Method and apparatus for automatically building conversational systems

• US 7,660,400 B2
• Filed: 12/19/2003
• Issued: 02/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/19/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Interactions, LLC
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Feng, Junlan, Rahim, Mazin G., Bangalore, Srinivas
• Primary Examiner(s): Gauthier, Gerald
• Application Number:
  US10/742,466
• Publication Number:
  US 20050135571A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,244 Days
• Field of Search: 707/10, 707/3, 707/6, 707/4, 707/110, 379/88.17, 379/37, 379/88.01, 379/88.22, 379/218.01, 455/41.2, 704/10, 704/270.1, 704/275, 704/260, 709/205, 709/217, 709/218, 715/234, 715/523, 705/10
• US Class Current: 379/88.17
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06311 Scheduling, planning or task assignment for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0635 Processing of requisition or of purchase orders
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/6418 Hybrid transport
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/40 using speech recognition
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/60 Medium conversion
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/355 Interactive dialogue design tools, features or methods
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4938 comprising a voice browser which renders and interprets, e.g. VoiceXML
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0009 where voice calls remain entirely in the telephone network
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0036 where the data service is an information service

Abstract

A system and method provides a natural language interface to world-wide web content. Either in advance or dynamically, webpage content is parsed using a parsing algorithm. A person using a telephone interface can provide speech information, which is converted to text and used to automatically fill in input fields on a webpage form. The form is then submitted to a database search and a response is generated. Information contained on the responsive webpage is extracted and converted to speech via a text-to-speech engine and communicated to the person.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of interacting with a webpage via a spoken dialog service, the method comprising:

parsing a webpage to identify input fields in a webpage form and information to be inserted into the input fields and to determine prompts and input tags for use with a spoken dialog with a user, wherein the spoken dialog includes audible speech from the user and an automatic spoken response from a spoken dialog system;

receiving an entity name having a physical location and location identifier from the user via the spoken dialog the entity name and location identifier associated with the webpage form;

providing the entity name and location identifier to respective input fields of the webpage form;

receiving from a computer server a list of physical entities geographically closest to the location identifier; and

communicating to the user at least the closest entity of the list of entities to the location identifier.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, where the entity is a business.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the entity is an individual.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the location identifier is a location code.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the location code is a zip code.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the location identifier is an address.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

extracting the closest entity to the location identifier; and

communicating the closest entity to the location identifier.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein communicating at least the closest entity to the user further comprises communicating via synthetic speech.

9. A system that enables interaction with a webpage via a spoken dialog service, the system comprising:

means for receiving an entity name with a physical location and location identifier from a user via a spoken dialog;

means for providing the entity name and location identifier to a webpage form;

means for receiving from a computer server a list of physical entities geographically closest to the location identifier; and

means for communicating to the user at least the closest entity of the list of entities.