SERVICE PROVIDING SYSTEM

• US 20090142743A1
• Filed: 04/19/2007
• Published: 06/04/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Morikawa, Koji, Adachi, Shinobu
• Granted Patent: US 8,382,483 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 434/362
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/377 using evoked responses
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/06 of the multiple-choice answer-type, i.e. where a given question is provided with a series of answers and a choice has to be made from the answers

Abstract

There is provided a system which is able to realize study assistance or a desired appliance operation for a user, even in the absence of an answer input from the user.

A service providing system includes an output section for presenting a question to a user, and further presenting sequentially a plurality of options as candidate answers to the question; a signal detection section for measuring an event-related potential of electroencephalograms of the user; and a determination section for determining whether the user has thought each option to be the correct answer or not, based on the event-related potential in a predetermined period after each option is presented, e.g., in a period from about 350 milliseconds to about 450 milliseconds.

Claims

1. A service providing system comprising:

an output section for presenting a question to a user, and further presenting sequentially a plurality of options as candidate answers to the question;

a signal detection section for measuring an event-related potential of electroencephalograms of the user;

a determination section for determining whether the user has thought each option to be a correct answer or not, based on the event-related potential in a predetermined period after each option is presented;

a database storing a plurality of questions as well as options which are correct answers to the plurality of questions and options which are not the correct answers; and

a selection section for, when there is one option which is determined by the determination section to have been thought to be the correct answer by the user and the option is described as a correct answer option in the database, selecting a question of a genre different from that of the question presented by the output section.

2. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein the determination section determines whether the user has thought each option to be a correct answer or not, by using as the predetermined period a period from about 350 milliseconds to about 450 milliseconds as counted from a point in time where each option is presented.

5. The service providing system of claim 1, further comprising a selection section for selecting the question by referring to the database, and thereafter selecting the option which is the correct answer and the option which is not the correct answer in an arbitrary order and sending the option to the output section, wherein,

when beginning boot of the service providing system or when receiving an instruction from the user,

based on an event-related potential after presenting the option which is the correct answer and an event-related potential after presenting the option which is not the correct answer, the determination section executes a calibration for the event-related potential related to the user having thought it to be the correct answer.

6. The service providing system of claim 1, further comprising a timing control section for determining whether the user is in a stand-by state or not based on the event-related potential in a predetermined period before presenting each option, and giving an instruction to select and output a next option in accordance with a determination result.

7. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein, when the determination section determines that the user has thought the presented option to be the correct answer, the output section does not present any option that is left as a candidate answer to the question.

8. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein,

when determining that the user has thought the presented option to be the correct answer, the determination section further determines whether the presented option matches the option which is the correct answer or not;

and

if they match, the output section does not present any option that is left as a candidate answer to the question.

9. The service providing system of claim 8, wherein, when determining that the user has thought the presented option to be the correct answer, the determination section presents the option which is the correct answer.

10. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein,

when detecting that noise is mixed in the event-related potential based on the event-related potential, the determination section quits the determination as to whether the user has thought the presented option to be the correct answer;

and

the output section again presents the option.

11. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein, the selection section presents an option which is the correct answer at an (n/2)^th or earlier, where n is a number of the plurality of options.

12. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein,

the determination section previously retains, regarding a predetermined question, a threshold which lies between an average potential of an event-related potential in a time slot from 300 milliseconds to 500 milliseconds after presenting an option which is determined as having been thought to be the correct answer by the user and an average potential of an event-related potential in the time slot, which is determined as having not thought to be the correct answer;

and

the determination section compares between the threshold and the average potential of the event-related potential in the time slot, and determines that the user has thought it to be the correct answer if the average potential is greater than the threshold, and determines that the user has not thought it to be the correct answer if the average potential is smaller than the threshold.

13. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein,

the determination section retains, regarding a predetermined question, first numerical values which are pre-generated based on an average potential of an event-related potential in a time slot from 300 milliseconds to 500 milliseconds after presenting an option which is determined as having been thought to be the correct answer by the user and second numerical values which are pre-generated based on an average potential of an event-related potential in the time slot, which is determined as having not thought to be the correct answer;

and

the determination section compares a first Mahalanobis distance between the average potential of the event-related potential in the time slot and the first numerical values against a second Mahalanobis distance between the average potential and the second numerical values, and determines that the user has thought it to be the correct answer if the first Mahalanobis distance is shorter than the second Mahalanobis distance, and determines that the user has not thought it to be the correct answer if the first Mahalanobis distance is longer than the second Mahalanobis distance.

14. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein the determination section retains, regarding a predetermined question, a first template which is pre-generated based on an event-related potential in a time slot from 300 milliseconds to 500 milliseconds after presenting an option which is determined as having been thought to be the correct answer by the user and a second template which is pre-generated based on an event-related potential in the time slot, which is determined as having not thought to be the correct answer;

and

the determination section compares a first correlation coefficient between a waveform value of the event-related potential in the time slot and the first template against a second correlation coefficient between the waveform value and the second template, and determines that the user has thought it to be the correct answer if the first correlation coefficient is greater than the second correlation coefficient, and determines that the user has not thought it to be the correct answer if the first correlation coefficient is smaller than the second correlation coefficient.

15. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein the determination section retains an average value of the event-related potential corresponding to each of the plurality of options, and determines that an option having a largest average value has been thought to be the correct answer by the user.

16. The service providing system of claim 13, wherein, among the event-related potentials corresponding respectively to the plurality of options, the determination section determines that an option having a shortest Mahalanobis distance from the first numerical values has been thought to be the correct answer by the user.

17. The service providing system of claim 14, wherein, among the event-related potentials corresponding respectively to the plurality of options, the determination section determines that an option having a largest first correlation coefficient has been thought to be the correct answer by the user.

19. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein, when an option determined by the determination section to have been thought to be the correct answer by the user is described as an option which is not a correct answer in the database, the selection section selects a question of a same genre as the question presented by the output section.

20. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein when there is no option determined by the determination section to have been thought to be the correct answer by the user, the selection section selects the same question as the question presented by the output section.

21. The service providing system of claim 1, wherein the output section presents the question selected by the selection section.

3-4. -4. (canceled)

18. A quizzing method comprising:

a presentation step of presenting a question to a user;

a sequential presentation step of sequentially presenting a plurality of options as candidate answers to the question;

a measurement step of measuring an event-related potential of electroencephalograms of the user;

a determination step of determining whether the user has thought each option to be a correct answer or not, based on the event-related potential in a predetermined period after each option is presented; and

a selection step of, when there is one option which is determined by the determination section to have been thought to be the correct answer by the user and the option is described as a correct answer option in a database storing a plurality of questions as well as options which are correct answers to the plurality of questions and options which are not the correct answers, selecting a question of a genre different from that of the question presented by the presentation step.