Fuzzy Target Selection for Robotic Process Automation
AssigneeUiPath, Inc.
InventorDan V. MUNTEANU
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A software robot is designed to carry out an activity (e.g., a mouse click, a text input, etc.) on a target element (e.g., a button, an input field, etc.) of a user interface. The robot is configured to automatically identify the target element at runtime according to a set of attributes of the target element specified in the source-code of the user interface. The robot's code specification includes an indicator of a selected fuzzy attribute and a numerical similarity threshold indicative of an acceptable degree of mismatch between design-time and runtime values of the respective fuzzy attribute. The robot is configured to identify the target element from a set of candidates which are sufficiently similar to it according to the specified degree of mismatch.
Claims23
A method comprising employing at least one hardware processor of a computer system to:
- in response to receiving a robotic process automation (RPA) script comprising a target element ID characterizing a target element of a target user interface (UI), automatically identify a runtime instance of the target element within a runtime UI exposed by the computer system, the runtime instance of the target element identified according to the element ID;
- and
- automatically carry out an operation that reproduces a result of an interaction of a human operator with the runtime instance of the target element, the operation determined according to the RPA script;
- wherein the target element ID comprises a plurality of attribute-value pairs collectively indicating a position of the target element within a tree representation of the target UI, a selected attribute of the plurality of attribute-value pairs having a target value;
- and
- wherein automatically identifying the runtime instance of the target element comprises:
- comparing the target value with a value of the selected attribute characterizing a candidate element of the runtime UI, the comparison performed according to a similarity threshold;
- and
- identifying the candidate element as the runtime instance of the target element according to a result of the comparison.
A computer system comprising at least one hardware processor configured to:
- in response to receiving a robotic process automation (RPA) script comprising a target element ID characterizing a target element of a target user interface (UI), automatically identify a runtime instance of the target element within a runtime UI exposed by the computer system, the runtime instance of the target element identified according to the target element ID;
- and
- automatically carry out an operation that reproduces a result of an interaction of a human operator with the runtime instance of the target element, the operation determined according to the RPA script;
- wherein the target element ID comprises a plurality of attribute-value pairs collectively indicating a position of the target element within a tree representation of the target UI, a selected attribute of the plurality of attribute-value pairs having a target value;
- and
- wherein automatically identifying the runtime instance of the target element comprises:
- comparing the target value with a value of the selected attribute characterizing a candidate element of the runtime UI, the comparison performed according to a similarity threshold;
- and
- identifying the candidate element as the runtime instance of the target element according to a result of the comparison.
A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by at least one hardware processor of a computer system, cause the computer system to:
- in response to receiving a robotic process automation (RPA) script comprising a target element ID characterizing a target element of a target user interface (UI), automatically identify a runtime instance of the target element within runtime UI exposed by the computer system, the runtime instance of the target element identified according to the element ID;
- and
- automatically carry out an operation that reproduces a result of an interaction of a human operator with the runtime instance of the target element, the operation determined according to the RPA script;
- wherein the target element ID comprises a plurality of attribute-value pairs collectively indicating a position of the target element within a tree representation of the target UI, a selected attribute of the plurality of attribute-value pairs having a target value;
- and
- wherein automatically identifying the runtime instance of the target element comprises:
- comparing the target value with a value of the selected attribute characterizing a candidate element of the runtime UI, the comparison performed according to a similarity threshold;
- and
- identifying the candidate element as the runtime instance of the target element according to a result of the comparison.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.