Information retrieval apparatus

Abstract

An information retrieval system (IPS). The system comprises an input interface (IN) for receiving a query related to an object of interest. A concept mapper (CM) is configured to map the query to one or more associated concept entries of a hierarchic graph data structure (ONTO). The entries in said structure encode linguistic descriptors of components of a model (GM) for said object (OB). A metric-mapper (MM) is configured to map the query to one or more metric relationship descriptors. A geo-mapper (GEO) is configured to map said concept entries against the geometric model linked to the hierarchic graph data structure to obtain spatio-numerical data associated with said linguistic descriptors. A metric component (MTC) is configured to compute one or more metric or spatial relationships between said object components based on the spatio-numerical data and the one or more metric relationship descriptors.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.