Interactive processing apparatus having natural language interfacing capability, utilizing goal frames, and judging action feasibility

An interactive processing method, comprising:

• extracting a user goal from an input natural language statement;
• determining a system goal corresponding to the extracted user goal;
• generating an action sequence for achieving the determined system goal;
• setting arguments for an action of the generated action sequence and judging the feasibility of the action by determining whether each argument needed to execute the action has been set;
• and
• outputting an action command for execution when the action is judged to be feasible.

An interactive processing apparatus comprising:

• a user goal extracting unit referring to a user goal knowledge that includes user goals for defining intentions of input natural language statements, in order to extract a user goal from each input statement, thereby generating a semantic representation of each input statement;
• an interaction history storage unit storing semantic representations of input statements and user goals output by the user goal extracting unit, as well as semantic representations output by a next action determining unit;
• a system goal determining unit determining a system goal corresponding to a given user goal from a system goal knowledge that includes system goals constituting action goals of a system;
• a goal frame generating unit retrieving from an action sequence knowledge a system action sequence knowledge node corresponding to a system goal which is input either from the system goal determining unit or from an action feasibility judging unit, the action sequence knowledge including system action sequence knowledge nodes needed to achieve system goals, the goal frame generating unit further generating a goal frame pairing the system goal with the corresponding system action sequence knowledge node;
• a goal frame storage unit storing goal frames output by the goal frame generating unit;
• the action feasibility judging unit retrieving a semantic representation from the interaction history storage unit in order to set arguments for, and judge feasibility of, an action in a goal frame being held by the goal frame storage unit;
• the action feasibility judging unit outputting an action command if the action is judged to be feasible;
• the action feasibility judging unit generating a new system goal if the action is not judged to be feasible, the new system goal being output to the goal frame generating unit;
• an external application driven upon receipt of an action command from the action feasibility judging unit, the external application further outputting a result of execution of the action;
• and
• the next action determining unit determining, in response to the result of action execution output by the external application, an action to be executed next in an action sequence of a goal frame being held by the goal frame storage unit, the next action determining unit further outputting to the interaction history storage unit a semantic representation acquired from the result of the execution of the action.

An interactive processing method, comprising:

• referring to user goal knowledge that includes user goals for defining intent of input natural language statements to extract a user goal from each input natural language statement, thereby generating a semantic representation of each input natural language statement;
• storing semantic representations of natural language statements and extracted user goals to create interaction history;
• determining a system goal corresponding to an extracted user goal from system goal knowledge that includes system goals representing action goals of a system;
• retrieving from action sequence knowledge a system action sequence knowledge node that corresponds to a determined system goal, the action sequence knowledge including system action sequence knowledge nodes needed to achieve various system goals, and generating a goal frame that pairs the determined system goal with a corresponding system action sequence knowledge node;
• storing a generated goal frame;
• retrieving a semantic representation from the interaction history to set arguments for, and judge feasibility of, an action represented in the stored goal frame, outputting an action command if the action is judged to be feasible, and generating a new system goal if the action is not judged to be feasible, the new system goal being used to generate a new goal frame;
• driving an external application upon receipt of an output action command and outputting a result of action execution;
• and
• determining, in response to the output result of action execution an action to be executed next in an action sequence of the stored goal frame, and outputting to the interaction history a semantic representation acquired from the result of the execution of the action.