Dialog supporting apparatus

• US 20080215338A1
• Filed: 11/28/2007
• Published: 09/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/08/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intertrust Technologies Corporation (Fidelio Acquisition Co LLC)
• Original Assignee: Kenji Mizutani, Yoshiyuki Okimoto
• Inventors: Mizutani, Kenji, Okimoto, Yoshiyuki
• Granted Patent: US 7,835,914 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/277
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/228 of application context

Abstract

A dialog supporting apparatus which can support an on-going dialog so that the dialog is smoothly completed. The dialog supporting apparatus includes an utterance receiving unit which receives an utterance of a dialog participant and outputs utterance information, an utterance processing unit which translates the utterance identified by the utterance information, an utterance output unit which outputs the translated utterance information, a dialog history database, an utterance prediction unit which generates a first utterance prediction information based on the first utterance prediction information and the second utterance prediction information.

Claims

1. A dialog supporting apparatus which supports a present dialog between dialog participants, said dialog supporting apparatus comprising:

a dialog history database for storing a previous dialog of a first dialog participant, the previous dialog including a number of utterances;

an utterance prediction unit for (a) generating first utterance prediction information based on the utterances of the previous dialog stored in said dialog history database, (b) obtaining second utterance prediction information indicating a number of utterances of a previous dialog from another dialog supporting apparatus, and (c) predicting a next utterance in the present dialog of the first dialog participant using said dialog supporting apparatus based on the first utterance prediction information and the second utterance prediction information; and

a display unit for displaying the next utterance predicted by said utterance prediction unit.

2. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein said utterance prediction unit transmits the generated first utterance prediction information to the other dialog supporting apparatus.

3. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein said dialog history database stores a plurality of previous dialogs each including a number of utterances, and

wherein said utterance prediction unit extracts a previous dialog which is most similar to the present dialog from among the plurality of previous dialogs stored in said dialog history database, the first utterance prediction information being based on the utterances of the extracted previous dialog.

4. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein said utterance prediction unit generates a first prediction stack based on an assembly of successive utterances in the first utterance prediction information and on an assembly of successive utterances in the second utterance prediction information from the other dialog supporting apparatus.

5. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 4,

wherein said utterance prediction unit predicts the next utterance of the first dialog participant as an opening utterance of the first prediction stack.

6. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 4,

wherein, when an utterance of the first dialog participant or an utterance of a second dialog participant appears in the assembly of utterances of the first prediction stack, said utterance prediction unit moves the assembly to an opening part of the first prediction stack and deletes, from the first prediction stack, any utterances previously located ahead of the utterance in the first prediction stack.

7. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein said utterance prediction unit adjusts the number of utterances of the first utterance information and the number of utterances of the second utterance information to a same number using dynamic programming.

8. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

an utterance receiving unit for receiving an utterance of the first dialog participant;

an utterance processing unit for transforming the utterance received by said utterance receiving unit into another utterance form; and

an utterance output unit for outputting the utterance of the other utterance form transformed by said utterance processing unit.

9. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 8,

wherein said utterance receiving unit performs speech recognition of speech inputted thereto, after narrowing down a speech recognition dictionary to one of prediction utterances predicted by said utterance prediction unit, sentences which are similar to the prediction utterances, words included in the prediction utterances, and words associated with the prediction utterances, and receives a result of the speech recognition as the utterance.

10. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 8,

wherein said utterance receiving unit receives the predicted next utterance as the utterance, when the predicted next utterance is selected by the first dialog participant.

11. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 8,

wherein said utterance prediction unit predicts a development of the utterances made by the dialog participants, based on the first utterance prediction information and the second utterance prediction information, and displays the predicted development on said display unit.

12. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 11,

wherein said utterance prediction unit transmits the predicted development of the utterances to the other dialog supporting apparatus.

13. The dialog supporting apparatus according to claim 1, said apparatus further comprising

a history registration unit for registering the present dialog made by the dialog participants in said dialog history database.

14. A dialog supporting system for supporting a present dialog between dialog participants, said dialog supporting system comprising:

a first dialog supporting apparatus; and

a second dialog supporting apparatus,

wherein said first dialog supporting apparatus includes;

a first dialog history database for storing a previous dialog of a first dialog participant;

a first utterance prediction unit for (a) generating first utterance prediction information, based on the previous dialog stored in said dialog history database, (b) obtaining second utterance prediction information from said second dialog supporting apparatus, and (c) predicting a next utterance in the present dialog of the first dialog participant using said first dialog supporting apparatus based on the first utterance prediction information and the second utterance prediction information; and

a first display unit for displaying the next utterance predicted by said first utterance prediction unit, and

wherein said second dialog supporting apparatus includes;

a second dialog history database for storing a previous dialog of a second dialog participant;

a second utterance prediction unit for (a) generating the second utterance prediction information based on the previous dialog stored in said second dialog history database, (b) obtaining the first utterance prediction information from said first dialog supporting apparatus, and (c) predicting a next utterance in the present dialog of the second dialog participant using said second dialog supporting apparatus based on the first utterance prediction information and the second utterance prediction information; and

a second display unit for displaying the next utterance predicted by said second utterance prediction unit.

15. A dialog supporting method of a dialog supporting apparatus for supporting a present dialog between dialog participants, said dialog supporting method comprising:

generating first utterance prediction information based on a previous dialog of a first dialog participant;

obtaining second utterance prediction information from another dialog supporting apparatus;

predicting a next utterance in the present dialog of the first dialog participant using the dialog supporting apparatus, based on the first utterance prediction information and the second utterance prediction information; and

displaying the predicted next utterance.

16. A computer-readable recording medium recorded with a program for supporting a present dialog between dialog participants, said program causing a computer, as a dialog supporting apparatus, to execute utterance prediction comprising:

generating first utterance prediction information based on a previous dialog of a first dialog participant;

obtaining second utterance prediction information from another dialog supporting apparatus;

predicting a next utterance in the present dialog of the first dialog participant using the dialog supporting apparatus, based on the first utterance prediction information and the second utterance prediction information; and

displaying the predicted next utterance.