Chatting System, Method And Apparatus For Virtual Pet

• US 20100106789A1
• Filed: 12/28/2009
• Published: 04/29/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Tencent Technology Shenzhen Company Limited (Tencent Holdings Limited)
• Original Assignee: Tencent Technology Shenzhen Company Limited (Tencent Holdings Limited)
• Inventors: Liu, Zhiyuan, Yu, Rongling, Liu, Yunfeng, Yang, Haisong
• Granted Patent: US 8,645,479 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/35 Discourse or dialogue representation

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provides a chatting system for a virtual pet, including a pet client, configured to receive a natural language sentence of a pet master, and send the natural language sentence to a virtual pet server; the virtual pet server, configured to forward the natural language sentence to a questioning and answering server, and return a natural language response to the pet client; the questioning and answering server, configured to perform processing of natural language understanding on the natural language sentence, obtain language characteristics of the pet master, generate the natural language response according to a natural language understanding result and the language characteristics of the pet master, and return the natural language response to the virtual pet server. Embodiments of the present invention further provide a chatting method for a virtual pet and a questioning and answering server.

Claims

1. A chatting system for a virtual pet, comprising:

a pet client, configured to receive a natural language sentence of a pet master, and send the natural language sentence to a virtual pet server;

the virtual pet server, configured to forward the natural language sentence to a questioning and answering server, and return a natural language response to the pet client;

the questioning and answering server, configured to perform processing of natural language understanding on the natural language sentence;

obtain language characteristics of the pet master;

generate the natural language response according to a natural language understanding result and the language characteristics of the pet master; and

return the natural language response to the virtual pet server.

2. The chatting system according to claim 1, wherein

the virtual pet server is further configured to manage pet attributes and send the pet attributes to the questioning and answering server;

and

the questioning and answering server is further configured to generate the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result, the language characteristics of the pet master and the pet attributes.

3. The chatting system according to claim 1, wherein the language characteristics of the pet master are stored in a pet master language information base, and

the pet master language information base is configured to adjust the language characteristics of the pet master in the pet master language information base according to the natural language understanding result.

4. The chatting system according to claim 2, wherein

the pet attributes are stored in a pet attribute base connected with the virtual pet server.

5. The chatting system according to claim 4, wherein

the pet attribute base is further configured to store pet master attributes;

and

the questioning and answering server is further configured to generate the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result, the language characteristics of the pet master, and the pet attributes and/or the pet master attributes.

6. The chatting system according to claim 1, further comprising:

a communication platform between the pet client and the virtual pet server;

wherein

the communication platform is configured to forward the natural language sentence and the natural language response between the pet client and the virtual pet server.

7. The chatting system according to claim 6, wherein the communication platform is an Instant Messaging, IM, communication platform, a short messaging service communication platform, a network interface communication platform, or an Email communication platform.

8. The chatting system according to claim 6, wherein there are at least two virtual pet servers, and the system further comprises a dispatch server set between the communication platform and the at least two virtual pet servers;

and

the dispatch server is configured to receive the natural language sentence of the pet master from the communication platform, and dispatch the natural language sentence to each virtual pet server according to a load balancing principle.

9. The chatting system according to claim 3, the pet master language information base is set in the questioning and answering server, or set independently.

10. The chatting system according to claim 1, the pet client is set in an IM tool.

11. A chatting method for a virtual pet, comprising:

receiving a natural language sentence of a pet master;

performing processing of natural language understanding on the natural language sentence;

obtaining and saving language characteristics of the pet master; and

generating a natural language response according to a natural language understanding result and the saved language characteristics of the pet master.

12. The chatting method according to claim 11, further comprising:

obtaining pet attributes and/or pet master attributes;

wherein generating the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result and the saved language characteristics of the pet master comprises;

generating the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result, the language characteristics of the pet master, and the pet attributes and/or the pet master attributes.

13. The chatting method according to claim 11, wherein performing the processing of the natural language understanding on the natural language sentence comprises:

performing any or any combination of operations comprising word segmentation, question trunk extraction, question type determination and topic determination on the natural language sentence.

14. The chatting method according to claim 12, wherein generating the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result and the saved language characteristics of the pet master comprises:

adjusting the language characteristics of the pet master according to the natural language understanding result, history chatting records of the pet master, and the saved language characteristics of the pet master; and

generating the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result, reasoning knowledge, the pet attributes and/or the pet master attributes, and the adjusted language characteristics of the pet master.

15. The chatting method according to claim 14, wherein the reasoning knowledge is saved in a format of a pair of questioning and answering sentences.

16. A questioning and answering server, comprising:

a sentence understanding engine unit, configured to perform processing of natural language understanding on a natural language sentence received, send a natural language understanding result respectively to a learning engine unit and a reasoning engine unit, and send a natural language response generated by the reasoning engine unit;

the learning engine unit, configured to obtain language characteristics of a pet master according to a natural language understanding result, and save the language characteristics into a pet master language information base; and

the reasoning engine unit, configured to generate the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result and the language characteristics of the pet master; and

the pet master language information base, configured to store the language characteristics of the pet master.

17. The questioning and answering server according to claim 16, further comprising a knowledge base, configured to save reasoning knowledge;

and

wherein the reasoning engine unit is further configured to generate the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result, the language characteristics of the pet master and the reasoning knowledge.

18. The questioning and answering server according to claim 17, wherein the knowledge base is further configured to store the reasoning knowledge in a format of a pair of questioning and answering sentences.

19. The questioning and answering server according to claim 16, wherein

the sentence understanding engine unit is further configured to perform any or any combination of operations comprising:

word segmentation, question trunk extraction, question type determination and topic determination on the natural language sentence.

20. The questioning and answering server according to claim 17, wherein the reasoning engine unit is further configured to obtain pet attributes and/or pet master attributes, and generate the natural language response according to the natural language understanding result, the reasoning knowledge stored in the knowledge base, the pet attributes and/or the pet master attributes, and the language characteristics in the pet master language information base.

21. The questioning and answering server according to claim 16, wherein the learning engine unit is further configured to adjust the language characteristics of the pet master according to the natural language understanding result, history chatting records of the pet master, and the saved language characteristics of the pet master, and save the adjusted language characteristics into the pet master language information base.