Autonomous eclone

• US 7,302,466 B1
• Filed: 06/07/2006
• Issued: 11/27/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/02/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Sprint Communications Company LP (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Original Assignee: Sprint Communications Company LP (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Inventors: Satapathy, Durga Prasad, Distler, Peter H., Nelson, Tracy
• Primary Examiner(s): TRAN, PHILIP B
• Application Number:
  US11/448,484
• Time in Patent Office: 538 Days
• Field of Search: 709203-206, 709223-225, 709/229, 704/270.1, 704/275
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/527 Centralised call answering arrangements not requiring operator intervention

Abstract

An autonomous eclone (10) comprises a plurality of interface agents (15,20,25,30) operable to interact with a person; an expert system (35) operable to process a command originated by any of the agents (15,20,25,30); and a database (40) accessible by the expert system (35) and operable to store all available information associated with a user. The eclone (10) also comprises an input authenticator and classifier (45) operable to authenticate and classify the person; a command creator (50) operable to create the command based upon a request; an output action generator (55) operable to execute the command and relay a result to any of the agents (15,20,25,30); and an activity logger (60) operable to log the request and the result. The expert system (35) is essentially a collection of rules that define how the eclone (10) reacts to each request.

Claims

1. A method of independently responding to a person wishing to communicate with a user represented by a plurality of message mediums via one of the message mediums that is then unattended by the user, the method comprising the steps of:

maintaining a database of information associated with the user;

operating an interface agent coupled to a respective message medium to;

receive an unattended message from the person;

convert the unattended message into a request; and

append an identifier to the request for identifying the person wishing to communicate with the user;

operating an authenticator to match the identifier with one of a plurality of known records, thereby authenticating the person;

operating a classifier to create, store, and retrieve a classification associated with each record;

operating a command creator to convert the request into a database query;

operating an expert system to modify the query by applying a collection of rules responsive to the classification;

operating an output action generator to access the database, execute the query thereby generating the result based on the information in the database, and relay the result to the interface agent; and

operating the interface agent to relay the result to the person.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of receiving a message from the person comprises:

receiving a spoken sentence from the person;

converting the sentence into the message.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the interface agent is operable to generate a voice signature based upon the spoken sentence.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of relaying the result to the person comprises:

converting the result into a spoken response; and

playing the response for the person.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the information stored in the database is selected from the group consisting of email, word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, schedules, contracts, drawings, figures, telephone numbers, dates, names, records, notes, files, images, addresses, and personal data about the user.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein said interface agent is operable to wait a user-specified time-delay before processing the message received from the person.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the interface agent is further operable to append a routing word to the request to be used in relaying the result to the person.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of operating the interface agent to:

query the person whether the relayed result is adequate; and

if not adequate, then receiving another message from the person for converting into a request.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the classifier is operable to:

create a new record corresponding to the identifier with a default classification if the identifier is not found in the known records.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the interface agent is selected from the group consisting of an email agent, a telephone agent, a voice-mail agent, and a video-conference agent.