Natural language interface for driving adaptive scenarios

A system for providing a list of probable tasks to a user in response to a user input, comprising using one or more computing devices to perform steps for:

• constructing a set of initial natural language mapping criteria from a set of available tasks;
• receiving a natural language input from a user;
• performing a semantic analysis of the natural language input relative to the initial natural language mapping criteria to identify a set of a plurality of highest probability tasks;
• extracting one or more values from the natural language input for use in populating one or more Slots of one or more of the set of highest probability tasks;
• scoring using a computer processor the tasks comprising the set of highest probability tasks as a function of the semantic analysis and the population of the one or more Slots of those tasks;
• sorting the scored tasks in order of highest to lowest scores to create a rank ordered list of probable tasks;
• and
• presenting the rank ordered list of probable tasks to the user.

A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions for presenting user selectable tasks to a user via a user interface, said computer executable instructions comprising means for:

• receiving a natural language input from a user;
• analyzing the natural language input relative to an initial mapping criteria extracted from one or more sets of available tasks to identify a set of a plurality of tasks having a highest probability of match to the natural language input;
• populating one or more variables of a plurality of the highest probability tasks with one or more data elements extracted from the natural language input;
• computing a score for each of the highest probability tasks as a function of a probability of match and the populated variables associated with each of those tasks;
• sorting the highest probability tasks as a function of the score associated with each of those tasks;
• and
• presenting the sorted tasks to the user via a graphical user interface.