METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FUSING CONTEXT DATA

• US 20080222057A1
• Filed: 05/23/2008
• Published: 09/11/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Chen, Ying, Lei, Hui, Myllymaki, Jussi P.
• Application Number:
  US12/126,451
• Publication Number:
  US 20080222057A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/283 Multi-dimensional databases or data warehouses, e.g. MOLAP or ROLAP
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A system and method for fusing context data for use by context aware applications. The method includes the steps of receiving context data from a plurality of information sources; computing a quality measure for each input context value; organizing context values into one or more clusters, and assigning a single context value and a single quality measure to each cluster; and, selecting one or more clusters according to one or more criteria and aggregating the context values and quality measures of selected clusters to generate a single context value and quality single measure. The single context value and single quality measure are usable by a context aware application to avoid conflict and ambiguity among different information sources providing the context data.

Claims

1. A system for fusing context data obtained from a plurality of sources, said system comprising:

one or more processors comprising;

(a) means for receiving said context data including one or more context values from one or more information sources;

(b) means for computing a quality measure for each context value;

(c) means for organizing context values into one or more clusters, each cluster having a single context value and a single quality measure associated therewith;

(d) means for selecting one or more clusters from said clusters according to one or more criteria; and

(e) means for aggregating the assigned single context values and quality measures of said selected one or more clusters to generate a single representative context value and single representative quality measure;

wherein said single representative context value and single representative quality measure are usable by a context aware application to avoid conflict and ambiguity among different information sources providing said context data,

further comprising means for guiding clustering, selecting and aggregating operations used in generating said single representative context value, said guiding performed according to a respective clustering policy, selection policy, and aggregation policy,

wherein a selection policy implements a step of selecting according to sum of areas of all context values divided by minimum bounding box of all context values in the cluster.

2. The system of claim 1, implementing a push model whereby updated context data is automatically received from said sources.

3. The system of claim 1, whereby said context aware application implements means for requesting updated context data from said sources.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising said clustering, selecting and aggregating policies being stored in a policy database.

5. The system of claim 4, further including means for maintaining default clustering, selection and aggregation policies, said clustering, selecting and aggregating operations being automatically selected.

6. The system of claim 4, further including means for enabling a user to specify said clustering, selection and aggregation policies used for guiding said clustering, selecting and aggregating operations.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein said context values includes a belief value representing a context source'"'"'s belief of the quality of a state of a single subject represented in a context value.

7. A computer program device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform method steps for fusing context data, said method steps comprising:

(a) receiving context data including one or more context values from a plurality of information sources;

(b) computing a quality measure for each context value;

(c) organizing context values into one or more clusters, at least one of the clusters having a plurality of context values, and assigning a single context value and a single quality measure to each cluster; and

,

(d) selecting one or more clusters from said clusters according to one or more criteria and aggregating the assigned single context values and quality measures of said selected one or more clusters to generate a single representative context value and single representative quality measure,

wherein said single representative context value and single representative quality measure are usable by a context aware application to avoid conflict and ambiguity among different information sources providing said context data

further comprising the steps of guiding clustering, selecting and aggregating operations used in generating said single representative context value, said guiding performed according to a respective clustering policy, selection policy, and aggregation policy,

wherein a selection policy implements a step of selecting according to sum of areas of all context values divided by minimum bounding box of all context values in the cluster.