RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF VIRTUAL PERSONAL ASSISTANT APPLICATIONS
First Claim
1. A method for developing a computerized virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) application for a domain of interest, the VPA application comprising an executable VPA engine and a re-usable VPA component accessible by the VPA engine to enable the VPA application to determine a likely intended goal of a computing device user based on conversational natural language input of the computing device user relating to the domain of interest, execute a task on behalf of the user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system response to the conversational natural language input, the method comprising, with a computing system;
analyzing content of an Internet web page that supports electronic interactions with computing device users relating to the domain of interest;
determining a characteristic that the content has in common with a computerized ontology that defines a structure for representing knowledge relating to one or more domains, wherein each domain refers to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA application may engage in a conversational natural language dialog with the computing device user;
establishing a data relationship between the content and the ontology based on the common characteristic; and
adapting the re-usable VPA component to the domain of interest by applying at least a portion of the content to the re-usable VPA component based on the data relationship between the content and the ontology.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A platform for developing a virtual personal assistant (“VPA”) application includes an ontology that defines a computerized structure for representing knowledge relating to one or more domains. A domain may refer to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA application may engage in a conversational natural language dialog with a computing device user. Re-usable VPA components may be linked to or included in the ontology. An ontology populating agent may at least partially automate the process of populating the ontology with domain-specific information. The re-usable VPA components may be linked with the domain-specific information through the ontology. A VPA application created with the platform may include domain-adapted re-usable VPA components that may be called upon by an executable VPA engine to determine a likely intended meaning of conversational natural language input of the user and/or initiate an appropriate system response to the input.
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Citations
19 Claims
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1. A method for developing a computerized virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) application for a domain of interest, the VPA application comprising an executable VPA engine and a re-usable VPA component accessible by the VPA engine to enable the VPA application to determine a likely intended goal of a computing device user based on conversational natural language input of the computing device user relating to the domain of interest, execute a task on behalf of the user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system response to the conversational natural language input, the method comprising, with a computing system;analyzing content of an Internet web page that supports electronic interactions with computing device users relating to the domain of interest; determining a characteristic that the content has in common with a computerized ontology that defines a structure for representing knowledge relating to one or more domains, wherein each domain refers to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA application may engage in a conversational natural language dialog with the computing device user; establishing a data relationship between the content and the ontology based on the common characteristic; and adapting the re-usable VPA component to the domain of interest by applying at least a portion of the content to the re-usable VPA component based on the data relationship between the content and the ontology. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
- VPA”
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9. A developer'"'"'s toolkit for developing a virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) computer application for a domain of interest, the developer'"'"'s toolkit comprising;a computerized ontology defining a structure for representing knowledge relating to one or more domains, each domain referring to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA computer application may engage in a conversational natural language dialog with a computing device user; one or more computerized re-usable VPA components, each of the re-usable VPA components being linked with the ontology, the one or more re-usable VPA components each accessible by an executable VPA engine to enable the VPA computer application to determine a likely intended goal of the computing device user based on conversational natural language input of the computing device user, execute a task on behalf of the computing device user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system response to the conversational natural language input; and a computerized ontology populating agent to analyze content of one or more Internet web pages that support electronic interactions with computing device users relating to the domain of interest, determine a characteristic that the content has in common with at least a portion of the ontology, and establish a data relationship between the content and the ontology based on the common characteristic. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
- VPA”
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16. A virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) computer application for a domain of interest, embodied in one or more machine-accessible storage media, the VPA computer application comprising;a user interface through which a conversational natural language dialog may be conducted between a computing device and a user to provide a service or information to the user with the computing device; a VPA engine to conduct the conversational natural language dialog and initiate the providing of the service or information to the computing device user; and a re-usable VPA component accessible by the VPA engine to enable the VPA computer application to determine a likely intended goal of the computing device user based on conversational natural language input of the computing device user, execute a task on behalf of the user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system response to the conversational natural language input; wherein the re-usable VPA component is adapted for use in the domain of interest in an automated fashion by a computerized agent configured to analyze content of an Internet web page and establish a data relationship between the web content and the re-usable VPA component. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19)
- VPA”
Specification