Systems and methods for providing dialog localization in a distributed environment and enabling conversational communication using generalized user gestures

• US 7,478,171 B2
• Filed: 10/20/2003
• Issued: 01/13/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Sedivy, Jan, Maes, Stephane H., Ramaswamy, Ganesh N.
• Primary Examiner(s): SALAD, ABDULLAHI ELMI
• Application Number:
  US10/689,094
• Publication Number:
  US 20050086382A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,912 Days
• Field of Search: 709/246, 709/203, 709/205, 715/863, 463/36
• US Class Current: 709/246
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/131 Protocols for games, networked simulations or virtual reality
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display

Abstract

Systems and methods for providing conversational computing in a distributed multi-modal environment and in particular, systems and methods for enabling a user to conversationally communicate with entities in a distributed network using a portable access device, wherein interaction dialog for communicating with entities in the network is described in a manner that is independent of, e.g., user language, access channel(s), I/O modalities of the access device, and regional/international settings, and wherein the user access device and/or a remote server comprise mechanisms for adapting the interaction dialog based on the user language, user preferences, access device characteristics and or regional/international settings, to thereby enable the user to interact with one or more entities in the network.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium embodying instructions executable by a processor to perform a method for providing conversational communication with entities in a network, the method comprising the steps of:

establishing connection to a distributed network using a client device;

obtaining, by the client device, from a server in the distributed network a list of one or more entities in the network and a description of one or more commands associated with the one or more entities that enable user interaction with the one or more entities in the distributed network, wherein the commands are written using an interaction-based programming language which is independent of user language, access channel, client device I/O (input/output) modality, regional settings and international settings;

receiving as input, by the client device, a user gesture for communicating with a target entity; and

processing, by the client device, the user gesture using transformation rules to map the user gesture to a relevant command of the one or more commands obtained from the server and invoking, by the client device, the relevant command on the target entity.