JP2016076117A - Information processing device and utterance content output method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To output an utterance content not only based on the state of emotion of a user but also more appropriate for the user.SOLUTION: An utterance analysis unit 2 identifies the emotion of a user on the basis of an utterance content of the user; and a response type determination unit 4 determines a response type of the utterance content of the user on the basis of the emotion. In addition, an utterance generation unit 7 obtains preference information (such as topic information and entity information) of the user from a personal DB 10; obtains a template corresponding to the response type from an utterance DB 8; and outputs as an utterance content a content in which the preference information of the user is applied to the template.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

  The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an utterance content output method.

  2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, there are interactive devices that allow a computer to respond in natural language to a user's natural language utterance. For example, in Patent Document 1, a keyword is extracted from a voice uttered by a user, and information on emotions such as “normal”, “good”, “anger”, and “joy” corresponding to the keyword is extracted. ) And responding to suggestions of behavior patterns according to the identified health condition.

Republished No. 2004-27527

  As described above, in Patent Document 1, a response related to a suggestion of an action pattern corresponding to an emotion is made, but a response of an action proposal is made based only on the emotion. Therefore, there is a problem that it is not always possible to respond appropriately to each user. For example, there is a problem that a response according to the user's hobbies and experiences cannot be made.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above, and provides an utterance device and an utterance method that can output utterance content (response content) more appropriate for the user as well as based on the emotional state of the user. Objective.

  An information processing apparatus according to the present invention is based on an emotion specifying means for specifying a user's emotion based on a user's utterance content, a preference information acquiring means for acquiring user's preference information, and an emotion specified by the emotion specifying means. An utterance that generates utterance content based on the response type determination means that determines the response type of the utterance content of the user, the response type determined by the response type determination means, and the preference information acquired by the preference information acquisition means Generating means, and utterance output means for outputting the utterance content generated by the utterance generation means.

  An utterance content method according to the present invention is an utterance content output method executed by an information processing apparatus, and includes an emotion specifying step for specifying a user's emotion based on the user's utterance content, and a preference for acquiring user preference information. A response type determining step for determining the response type of the user's utterance content based on the emotion specified by the information acquiring step, the emotion specifying step, a response type determined by the response type determining step, and a preference information acquiring step An utterance generation step for generating utterance contents based on the acquired preference information and an utterance output step for outputting the utterance contents generated by the utterance generation step are included.

  According to this invention, since the utterance content is generated based on the user's preference information, the utterance content more appropriate for the user can be output as well as based on the emotional state of the user.

  The information processing apparatus further includes history storage means for storing the emotion specified by the emotion specifying means and the response type determined by the response type determining means as history information, and the response type determining means The response type may be determined based on the change in emotional characteristics. In this way, the information processing apparatus uses the history information to determine the response type based on a specific change in emotion, so that it is more user-friendly than when utterance content is determined based on emotion uniformly. It is possible to output the utterance content appropriate for the user.

  The information processing apparatus further includes a template storage unit that stores template information of the utterance content, and the utterance generation unit generates content in which the preference information is applied to the template stored in the template storage unit as the utterance content. Good. In this case, since the information processing apparatus includes the preference information in the utterance content, the utterance content more in line with the user preference is output, so that the utterance content appropriate for the user can be output.

  In the information processing apparatus, the preference information further includes specific thing information and higher-level concept information of the specific thing information, and the utterance generation means is classified into the types defined in the template stored in the template storage means. Accordingly, the specific matter information of the preference information or the content to which the higher level concept information of the specific matter information is applied may be generated as the utterance content. In this case, since the information processing apparatus generates the content in which the specific matter information of the preference information or the information conceptualized in the specific matter information is applied to the template as the utterance content, the depth of the preference information Since different information can be selectively provided, utterance content appropriate for the user can be output.

  In the information processing apparatus, priority is set between the higher-level concept information of specific things, and the utterance generation means generates the content that applies the content of the higher-level concept information between the higher-level concept information as the utterance content. May be. In this case, since the information processing apparatus outputs the utterance content based on the rank between the higher concepts, the utterance content can be output more in line with the user preference.

  In the information processing apparatus, the emotion identification unit may extract a topic from the user's utterance content, and the utterance generation unit may generate the utterance content further based on the topic extracted by the emotion identification unit. In this case, since the information processing apparatus extracts not only the emotion specified from the user's utterance content but also the user's topic and generates the utterance content based on the topic, the utterance content more suited to the user's state Can be output.

  According to the present invention, it is possible not only to be based on the emotional state of the user, but also to output utterance content more appropriate for the user.

It is a block diagram which shows the function structure of the communication terminal device 1 which concerns on this embodiment. It is a figure which shows an example of the information which speech utterance DB3 memorize | stores. It is a figure which shows an example of the information which response type DB5 memorize | stores. It is a figure which shows an example of the information which response log | history DB6 memorize | stores. It is a figure which shows an example of the information which speech DB8 memorize | stores. It is a figure which shows an example of the information which personal DB10 memorize | stores. 2 is a block diagram showing a hardware configuration of a communication terminal device 1. FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing processing of the communication terminal device 1. It is a flowchart which shows a template production | generation process.

  Hereinafter, this embodiment will be described with reference to the drawings. Where possible, the same parts are denoted by the same reference numerals, and redundant description is omitted.

  FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a functional configuration of a communication terminal device 1 (information processing device) according to the present embodiment. The communication terminal device 1 is a device that specifies the utterance content of the user and outputs an utterance (response to the utterance of the user) based on the utterance content.

  The communication terminal device 1 is a terminal device such as a smartphone or a tablet, for example. However, the communication terminal device 1 is not limited to these devices as long as it can identify the user's utterance content and output the utterance accordingly.

  As described above, the communication terminal device 1 specifies the utterance content of the user and outputs the utterance content corresponding to the utterance content. In order to realize such a function, the communication terminal device 1 includes an utterance analysis unit 2 (emotion specifying unit), an utterance emotion DB 3, a response type determination unit 4 (response type determination unit), a response type DB 5, Response history DB 6 (history storage means), utterance generation section 7 (preference information acquisition means, utterance generation means), utterance DB 8 (template storage means), topic estimation section 9, personal DB 10, and personalized information input section 11 And an utterance output unit 12 (utterance output means).

  The utterance analysis unit 2 is a part that identifies the user's emotion based on the content of the user's utterance received by means for receiving the user's utterance (for example, a microphone or the like). The utterance analysis unit 2 converts the user's utterance content into a speech waveform using a microphone or the like included in the communication terminal device 1, and identifies the user's utterance content based on the converted speech waveform by a known technique.

  The utterance analysis unit 2 specifies the content of the user's utterance in units of words by a known technique. For example, when the user utters “study tired”, the speech analysis unit 2 specifies “study” “tired” in units of words.

  And the utterance analysis part 2 specifies a user's emotion based on the word specified from the utterance content. Specifically, the utterance analysis unit 2 identifies an emotion from the identified word by comparing the identified word with information in the utterance emotion DB 3.

  Here, FIG. 2 shows information held in the speech emotion DB 3. As shown in FIG. 2, “speech” that is information corresponding to each emotion, “emotion” that indicates emotion, and information (emotion characteristic) that indicates whether the emotion is positive or negative. PN ".

  For example, the words “Ukiuki”, “Wai”, and “Happy” indicate that the emotion is “joy” and “PN” is positive. This is because, in many cases, when the user is happy, the words “exciting”, “wai”, and “happy” are spoken, and these words are associated with “joy”. When the user is delighted, the state is generally positive, and thus the emotion is associated with “joy” and positive. As described above, since the utterance emotion DB 3 in FIG. 3 stores utterances, emotions, and emotion characteristics (positive / negative) in association with each other, the utterance analysis unit 2 refers to the utterance emotion DB 3. Thereby, a user's emotion can be specified based on a user's utterance content.

  For example, the utterance analysis unit 2 refers to the utterance emotion DB 3 and specifies that the emotion is “joy” and is positive if the specified word is “Wai”.

  Thus, the utterance analysis unit 2 accepts the user's utterance content and identifies the user's emotion from the utterance content. Also, the utterance analysis unit 2 identifies whether the user is positive or negative based on the identified emotion.

  Then, the utterance analysis unit 2 notifies the response type determination unit 4 of the identified word and emotion (including positive or negative). Note that the utterance analysis unit 2 may specify not only the emotion but also the topic of the content uttered by the user. For example, a topic specifying word for specifying a topic (not shown) is stored in advance in the communication terminal device 1, and the utterance analysis unit 2 compares the content uttered by the user with the topic specifying word, Identify the topic. For example, when “tennis” is stored in the topic specifying word and the user's utterance content is “tennis tired”, the utterance analysis unit 2 determines whether the utterance content “tennis” and the topic specifying word are Since “tennis” matches, it is determined that the topic is tennis. In addition, a word that is a general concept of the word may be associated with a topic identification word. For example, the topic specifying word “tennis” may be associated with “sports”, which is a superordinate concept of the word. In this case, the utterance analysis unit 2 may determine that the topic is not “tennis” but “sports”.

  In addition, although the speech analysis part 2 specified the emotion based on the word memorize | stored previously and the emotion corresponding to the word as mentioned above, you may make it specify by the well-known machine learning. In addition, the utterance analysis unit 2 may identify the topic by machine learning. For example, the utterance analysis unit 2 marks a topic-like part on a large amount of corpora and learns under what conditions the part appears. Specifically, the utterance analysis unit 2 creates a model in which information such as “noun” appearing before “ha” is listed as + 1% of topic likelihood, and extracts the topic using the model.

  The response type determination unit 4 is a part that determines the response type based on the emotion specified by the utterance analysis unit 2 and user preference information. Here, the user preference information is information specialized for the user, and includes information such as hobbies and special skills. In addition, information obtained by converting the specific information on the hobby and special skills into a superordinate concept is also included as preference information. The response type means a category of contents to which the communication terminal device 1 responds, and includes, for example, praise, proposal, and the like.

  First, the response type determination unit 4 acquires the emotion (including positive or negative) specified by the utterance analysis unit 2 and specifies the response type corresponding to the acquired emotion using information stored in the response type DB 5. To do. Note that when the utterance analysis unit 2 identifies a topic uttered by the user, the topic is also acquired.

  An example of the response type DB 5 is shown in FIG. As illustrated in FIG. 3, the response type DB 5 includes “emotion”, “PN”, and “response type” indicating a response type to the user. For example, the response type corresponding to emotion is praise, interest, empathy, and envy. (This response type has a priority in advance, and the left side in FIG. High degree). That is, when the emotion is joy, it indicates that a response regarding any of praise, interest, empathy, or envy is given. The response type determination unit 4 uses the information of the response type DB 5 and, when the emotion acquired from the utterance analysis unit 2 is “joy”, the response type is “praise”, “interest”, “sympathy”, “envy” Either.

  Here, “praise” indicates a response that praises, “interest” indicates a response that indicates interest in the user's utterance content, and “sympathy” indicates the user's response. The response indicates that the user sympathizes with the utterance content. “Envy” indicates that the response is enviable based on the utterance content of the user. “Proposal” included in the response type corresponding to emotion “anger” indicates that a response indicating that something is proposed to the user is sent.

  In addition, when a past history (response history from the communication terminal device 1) is stored in the response history DB 6, the response type determination unit 4 determines the response type based on the past history. The information stored in the response history DB 6 is shown in FIG.

  As illustrated in FIG. 4, the response history DB 6 includes emotion, response history, and date / time. The response history DB 6 is stored in the order of date. For example, when the emotion specified from the user's utterance content is “joy” at the date “XX year XX month XX day”, it indicates that a response of praise was made as a response history. When information is stored in the response history DB 6, the response type determination unit 4 narrows down response type candidates based on whether the emotion corresponding to the latest response history is positive or negative. For example, when the emotion corresponding to the response history is a positive emotion (for example, pleasure), the priority of the response type corresponding to the immediately previous response history is increased. In the case of the example in FIG. 4, the emotion of “praise” in the response history is “joy” and is a positive emotion. Therefore, when “praise” is included in the response type corresponding to the emotion characterized this time, priority of “praise” is given. Raise the degree.

  If the emotion identified by the speech analysis unit 2 this time is a negative emotion and the emotion corresponding to the immediately preceding response history is also a negative emotion, the response type of the immediately preceding response history may be excluded from the candidates. Yes (only this time may be excluded from the response type candidates, or the order of the response types in the response type DB 5 may be switched). That is, when the emotion corresponding to the immediately previous response type is the same as the emotion acquired from the utterance analysis unit 2 this time, the response type determination unit 4 selects a response type different from the latest response history. May be.

  As described above, it may be determined based only on the latest response history, or the response type determination unit 4 may determine based on a plurality of response histories.

  For example, the response type determination unit 4 may determine the priority of the response type based on the emotional changes in the latest response history and the previous response history. For example, when the emotion characteristic identified by the utterance analysis unit 2 changes from negative to positive, the priority of the response type in the response type DB 5 that is the same as the response type of the previous response history may be increased. In the case of a change from positive to negative, the priority of the response type in the response type DB 5 that is the same as the response type of the previous response history is lowered.

  For example, if you identify “angry” in the first conversation and make a suggestion based on it, and the next user ’s conversation identifies “joy”, the user ’s emotional characteristics have shifted from negative to positive. It would be appropriate to make a suggestion when the emotion is “anger”. Therefore, the response type determination unit 4 changes the priority of “suggestion” when the user's emotion is “anger”. In this way, the response type determination unit 4 refers to the response history and determines the response type in consideration of emotion characteristics, so that an appropriate response type can be determined in accordance with the change in emotion.

  As described above, the response type determination unit 4 estimates the response type based on the emotion acquired from the emotion identification unit 3 and the priority determined based on the response history. Then, the response type determination unit 4 notifies the utterance generation unit 7 of the determined response type. When the utterance analysis unit 2 acquires a topic, the utterance generation unit 7 is notified of the topic.

  The utterance generation unit 7 is a part that generates utterance contents based on the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4 and the preference information. Specifically, the response type determined based on the emotion or the like is acquired from the response type determination unit 4, the preference information is acquired from the personal DB 10, and the utterance content is generated based on these two pieces of information.

  An example of information stored in the personal DB 10 is shown in FIG. As shown in FIG. 5, the personal DB 10 has information in which a category, an entity, and a topic are associated with each other. Thus, by associating the category with the entity, it is indicated that “user A is B”. First, the category corresponds to A of “user A is B”, for example, possession or hobby. That is, the category indicates the type of user preference information. Since the category uses a predetermined classification, limited types of words are included.

  The entity corresponds to B of “user A is B”, and there is a possibility that the names of all things (specific thing information) may be entered. The topic is given to the input (utterance) of the user who has registered “user A is B” or to the entity itself. A topic is, for example, superordinate concept information of an entity.

  The information stored in the personal DB 10 is stored as an entity or a topic by the personalized information input unit 11. The personalized information input unit 11 stores information input in response to a user operation or the like.

  Note that topics may be automatically added by the topic estimation unit 9. The topic estimation method will be described later. 5, the category “hobby” entity “Adventure of ΔΔΔ” (game name) and the topic “game” are “the user's hobby is an adventurous of ΔΔΔ. Is. Either the entity or topic may be empty. If both are empty, the user assumes that the category is not self-disclosure. That is, in the example of FIG. 5, it is considered that the user does not disclose information about his / her property.

  The utterance generation unit 7 uses, as an utterance content, an entity or topic reflected in a template corresponding to the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4 among the templates stored in the utterance DB 8.

  FIG. 6 shows an example of an utterance template stored in the utterance DB 8. The utterance template may include a place to be replaced with an entity name or a topic name. A template including a replacement part is limited to a case where an entity or topic that can be replaced as user information is registered.

  As shown in FIG. 6, the template ID, the category corresponding to the template, the target topic, and the template are stored in association with each other. For example, the template with ID “2” is “[entity] Would you like to go?”, The target topic of this template is “travel, event”, the category “hobby”, and the response type “ "Proposal". The target topic is predetermined, and when a plurality of target topics are set, the priority of the topic may be determined. That is, priority may be determined between topics. It is assumed that the left side of the target topics in the example of FIG. 6 has a higher priority.

  The utterance generation unit 7 generates an utterance by combining this template with the user information (preference information) shown in FIG. First, the utterance generation unit 7 extracts, from the user information stored in the personal DB 10, a category in which either or both of the entity and the topic are registered, and a topic registered in the category.

  This extracted list is called “category and topic list (a)”. For example, when the user information stored in the personal DB 10 is in the state of FIG. 5, the category and topic list (a) is “hobby, game | custom, | experience, sport | speciality, sport | ability, sport | wish, "Travel".

  Here, “|” represents a category delimiter, and “,” delimits a category and a topic. The category “property” is not included in the list because neither an entity nor a topic was registered. Since the category “hobby” includes information in both the entity and the topic, it is included in the list as “hobby, game”. Since only the entity information exists in the category “custom”, only the category “custom” is included in the list. As described above, the utterance generation unit 7 identifies categories in which user information can be input to the template by listing the categories or entities to which the topics are input.

The utterance generation unit 7 acquires a list (b) that is a set of categories and topics that can be uttered from the list (a). The following sets are available.
Category = Hobby Category = Custom Category = Experience Category = Skill Category = Ability Category = Ability Category = Aspiration Category = Hobby and Topic = Game Category = Experience and Topic = Sport Category = Ability and Topic = Sport Category = Skill and Topic = Sport Category = Aspiration and Topic = Travel

  In addition, when only the category is designated, it indicates that there is no restriction on the target topic of the template. As described above, the utterance generation unit 7 generates a list (b), and uses this list (b) to specify a template that can be replaced with a template (that is, an utterable template).

  Next, the utterance generation unit 7 acquires, from the utterance DB 8, an utterance template that is a set of categories and topics included in the list (b) and matches the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4.

  Here, a case where the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4 is “suggestion” will be described as an example. First, in the utterance template stored in the utterance DB 8, the response type is limited to “suggestion”.

  That is, ID numbers 2 to 6 correspond here. Next, the target topic in each category is confirmed, and it is determined whether the utterance is possible. The utterance of ID number 2 has a category “hobby” and a target topic “travel” or “event”. Here, from the list (b), since the topic of the category “hobby” is “game”, the utterance generation unit 7 determines that the template of ID number 2 is not utterable.

  Similarly, the utterance with ID number 3 has the category “hobby” and the target topic “sports” or “game”. Here, since the list (b) includes a combination of the category “hobby” and the topic “game”, the utterance generation unit 7 determines that the ID number 3 is utterable. Similarly, the utterance generation unit 7 can determine that the ID numbers 4 and 5 cannot be uttered. In ID numbers 6 and 7, the target topic is empty for the category “custom” or “wish”. Here, the target topic is empty indicates that the target topic may be anything, that is, there is no limit.

  In list (b), there is no target topic in category “custom”, and topic “travel” is registered in category “wish”, but ID numbers 6 and 7 can speak regardless of topic. The utterance generation unit 7 determines that both are utterable.

  From the above, the utterance generation unit 7 determines that ID numbers 3, 6, and 7 in FIG. 6 can utter in this example, and sets these three utterance templates as candidate templates (c). Then, the utterance generation unit 7 repeats the number of candidate templates (c). As an iterative process, the utterance generation unit 7 first checks whether there is a replacement designation in the template. If there is no substitution designation, the utterance generation section 7 moves to the next template included in the utterance template (c). If there is a replacement designation, the utterance generation unit 7 checks whether the replacement is possible.

  In FIG. 6, [topic] means replacement with a topic, and [entity] means replacement with an entity. That is, here, it is determined that all ID numbers 3, 6, and 7 need to be replaced. If there is a replacement specification, it is checked whether replacement is possible next.

  In FIG. 6, ID numbers 3 and 7 need to be replaced with entities, and ID number 6 needs to be replaced with a topic. That is, for example, ID number 3 is determined to be utterable in the category “hobby” topic “game”, but the entity name is also essential.

  Here, referring to the user information in FIG. 5, the entity name “Adventure of ΔΔΔ” is registered in the category “Hobby” topic “Game”. Accordingly, it is determined that ID number 3 can be replaced, that is, speech is possible. Similarly, ID number 6 is designated to be replaced by a topic name. Here, no topic is registered in the category “custom” of the user information. Therefore, it is determined that the ID number 6 cannot be spoken. The ID number 7 is designated to be replaced by an entity.

  Here, the topic “UK” is registered in the category “Wish” of the user information. Therefore, it is determined that the ID number 7 is utterable. At the end of the processing of the utterance generation unit 7, replacement in the utterance template is performed. Since only one entity is held in FIG. 5, the [entity] part of ID number 3 is replaced with “Adventure of ΔΔΔ”, and [entity] of ID number 7 is replaced with “United Kingdom”. Therefore, the utterance generation unit 7 generates two system utterance candidates, “What if I tried an adventure of ΔΔΔ?” And “Why are you interested in the UK?”. If there are a plurality of replaceable entities for one template, the utterance generation unit 7 selects and replaces one at random. In addition, when there are a plurality of finally remaining templates, the utterance content may be a combination of a plurality of templates, or based on a priority between predetermined topics or a topic acquired by the utterance analysis unit 2 You may make it narrow down to any one (an example of narrowing down based on the topic will be described later).

  As described above, the utterance generation unit 7 can replace the input user information, and uses the content of the template corresponding to the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4 as the utterance content to be output. And the utterance production | generation part 7 notifies the utterance output part 12 by making the template after replacing an entity or a topic into utterance content.

  When the utterance analysis unit 2 extracts a topic from the utterance, the utterance generation unit 7 can narrow down candidates using the extracted topic. This is a user's utterance such as “I am tired from tennis”, and utterance such as “Would you like to refresh with tennis?” Using the user information that my hobby is tennis (in the case of the template in FIG. 6 “ What if you try to play tennis? ”). This is particularly effective when the emotional state of the user is negative. That is, when the emotional state of the user is negative, the utterance generation unit 7 may not set an entity or topic equal to the topic of the user utterance as a replacement candidate.

  Specifically, when the user utters “tennis tired”, tennis (topic is sport) is the topic, and emotion characteristics are negative from “tired”. Here, consider a case where the utterance generation unit 7 uses the template with the ID number 3 among the target topics shown in FIG. 6 as the utterance candidate. If the topic is not considered, the priority among the target topics is higher in the sport. However, since the topic is sport and the emotional characteristics are negative, the utterance generation unit 7 excludes the sport that matches the topic as a topic and utters the utterance related to the game “Try adventure of △△△” The contents are utterance candidates.

  Moreover, if the emotion specified by the speech analysis unit 2 is a positive emotion, the speech generation unit 7 may use the content of the template that replaces the entity or topic that is equal to the topic as the speech content.

  The topic estimation unit 9 is a part that gives a topic to a sentence or a word. Topic assignment can be realized by a dictionary prepared in advance or machine learning. The topic estimation unit 9 determines topics in advance and classifies words and sentences into any of them. Moreover, the topic estimation part 9 may consider that there is no topic, when it cannot be classified. The topic estimation unit 9 may use a dictionary for words, and may be realized by machine learning for sentences. In the case of a dictionary, the topic estimation unit 9 collects a large number of words and classifies them into predetermined topics. When the input word appears anywhere, the topic estimation unit 9 gives the topic.

  Moreover, the topic estimation part 9 considers that there is no topic, when the input word does not appear anywhere. Similarly, in the case of machine learning, the topic estimation unit 9 determines necessary topics in advance. Thereafter, a large amount of sentences may be collected, and the topic estimation unit 9 may classify the sentences into topics based on user input contents. Those that cannot be classified may be classified as having no topic. This data is called correct data. Thereafter, the topic estimation unit 9 applies a machine learning method such as a support vector machine (SVM) to the correct answer data to create a classification model. A classification model is simply a file that describes the likelihood of a topic, such as “When a word appears, the probability of topic A is + 1%, and the probability of topic B is -1%”. . Here, the word surface layer has been described for the sake of simplicity, but the topic estimation unit 9 actually learns various elements such as unigram (word unit), bigram (two words continued), and part of speech of the word surface layer. , Have created the most accurate model. The topic estimation unit 9 confirms all of these topic-likeness with respect to the input, and determines the topic that is judged to be the most topic overall as the topic for the input. At that time, if the likelihood of the topic is equal to or less than a certain threshold, the topic estimation unit 9 may determine that there is no topic.

  The utterance output unit 12 is a part that outputs the utterance content generated by the utterance generation unit 7. As an output method, sound output, display output on a screen, or transmission to an external device is performed.

  2 is a block diagram showing a hardware configuration of a communication terminal device 1. FIG. As shown in FIG. 7, one or a plurality of CPUs 101, a RAM 102 and a ROM 103 that are main storage devices, an input device 104, an output device 105, a communication module 106 that is a data transmission / reception device such as a network card, and a hard disk The computer system includes an auxiliary storage device 107 such as a drive and a semiconductor memory. The functions of the communication terminal device 1 described above are exhibited by the operation of these components by a program or the like.

  Next, processing of the communication terminal device 1 will be described using the flowcharts shown in FIGS. 8 and 9.

  The utterance content from the user is received by a microphone or the like provided in the communication terminal device 1 (step S1), and the utterance analysis unit 2 analyzes the utterance content, information included in the utterance content, and information of the utterance emotion DB 3 Is identified by comparing (step S2 emotion identification step).

  Then, the response type determination unit 4 determines the response type corresponding to the emotion specified by the utterance analysis unit 2 with reference to the information of the response type DB 5 (step S3 response type determination step).

  Subsequently, the utterance generation unit 7 generates a template in which user information is replaced with the template corresponding to the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4 (step S4 utterance generation step).

  Then, the utterance generation unit 7 extracts an utterance template in the utterance DB 8, and generates an utterance by specifying the most appropriate utterance content in the utterance template (step S5 utterance generation step).

  And the utterance output part 12 outputs the utterance content which the utterance production | generation part 7 produced | generated, and complete | finishes a process (step S6 utterance output step).

  Next, a detailed procedure of processing for determining a template to be an output candidate based on the response type and user information from the template data in step S4 will be described using the flowchart of FIG. First, the utterance generation unit 7 acquires a list of categories and topics (list (a)) in which user information is registered from the personal DB 10 (step S11).

  Then, the utterance generation unit 7 acquires a list of categories and topics that can be uttered (list (b)) from the list of categories and topics (step S12). Then, the utterance generation unit 7 acquires an utterance template that matches the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4 from the utterance DB 8 and is a category / topic combination included in the category / topic combination (step S13). ).

  And the utterance production | generation part 7 extracts one of the utterance templates acquired by step S13 (step S14), and when the replacement designation | designated is in the said utterance template (step S15; YES), if substitution is not possible (step S14) (S16; NO), the corresponding template is removed from the utterance candidates (step S17), and the process proceeds to step S19. In step S15, if there is no replacement designation in the utterance template (step S15; NO), the process proceeds to step S19.

  If it is possible to replace in step S16 (step S16; YES), the utterance generation unit 7 replaces the utterance template (step S18) and moves to step S19.

  In step S19, it is determined whether there is an unextracted template. If there is an unextracted template (step S19; NO), the process moves to step S14, and if there is no unextracted template (step S19; YES). The process is terminated.

  In the above-described embodiment, the case where the present invention is applied to the communication terminal apparatus 1 has been described. However, the present invention may be applied to various other information processing apparatuses such as a server apparatus.

  In the communication terminal device 1 described above, the utterance analysis unit 2 specifies the user's emotion based on the user's utterance content, and the response type determination unit 4 determines the response type of the user's utterance content based on the emotion. . In addition, the utterance generation unit 7 acquires user preference information (for example, topic information and entity information) from the personal DB 10, acquires a template corresponding to the response type from the utterance DB 8, and applies the user preference information to the template. Output the contents as utterances. In this case, since the communication terminal device 1 generates the utterance content based on the user preference information, the communication terminal device 1 can output the utterance content more appropriate for the user as well as based on the emotional state of the user.

  Further, the communication terminal device 1 stores the emotion identified in the past by the utterance analysis unit 2 and the response type determined by the response type determination unit 4 based on the emotion as history information in the response history DB 6. The type determination unit 4 determines the response type based on the past emotion characteristic change from the history information. In this case, since the communication terminal device 1 determines the response type based on the specific change of emotion using the history information, the communication terminal device 1 is more user-friendly than the case of determining the utterance content based on the emotion uniformly. It is possible to output the utterance content appropriate for the user.

  Moreover, the communication terminal device 1 stores the template information of the utterance content in the utterance DB 8. The utterance generation unit 7 generates contents obtained by applying entity information or topic information to the template information as utterance contents. In this case, since the communication terminal device 1 includes the preference information (entity information and topic information) in the utterance content, the utterance content more in line with the user preference is output, so that the utterance content appropriate for the user can be output. .

  Moreover, in the communication terminal device 1, entity information and topic information are included as information which personal DB10 memorize | stores. The utterance generation unit 7 generates, as the utterance content, the content to which the entity or topic information is applied according to the type defined by the template stored in the utterance DB 8. In this case, since the communication terminal device 1 generates the content in which either the entity information or the topic information is applied to the template as the utterance content, the communication terminal device 1 can selectively provide information with different depth of preference information. It is possible to output the utterance content appropriate for the user.

  Moreover, in the communication terminal device 1, a priority is defined between topic information. The utterance generation unit 7 generates, as utterance contents, contents obtained by applying the contents of topic information having high priority among the topic information. In this case, since the communication terminal device 1 outputs the utterance content based on the ranking between topics, it is possible to output the utterance content according to the user preference.

  In the communication terminal device 1, the utterance analysis unit 2 extracts a topic from the user's utterance content, and the utterance generation unit 7 further generates the utterance content based on the topic extracted by the utterance analysis unit 2. In this case, since the communication terminal device 1 extracts not only the emotion specified from the user's utterance content but also the user's topic and generates the utterance content based on the topic, the utterance more suited to the user's state The contents can be output.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Communication terminal device, 2 ... Speech analysis part, 3 ... Speech emotion DB, 4 ... Response type determination part, 5 ... Response type DB, 6 ... Response history DB, 7 ... Speech production | generation part, 8 ... Speech DB, 9 ... Topic estimation unit, 10 ... personal DB, 11 ... personal information input unit, 12 ... utterance output unit, 101 ... CPU, 102 ... RAM, 103 ... ROM, 104 ... input device, 105 ... output device unit, 106 ... communication module, 107 An auxiliary storage device.

Claims (8)

Emotion identifying means for identifying the user's emotion based on the user's utterance content;
Preference information acquisition means for acquiring the user's preference information;
A response type determining unit that determines a response type of the utterance content of the user based on the emotion specified by the emotion specifying unit;
Utterance generation means for generating utterance content based on the response type determined by the response type determination means and the preference information acquired by the preference information acquisition means;
Utterance output means for outputting the utterance content generated by the utterance generation means;
An information processing apparatus comprising: A history storage unit for storing the emotion identified by the emotion identification unit and the response type determined by the response type determination unit as history information;
The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the response type determination unit determines a response type based on a change in past emotional characteristics from the history information. Template storage means for storing template information of the utterance content;
The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the utterance generation unit generates, as utterance content, content obtained by applying preference information to a template stored in the template storage unit. The preference information further includes specific matter information and higher concept information of the specific matter information,
The utterance generation means uses, as the utterance content, the specific thing information of the preference information or the upper concept information of the specific thing information according to the type defined in the template stored in the template storage means. The information processing apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the information processing apparatus generates the information processing apparatus. Priorities are defined between the high-level concept information of the specific things,
The information processing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the utterance generation unit generates, as the utterance content, content obtained by applying the content of the high-priority concept information having high priority between the high-level concept information. The emotion identifying means extracts a topic from the user's utterance content,
The information processing apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the utterance generation unit generates the utterance content further based on the topic extracted by the emotion identification unit.   5. The information processing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the utterance generation unit generates, as the utterance content, content obtained by combining a plurality of templates among the templates stored in the template storage unit. An utterance content output method executed by an information processing apparatus,
An emotion identifying step for identifying the user's emotion based on the user's utterance content;
A preference information acquisition step of acquiring the user's preference information;
A response type determining step for determining a response type of the utterance content of the user based on the emotion specified by the emotion specifying step;
An utterance generation step of generating utterance content based on the response type determined by the response type determination step and the preference information acquired by the preference information acquisition step;
An utterance content output method comprising: an utterance output step of outputting the utterance content generated by the utterance generation step.

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