Method and apparatus for the automated construction of models of activities from textual descriptions of the activities
First Claim
1. A method of operating on a plurality of textual documents discussing an activity, comprising:
- extracting prototypical steps of an activity from said plurality of textual documents;
sequencing the extracted steps;
aligning the sequenced steps; and
storing the aligned steps.
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Abstract
A method of automatically constructing a model of an activity from an unsupervised examination of a plurality of textual documents describing the activity is comprised of: extracting prototypical steps from the plurality of textual documents; sequencing the extracted steps; aligning the sequenced steps; and constructing the model based on the aligned steps. The model may take the form of a step vs. position matrix which identifies the prototypical steps that make up the activity and provides the probability of each step occupying each position within the activity. The model thus constitutes common sense knowledge that encodes the stereotypical steps of an activity and the stereotypical sequencing of the steps.
6 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method of operating on a plurality of textual documents discussing an activity, comprising:
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extracting prototypical steps of an activity from said plurality of textual documents; sequencing the extracted steps; aligning the sequenced steps; and storing the aligned steps. - View Dependent Claims (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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3. The method of claim 3 wherein said candidate prototypical steps are selected from the group consisting of words, phrases, sentences, or other semantic units.
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10. A method of constructing a model of an activity by operating on a plurality of textual documents discussing the activity, comprising:
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extracting prototypical steps of the activity from said plurality of textual documents; sequencing the extracted steps; aligning the sequenced steps so as to define a global step alignment; constructing a model based on said aligned steps; and saving said model. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A computer readable medium carrying a model of an activity wherein said model comprises data identifying each step in an activity and a plurality of probabilities for each step representing the likelihoods of that step occupying locations in the global alignment of steps.
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19. A computer readable medium carrying a set of instructions which, when executed, perform a method of operating on a plurality of textual documents discussing an activity, comprising:
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extracting prototypical steps of an activity from said plurality of textual documents; sequencing the extracted steps; aligning the sequenced steps; and storing the aligned steps.
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20. A computer readable medium carrying a set of instructions which, when executed, perform a method of constructing a model of an activity by operating on a plurality of textual documents discussing the activity, comprising:
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extracting prototypical steps of the activity from said plurality of textual documents; sequencing the extracted steps; aligning the sequenced steps so as to define a global step alignment; constructing a model based on said aligned steps; and saving said model.
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Specification