CONTEXT-BASED INTERESTS IN COMPUTING ENVIRONMENTS AND SYSTEMS

• US 20100161544A1
• Filed: 12/23/2008
• Published: 06/24/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/23/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Inventors: KALASAPUR, Swaroop, JEONG, Sangoh, CHENG, Doreen, SONG, Yu
• Granted Patent: US 8,554,767 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/52
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

Techniques for determining an interest in an object of interest in a given situation are disclosed. Multiple situation-based interest rating components can be provided for various situations. Each situation-based interest rating component can include an interest value indicative of interest in an object of interest in one of the situations. An input situation can then be obtained. One of the situation-based interest rating components can be identified matching an input situation. The relevance of one or more of the other situation-based interest rating components to the identified matching component can then be determined. This can, for example, be done by computing one or more distances between only the respective situation-based portions of the matching situation-based interest rating component and one or more of the other components, or based on the interest value-based portion of each component, or both.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of determining interest in an object of interest in a given situation, wherein said method comprises:

obtaining a plurality of situation-based interest rating components for a plurality of situations, wherein each one of said plurality of situation-based interest rating components includes an interest value indicative of interest in said object of interest in one of said plurality of situations, each one of the plurality of situations effectively represented by a plurality of context variables, each one of the plurality of context variables having an associated plurality of possible context values;

obtaining an input situation that is effectively represented by a plurality of input context values;

identifying, based on said input situation, one of said situation-based interest rating components as a matching situation-based interest rating component for said input situation;

determining the relevance of at least a portion of one or more other situation-based interest rating components to said matching situation-based interest rating component; and

determining, based on said one or more relevancies, a projected interest value indicative of a projected interest in said object of interest in said input situation.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said determining of relevance comprises one or more of the following:

determining the relevance of situations of said one or more other situation based interest rating components to a matching situation of said matching situation-based interest rating component;

determining the relevance of interest values of said one or more other situation-based interest rating components to a matching interest value of said matching situation-based interest rating component; and

determining the relevance of said one or more other situation-based interest rating components as a whole to said matching situation-based interest rating component considered as a whole.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein each of said situation-based interest ratings components are represented in a vector form.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein determining the relevance of said one or more other situation-based interest rating components as a whole comprises considering entire said vector forms.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein:

at least one of said situation-based interest rating components is an unknown interest rating component that includes an unknown interest value; and

said determining of the relevance of interest values of said one or more other situation-based interest rating components comprises;

not considering said unknown interest value.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of said situation-based interest rating components is an average-based interest rating component that includes an average interest value.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein said method further comprises:

determining said average interest value at least by averaging a plurality of known interest values associated with a repeated occurrence of a situation associated with said average-based interest rating component.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said method further comprises:

assigning an initial value to an unknown interest value, the unknown interest value having a range of possible interest values;

updating said initial value based on one or more of the following;

a) the projected interest value; and

b) an approximate midpoint of the range of possible interest values.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said method further comprises:

obtaining data relating to a set of data associations, each one of the set of data associations including an associated data association situation and an associated data association interest value, the associated data association situation including two or more data association context variables, each one of said data association context variables having a plurality of possible data association context values.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein said obtaining of said plurality of situation-based interest rating components includes averaging the data association interest values associated with a subset of the set of data associations, the subset including two or more data associations that have the same situation.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein:

a first one of the plurality of situation-based interest rating components has at least two context variables, the at least two context variables encoded as at least a portion of a first multi-dimensional vector;

at least two of the input context values of the input situation are encoded as at least a portion of a second multi-dimensional vector;

the predicting of the projected interest level uses a weighted sum, the weighted sum being based at least partly on the calculating of a distance between the first multi-dimensional vector and the second multi-dimensional vector.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the calculating of the distance includes at least one of a group consisting of:

a) calculating a cosine distance; and

b) calculating a Euclidean distance.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein a first one of the context variables is encoded using 1-in-N encoding, N being an integer equal to the number of possible context values associated with the first one of the context variables, such that the first one of the context variables is encoded as a vector with N values.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein each one of the plurality of situations are represented by a different combination of context values.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein each one of the plurality of situations includes a first context variable and a second context variable, the first context variable representing a location and the second context variable representing a time of day.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein each one of the plurality of situation-based interest rating components includes an associated plurality of interest values, each one of the associated plurality of interest values indicative of interest in different objects of interest in the one of the plurality of situations associated with the respective situation-based interest rating component.

17. A computing system, wherein said computing system is operable to:

obtain a plurality of situation-based interest rating components for a plurality of situations, wherein each one of said plurality of situation-based interest rating components includes an interest value indicative of interest in said object of interest in one of said plurality of situations, each one of the plurality of situations effectively represented by a plurality of context variables, each one of the plurality of context variables having an associated plurality of possible context values;

obtain an input situation that is effectively represented by a plurality of input context values;

identify based on said input situation, one of said situation-based interest rating components as a matching situation-based interest rating component for said input situation;

determine the relevance of at least a portion of one or more other situation-based interest rating components to said matching situation-based interest rating component; and

determine, based on said one or more relevancies, a projected interest value indicative of a projected interest in said object of interest in said input situation.

18. The computing system of claim 17, wherein said computing system includes one or more of the following:

a server configured to perform the obtaining of the plurality of situation-based interest rating components, the identifying of one of said situation-based interest rating components, the determining of the relevance, and the determining of the projected interest value; and

a client coupled with the server, the server configured to perform the obtaining of the input situation and further configured to transmit the input context values to the server.

19. The computing system of claim 17, wherein at least one of the context variables is based on one or more of the following:

a) an environmental factor and/or element;

b) an environmental factor and/or element associated with one or more humans interacting with one or more applications on the computing system;

c) environmental context of use associated with an environment of one or more humans as they interact with one or more active applications on the computing system;

d) a geographical and/or physical factor and/or element;

e) time, date, location, mode, mode of operation, condition, event, temperature, speed and/or acceleration of movement, power and/or force;

f) presence of one or more external components and/or devices;

g) presence of one or more active components operating on one or more external devices in a determined proximity of said device; and

h) one or more physiological and/or biological conditions associated with one or more persons interacting with the computing system.

20. A computer readable medium embodied in a tangible form including executable computer program code operable to predict an interest in an object of interest in a situation, wherein the computer readable medium includes:

executable computer code operable to obtain a plurality of situation-based interest rating components for a plurality of situations, wherein each one of said plurality of situation-based interest rating components includes an interest value indicative of interest in said object of interest in one of said plurality of situations, each one of the plurality of situations effectively represented by a plurality of context variables, each one of the plurality of context variables having an associated plurality of possible context values;

executable computer code operable to obtain an input situation that is effectively represented by a plurality of input context values;

executable computer code operable to identify, based on said input situation, one of said situation-based interest rating components as a matching situation-based interest rating component for said input situation;

executable computer code operable to determine the relevance of at least a portion of one or more other situation-based interest rating components to said matching situation-based interest rating component; and

executable computer code operable to determine, based on said one or more relevancies, a projected interest value indicative of a projected interest in said object of interest in said input situation.

21. A computer-implemented method of determining interest in an object of interest in a given situation, wherein said method comprises:

obtaining a plurality of situation-based interest rating components for a plurality of situations, each one of said plurality of situation-based interest rating components including an associated interest value indicative of interest in said object of interest in associated one of said plurality of situations, each one of the plurality of situations effectively represented by a plurality of context variables, each one of the plurality of context variables having an associated plurality of possible context values, wherein a first one of the plurality of situation-based interest rating components is a first unknown interest rating component whose said associated interest value is unknown;

determining the relevance of at least a portion of a first set of one or more situation-based interest rating components to at least a portion of said first unknown interest rating component; and

determining, based on said one or more relevancies, a first projected interest value indicative of a projected value for said unknown interest rating.

22. The method of 21, further comprising:

obtaining an input situation that is effectively represented by a plurality of input context values

identifying said input situation as a situation that matches said situation associated with said first unknown interest rating component.

23. The method of claim 22, further comprising:

substituting said unknown interest value associated with the first unknown interest rating component with the first projected interest value to form an updated situation-based interest rating component;

obtaining an input situation that is effectively represented by a plurality of input context values;

identifying, based on said input situation, one of said situation-based interest rating components as a matching situation-based interest rating component for said input situation;

determining the relevance of at least a portion of a second set of one or more other situation-based interest rating components to at least a portion of said matching situation-based interest rating component, said second set of one or more other situation-based interest rating components including the updated situation-based interest rating component; and

determining, based on said one or more relevancies, a second projected interest value indicative of a projected interest in said object of interest in said second input situation.