Adaptive emotion and initiative generator for conversational systems

• US 6,598,020 B1
• Filed: 09/10/1999
• Issued: 07/22/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 09/10/1999
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Uniloc 2017 LLC (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Coffman, Daniel M., Gopalakrishnan, Ponani, Ramaswamy, Ganesh N., Kleindienst, Jan
• Primary Examiner(s): Smits, Talivaldis Ivars
• Assistant Examiner(s): Azad, Abul K.
• Application Number:
  US09/394,556
• Time in Patent Office: 1,411 Days
• Field of Search: 704/270,271,272,275,276,270.1
• US Class Current: 704/270
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/04 Details of speech synthesis systems, e.g. synthesiser structure or memory management
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/08 Text analysis or generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text, e.g. grapheme to phoneme translation, prosody generation or stress or intonation determination

Abstract

A method, in accordance with the present invention, which may be implemented by a program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform steps for providing emotions for a conversational system, includes representing each of a plurality of emotions as an entity. A level of each emotion is updated responsive either user stimuli or internal stimuli or both. When a threshold level is achieved for each emotion, the user stimuli and internal stimuli are reacted to by notifying components subscribing to each emotion to take appropriate action.

Claims

1. A method for providing emotions for a conversational system, comprising the steps of:

representing each of a plurality of emotions as an entity wherein the emotions comprise one of a growing emotion, a dissipating emotion, and both;

assigning attributes to said emotion entity;

applying a system method to update a level attribute of each emotion entity responsive to one of user stimuli and internal-stimuli; and

when a level attribute meets a specified threshold, reacting to the user stimuli and internal stimuli by notifying components subscribing to each emotion entity to take appropriate action, wherein a level attribute comprises one of an emotional level of a growing emotion that increases as a function of time and decreases upon user stimuli, an emotional level of a dissipating emotion that decreases as a function of time and increases upon user stimuli, and both.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the user stimuli include a type, a quantity and a rate of commands given to the conversational system.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the internal stimuli include an elapsed time and time between user interactions.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the level of emotions is one of incremented and decremented by an assignable amount based on interaction events with the user.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the emotions include at least one of happiness, frustration, loneliness, anger, impatience, jealousy and weariness.

6. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of generating an initiative by the conversational system in accordance with achieving a threshold level for the level of emotions.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of selecting t he threshold level by the user.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the level of emotions is indicated by employing fuzzy quantifiers which provide a level of adjustment to the level of emotions based on a personality of the conversational system.

9. A program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for providing emotions for a conversational system, the method steps comprising:

representing each of a plurality of emotions as an entity wherein the emotions comprise one of a growing emotion, a dissipating emotion, and both;

assigning attributes to said emotion entity;

applying a system method to update a level attribute of each emotion entity responsive to one of user stimuli and internal stimuli; and

when a level attribute meets a specified threshold, reacting to the user stimuli and internal stimuli by notifying components subscribing to each emotion entity to take appropriate action, wherein a level attribute comprises one of an emotional level of a growing emotion that increases as a function of time and decreases upon user stimuli, an emotional level of a dissipating emotion that decreases as a function of time and increases upon user stimuli, and both.

10. The program storage device as recited in claim 9, wherein the user stimuli include a type, a quantity and a rate of commands given to the conversational system.

11. The program storage device as recited in claim 9, wherein the internal stimuli include an elapsed time and time between user interactions.

12. The program storage device as recited in claim 9, wherein the level of emotions is incremented by an assignable amount based on interaction events with the user.

13. The program storage device as recited in claim 9, wherein the emotions include at least one of happiness, frustration, loneliness, anger, jealousy, impatience and weariness.

14. The program storage device as recited in claim 9, further comprising the step of generating an initiative by the conversational system in accordance with achieving a threshold level for the level of emotions.

15. The program storage device as recited in claim 9, further comprising the step of selecting the threshold level by the user.

16. The program storage device as recited in claim 9, wherein the level of emotions is indicated by employing fuzzy quantifiers which provide a level of adjustment to the level of emotions based on a personality of the conversational system.