Natural language generation system for producing natural language instructions

• US 5,181,250 A
• Filed: 11/27/1991
• Issued: 01/19/1993
• Est. Priority Date: 11/27/1991
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Board of Trustees of The University of Illinois
• Original Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Frisch, Alan M., Morgan, Jerry L., Hinrichs, Erhard W.
• Primary Examiner(s): Evans, Arthur G.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Tung, Kee M.
• Application Number:
  US07/800,780
• Time in Patent Office: 419 Days
• Field of Search: 381/31, 381/51, 340/988, 340/990, 340/995, 364/443, 364/444, 364/449, 364/424.01
• US Class Current: 704/270
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3629 Guidance using speech or audio output, e.g. text-to-speech text to speech systems per se G10L13/00
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3641 Personalized guidance, e.g. limited guidance on previously travelled routes
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems

Abstract

In certain computerized systems, computer-generated spoken instructions are made more natural sounding by using recursion to identify significant points in a series of similar instructions when an utterance should be made. No instructions are issued when such instructions would provide little or no information to a user. In a vehicle navigation system, instructions to a driver are typically issued at points along the drivers route where the driver should perform some critical action.

Claims

1. A method of generating instructions to navigate along a route between a starting location and a desired destination location, said route being comprised of at least one road segment, a plurality of the characteristics of a plurality of road segments being known and defined in a series of data records, said method comprised of the steps of:

a) planning a speech action for a user, that describes at least one operation to be performed by the user, to traverse at least one segment between the starting location and the destination location;

b) determining which speech act, from a predetermined set of possible speech acts, is required to convey an instruction to the user to perform said at least one operation;

c) for the speech act of step b;

forming a subset of speech clauses from a set of possible speech clauses to convey said instruction;

clausifying said subset of speech clauses prior to generating an audible speech clauses;

generating an audible speech clause from said subset of speech clauses.

2. The method of claim 1 where the step of planning a speech action for a user further includes recusively calling simple turn loops to form a complex turn loop.

3. The method of claim 1 where the step of planning a speech action includes parsing sequences of simple action representations for single intersections.

4. The method of claim 1 including the step of providing a preroute summary to the user.

5. An apparatus for generating instructions to navigate along a route between a starting location and a desired destination location, said route being comprised of at least one road segment, a plurality of the characteristics of a plurality of road segments being known and defined in a series of data records, said apparatus comprised of:

means for planning a speech action for a user, that describes at least one operation to be performed by the user, to traverse at least one segment between the starting location and the destination location;

means for determining which speech act, from a predetermined set of possible speech acts, is required to convey an instruction to the user to perform said at least one operation;

means for forming a subset of speech clauses from a set of possible speech clauses to convey said instruction;

means for clausifying said subset of speech clauses prior to generating an audible speech cluases;

means for generating an audible speech clause from said subset of speech clauses.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 including means for planning a speech action for a user that further includes means for recusively calling simple turn loops to form a complex turn loop.

7. The method of claim 5 where the means for planning a speech action includes a means for parsing sequences of simple action representations for single intersections.

8. The apparatus of claim 5 including a means for providing a pre-route summary to the user.