Input apparatus, input method and input program

• US 20070124131A1
• Filed: 09/28/2006
• Published: 05/31/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/29/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation), Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation (Toshiba Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Inventors: Chino, Tetsuro, Kamatani, Satoshi, Sumita, Kazuo
• Granted Patent: US 8,346,537 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue

Abstract

An input apparatus which presents examples suitable to users, including an example storage module to store a plurality of example expressions; an edit storage module to store edits when a user edits the plurality of example expressions; a presentation example determining module to determine one or more presentation examples to be presented to the user from the plurality of example expressions stored in the example storage module; an edit adapting module to edit the presentation examples determined by the presentation example determining module based on the edits stored in the edit storage module; a display control module to present the presentation examples determined by the presentation example determining module to the user; and an entry accepting module to accept one of the presentation examples as a selected example when one of the presentation examples is selected by the user, or to receive edits from the user to one of the presentation examples and accept the edited presentation example as the selected example.

Claims

1. An input apparatus comprising:

an example storage module to store a plurality of example expressions;

an edit storage module to store edits when a user edits the plurality of example expressions;

a presentation example determining module to determine one or more presentation examples to be presented to the user from the plurality of example expressions stored in the example storage module;

an edit adapting module to edit the presentation examples determined by the presentation example determining module based on the edits stored in the edit storage module;

a display control module to present the presentation examples determined by the presentation example determining module to the user; and

an entry accepting module to accept one of the presentation examples as a selected example when one of the presentation examples is selected by the user, or to receive edits from the user to one of the presentation examples and accept the edited presentation example as the selected example.

2. The input apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the edit storage module stores an association between a subject expression in a first edit with an edited result expression in the first edit, the subject expression representing words in one of the example expressions before the first edit and the edited result expression representing words replacing the subject expression after the first edit, and

the edit adapting module edits the presentation examples by replacing the subject expression in the presentation examples with the edited result expression.

3. The input apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the example storage module stores example expressions where one or more words included in the example expressions are given a semantic attribute expressing a meaning of the words,

the edit storage module stores an association between the semantic attribute, a subject expression, and an edited result expression, the subject expression representing words in one of the example expressions before a first edit and the edited result expression representing words replacing the subject expression after the first edit, and

the edit adapting module edits the presentation examples by replacing the subject expression with the edited result expression, the presentation examples also having a stored association with the semantic attribute.

4. The input apparatus according to claim 3 further comprising a semantic relationship storage module to associate expressions with each other through semantic relationships between the expressions,

wherein the edit adapting module edits the example expressions by:

acquiring a semantic relationship between a subject expression and a first conceptual expression, the subject expression corresponding to an edited result expression, the subject expression representing words in one of the example expressions before a first edit andthe edited result expression representing words replacing the subject expression after the first edit;

acquiring a second conceptual expression having the semantic relationship with the edited result expression, and

editing the example expressions that include the first conceptual expression by replacing the first conceptual expression with the second conceptual expression.

5. The input apparatus according to claim 1 further comprising an analyzing module to, when the entry accepting module accepts an entry example expression partially edited by a user, compare the stored example expressions with the edit, specify the edited portion of the entry example expression, and register the edit by associating a subject expression with an edited result expression corresponding to the edited portion in the edit storage module, the subject expression representing words in the entry example expression before the edit and the edited result expression representing words replacing the subject expression after the edit.

6. The input apparatus according to claim 1 further comprising a use condition detecting module to detect a use condition for the apparatus,

wherein the example storage module stores an association between an example expression and the use condition;

and

the presentation example determining module determines presentation examples to be presented to the user from the example expressions stored in the example storage module that are associated with the use condition.

7. The input apparatus according to claim 6, wherein the display control module presents one or more predetermined use conditions to a user;

the entry accepting module accepts an entry from a user to select one of the predetermined use conditions presented by the display control module as a selected use condition; and

the use condition detecting module detects the selected use condition as the accepted use condition of the apparatus.

8. The input apparatus according to claim 6 further comprising a location information acquiring module to acquire location information for the apparatus,

wherein the use condition detecting module detects the use condition of the apparatus based on the location information acquired by the location information acquiring module.

9. The input apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the entry accepting module accepts a speech input of the selected example or accepts a speech input describing edits to one of the presentation examples, performs speech recognition on the speech input, and accepts a speech recognition result as a whole or partial edit to the selected example or the presentation example.

10. The input apparatus according to claim 9, wherein the entry accepting module limits candidates for the speech recognition result by performing speech recognition on the speech input and comparing the speech recognition with speech recognition for at least one of:

the presentation examples being displayed by the display control module, or

a partial edit by the user to one of the presentation expressions.

11. An input method comprising:

determining one or more presentation examples to be presented for a user from example expressions stored in an example storage module;

editing the presentation examples determined at the presentation example determining step based on edits stored in an edit storage module which stores the edits when a user edits an example;

a display control step which presents the presentation examples determined at the presentation example determining step to the user; and

an entry accepting step which accepts one of the presentation examples as a selected example when the user selects one of the presentation examples, or receives edits from the user to one of the presentation examples and accepts the edited presentation example as the selected example.

12. An input program, tangibly embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, the input program operable to cause a computer to execute:

a presentation example determining procedure which determines one or more presentation examples to be presented to a user from example expressions stored in an example storage module;

an editing adapting procedure which edits the presentation examples determined by the presentation example determining procedure based on edits stored in an edit storage module which stores the edits when a user edits an example;

a display control procedure which presents the presentation examples determined at the presentation example determining procedure to the user; and

an entry accepting procedure which accepts one of the presentation examples as a selected example when the user selects one of the presentation examples, or receives edits from the user to one of the presentation examples and accepts the edited presentation example as the selected example.