the dialog participants in the dialog, based on the dialog history sent by said server apparatus.

15. A dialog supporting method for supporting an on-going dialog made by dialog participants, said method comprising:

selecting a dialog history from a dialog history database, based on information identifying the dialog participants and a situation of the dialog, the dialog history database storing dialog histories of the dialog participants and people other than the dialog participants; and

predicting a next utterance of one of the dialog participants in the dialog, based on the dialog history selected in said selecting of the dialog history.

16. A program for supporting an on-going dialog made by dialog participants, said program causing a computer to execute:

selecting a dialog history from a dialog history database, based on information identifying the dialog participants and a situation of the dialog, the dialog history database storing dialog histories of the dialog participants and people other than the dialog participants; and

predicting a next utterance of one of the dialog participants in the dialog, based on the dialog history selected in said selecting of the dialog history.