JP2000122941A - Method for transferring information by using electronic mail - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information transferring method through the use of an electronic mail, which can easily transmit feeling at the time of transmitting the electronic mail with the electronic mail without permitting a user to feel unpleasantness. SOLUTION: The information transferring method is provided with a process transferring an electronic mail containing character information 12 and attribute information 11 on sound and a process receiving character information 12 and attribute information 11 and converting character information 12 into sound information based on attribute information 11. Thus, a user converts character information into sound information based on attribute information 11 on sound at the time of transferring information without permitting the user to actually emit sound. Thus, feeling at the time of transmitting the electronic mail can easily be transmitted with the electronic mail without feeling unpleasantness.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information transfer method using an e-mail which can easily transmit a feeling (emotion) at the time of transmission of the e-mail together with the e-mail to a user.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art With the spread of computers and communication networks, information is frequently exchanged via electronic mail. This is due to the merit that e-mail can be sent regardless of time of day and whether or not there is a recipient, unlike telephones.

At present, in addition to character strings (text), voice,
A mail system capable of handling a compound mail including non-text information such as image information has been developed.
Also, there has been proposed a mail system (refer to, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-66830), which can convert the text of an e-mail into voice data and output it as voice, and can be used from a remote place with a telephone terminal.

[0004] Furthermore, "emoticons" used to convey the feelings of a caller are widely used in electronic mail.

[0005]

For example, it is very difficult for a user to transmit a message unidirectionally by voice without a listener, such as when answering a telephone message, because the user feels uncomfortable. The conventional method of transferring the caller's voice information via email is the same as a telephone answering machine. Therefore, a mail system capable of handling complex mails can, of course, transfer the voice information of the caller, but it is very unpleasant to emit a voice without the user having a listener feeling uncomfortable. there were.

In the mail system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-66830, a receiver mechanically converts the body of an electronic mail into voice data and reads it out based on a predetermined rule. It was impossible to convey the caller's feelings at the time of the call, and the caller could not be felt closer (to enhance the sense of presence).

[0007] Furthermore, electronic mails using "emoticons" can transmit the sender's feelings to some extent, but they cannot be transmitted sufficiently, and there is a limit.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and provides an information transfer method using an e-mail capable of easily transmitting a feeling of sending an e-mail together with the e-mail without feeling uncomfortable for the user. The purpose is to do.

Another object of the present invention is to provide an information transfer using an electronic mail capable of outputting an electronic mail with enhanced realism between the sender and the electronic mail while achieving the above object. It is to provide a method.

[0010]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information transfer method using an electronic mail, comprising the steps of: transferring an electronic mail including character information and attribute information relating to voice; Receiving attribute information and converting the character information into audio information based on the attribute information.

Preferably, the attribute information includes information indicating an emotion. It is desirable. Preferably, the attribute information includes information unique to the sender. Further, it is desirable that the unique information of the sender includes at least one of age and gender.

According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the information transfer method using electronic mail according to the present invention, the step of converting into the voice information includes the step of converting the character information into character information using a spoken language and then based on the attribute information. The character information using the spoken language is converted into voice information.

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information transfer method using electronic mail, wherein attribute information relating to character information and voice is created, and the character information is converted into voice information based on the attribute information. And a step of transferring an electronic mail including the voice information.

According to a tenth aspect of the present invention, in the information transfer method using an electronic mail, the step of converting the voice information into the voice information comprises:
After converting the character information into character information using a spoken language, the character information using the spoken word is converted into voice information based on the attribute information.

[0015]

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an electronic mail system according to one embodiment of the present invention. This e-mail system is realized by a personal computer, a workstation, or the like, and has a document conversion function and a speech synthesis function.

In FIG. 2, a network control unit 28 controls communication with another electronic mail system via a signal network (network). External storage device 24
Is used for storing data received via the network control unit 28 and data input from the keyboard 22. The mail control unit 23 controls various devices connected to the I / O bus, and is, for example, a CPU. Various processing programs of the mail control unit 23 are stored inside the mail control unit 23. The memory 27 is used as a work area of the mail control unit 23. The sentence-speech conversion unit 26 has a function of converting character information (document) into a document using spoken language and a speech synthesis function of synthesizing speech from the document, and the synthesized speech is output from the speaker 25. Of course, it is also possible to output a synthesized voice using headphones or the like in consideration of the surrounding inconvenience. The display device 21 is used for displaying characters, graphic information, and the like.
It is a CRT monitor.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the internal configuration of the sentence-speech conversion unit 26. The text-to-speech conversion unit 26 includes a document conversion unit 31 and a speech synthesis unit 32. The document conversion unit 31 has a T of attribute information relating to voice attached to an e-mail described later.
The ON / OFF of the operation is controlled by the bit. When operating, the input electronic mail document (character information) is converted into character information using a spoken language based on the information stored in the spoken language holding unit 33, and the speech synthesis unit 32 is operated.
Output. When the electronic mail is not operated, the input electronic mail document (character information) is passed through and output to the voice synthesizing unit 32. Taking Japanese as an example, the spoken language holding unit 33 has various dialects such as the Osaka dialect and the Tohoku dialect and data of standard spoken language, and the mail control unit 23 of the e-mail system sends an e-mail header described later. Identify the caller from the name of the caller in and select one from various spoken words. The language used for the e-mail is not limited to Japanese, but may be Chinese or English. Even in this case, it is desirable to have data of various dialects and standard spoken language in Chinese and the like.

The voice synthesizing unit 32 synthesizes the character information input through the document converting unit 31 into a voice using the information stored in the voice quality data holding unit 34 based on specific bit information of attribute information described later. It has a function to do. The information stored in the voice quality data holding unit 34 stores a plurality of types of voice quality data (that is, various voice quality data according to age, gender, and emotion) corresponding to emotion information and unique information of attribute information described later. I have. Therefore, once the document data of the e-mail is converted into character information using spoken language, the voice is synthesized based on the attribute information, so that when the synthesized voice is output, the presence of the sender is enhanced. can do.

Further, voice data of many callers is registered and stored, and as described above, the mail control unit 23 of the e-mail system specifies the caller, selects the voice data of the caller, and sets the attribute information. If voice synthesis is performed by the voice synthesis unit 32 based on voice quality data further narrowed out of the voice quality data of the caller according to the emotion information, it is possible to form a state in which the sense of presence with the caller is further enhanced. it can.

FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically showing the structure of an electronic mail. In FIG. 1A, an e-mail has a header 10
And attribute information 12 relating to voice, and a mail text 12 to be converted into voice based on this attribute information. The header 10 has a sender column in which the name of the sender and the machine name of the transmitting machine are described, a receiver column in which the name of the destination and the machine name of the destination are described, and a title column. The attribute information 11 is the mail text 12, that is, information instructing a conversion method from character information to voice information. In addition, the document conversion unit 31 controls whether or not to convert the character information of the e-mail into character information using a spoken language by a specific T bit of the attribute information 11, and thereafter,
Using the other bits of the attribute information 11, the speech synthesis unit 32
Can be converted into audio information.

FIG. 1B is a diagram showing a bit configuration of the attribute information 11. The attribute information 11 is composed of 8 bits,
Four bits are assigned to information indicating the emotion of the sender, and two bits are assigned to the unique information of the sender. One of the remaining two bits is a T bit for instructing the above-described conversion into the spoken language, and the other is a V (valid) bit for indicating the validity of the attribute information.

The four bits indicating the emotion information include two bits (in this case, an E bit indicating a pleasant mood and a D bit indicating a depressed mood) indicating that the user is in a good mood when sending the mail, and It is divided into two bits (in this case, an A1 bit indicating an angry mood and an S1 bit indicating a sad mood) indicating a bad mood. If the 4-bit emotion information is 1 (high), information indicating the emotion is transmitted. If the information is 0 (low), the information indicating the emotion is not transmitted. Then, it is assumed that there is a prohibition rule that only one specific bit of the 4-bit emotion information becomes high and the other remaining bits become low. This rule is because the sender's emotion (mood) when sending an email is usually one specific mood.

The two bits indicating the unique information of the sender are composed of A2 bits (0: young person, 1: elderly) indicating the age and S2 bits (0: male, 1: female) indicating the gender. For example, the bit configuration of the unique information may be changed to one of the A2 bit and the S2 bit.

If the attribute information is, for example, (E, D, A
1, S1, A2, S2, T, V) = (1,0,0,0,0,1,0,
The case 1) will be described. In this case, the emotion information E
Bit is high, A2 bit is low, S2 bit is 1, V
Since the bit is high, in the mail system (machine) that has received the e-mail having the attribute information 11, the mail control unit 23 transmits the mail body 12 to the sentence-voice conversion unit 26 based on the attribute information. That is, the control is performed such that the voice is converted into a pleasant voice by a young woman and output through the speaker 25. If the T bit is set high in the above example, the document conversion unit 31 in the sentence-to-speech conversion unit 26 once converts the mail text 12 into a document using spoken language, and then, based on the converted document, As in the case where the bit is low, control is performed to convert the voice into a pleasant voice with a young female voice and output it through the speaker 25.

Next, the operation of the e-mail system shown in FIG. 2 will be described with respect to (a) creation and transmission of mail, (b) reception of mail, and (c) output of received mail.

(A) Creation and Transmission of Mail FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the procedure of creation and transmission of mail.

In step 1, the user's keyboard 22
By the operation described above, the mail control unit 23 creates the title of the mail and the mail body 12 on the memory 27. At this time, the mail content is displayed on the screen of the display device 23.

In step 2, the mail control unit 23 displays a screen for prompting the user to set the attribute information 11 on the created mail content on the display unit 23, and the creator of the e-mail sends his / her feelings and transmission. 1 (b) based on the individual's unique information
8 bits are set. That is, only one specific bit of the four bits of the emotion information indicating the mood (emotion) of the mail creator is set to high. Also, the A2 bit that is age information and the S2 bit that indicates gender, which are the unique information of the mail creator, are set to predetermined values. If this unique information is set in advance in conformity with the user of the electronic mail system, it is not necessary to set the unique information every time the mail is transmitted. If it is desired to convert the text of the e-mail into character information using spoken words, the T bit is set to high. When speech synthesis is desired based on the attribute information 11, the valid bit V is set to high.

In step 3, when the mail shown in FIG. 1A is created on the memory 27, the mail control unit 23 stores the mail in the external storage device 24, and then the network control unit 28 stores the mail in another memory. To the other machine.

(B) Receiving E-mail An e-mail having the structure shown in FIG. 1A created by another e-mail system (machine) in the same manner as in the above-mentioned (a) is transmitted from the other machine to the e-mail shown in FIG. It is transmitted to the system via the communication network. When the mail is received by the network control unit 28, the mail control unit 23 is notified of the reception of the mail. Thereafter, the mail control unit 23 stores the received mail in the external storage device 24.

(C) Output of Received Mail FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a procedure of outputting a received mail.

At step 4, the user
If you want to read the mail stored in the
To give an output instruction of the mail. In response to the output instruction, the mail control unit 23 sends the mail to the external storage device 2
4 to the memory 27. In step 5, the mail control unit 23 detects the attribute information 11 of the mail fetched in the memory 27.

In step 6, based on the detected attribute information 11, the mail control unit 23 sends the sentence-voice conversion unit 26
Next, the electronic mail body is controlled to perform document conversion and speech synthesis. Document converter 31 in sentence-speech converter 26
First converts a text (text information) using a spoken word based on the T bit of the attribute information 11, and then the speech synthesis unit 32 converts the text information using the e-mail text or the spoken word into the emotion information of the attribute information 11. The voice synthesis is performed on the basis of the two bits of the information set as the high and the unique information of the sender of the mail. In step 7, the synthesized voice is output via the speaker 25.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, the step of transferring the character information 12 and the attribute information 11 relating to the voice using electronic mail, the step of receiving the character information 12 and the attribute information 11, Converting the character information 11 into voice information based on the information 11 so that the user can convert the character information into voice information based on the attribute information related to the voice at the time of the information transfer without actually uttering the voice. This makes it possible for the user to easily transmit the emotion at the time of sending the e-mail together with the e-mail without feeling uncomfortable, which can greatly contribute to smooth communication using the e-mail.

In the above embodiment, the mail is transmitted with the voice attribute information attached to the text of the mail when the mail is transmitted, and the machine that has received the mail then converts the text of the mail based on the attribute information. Although the text was converted to text information using spoken language (document conversion) and voice synthesis was performed, after the voice attribute information related to the text of the email was created when the email was sent, the text of the email was converted to the spoken language based on the attribute information. After performing conversion to the used character information or performing voice synthesis, an electronic mail including the synthesized voice information may be transferred.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart when the above-described mail is created and transmitted. The flowchart can also perform the processing operation using the electronic mail system of FIG.
Hereinafter, the operation procedure of the flowchart will be described.

In steps 8 and 9, steps 1 and 2 in FIG.
Perform the same steps as 2. In step 10, after creating the voice attribute information relating to the mail body in steps 8 and 9,
Based on the attribute information 11, the text-to-speech conversion unit 26 performs control so that the text of the electronic mail is converted into a document and synthesized. As in step 6, the document conversion unit 31 in the sentence-to-speech conversion unit 26 first converts into a document (character information) using a spoken language based on the T bit of the attribute information 11, and then the speech synthesis unit 32 Speech synthesis is performed on the text information using the text of the e-mail or the spoken language based on the high bit of the emotion information of the attribute information 11 and the two bits of the unique information of the sender of the mail.

In step 11, the mail control unit 23 passes the electronic mail including the voice information synthesized in step 10 to the network control unit 28 through the external storage device 24 and transmits the electronic mail.

In the present embodiment, the emotion information of the attribute information relating to the voice is expressed using 4 bits.
The present invention is not limited to this number of bits. That is, one bit indicating a specific emotion may be assigned as emotion information, and conversely, the number of bits of emotion information may be increased to include information such as excitement. Further, in the present embodiment, both the emotion information and the unique information are used as the bit configuration of the attribute information related to the voice, but only the emotion information may be used.

Further, in the present embodiment, the emotion information and the unique information constituting the attribute information 11 are set as relating to the sender at the time of sending the mail, but the present invention is not limited to this. It is also possible to set the emotion information and the unique information constituting the attribute information 11 independently of the sender in a sense of play and transmit the mail.

Further, in the present embodiment, the mail body 1
Although the bit indicating the predetermined emotion information in the attribute information 11 is set to high for the whole 2, the mail text is divided into regions according to the text contents, and the emotion information is indicated for each divided region. It is also possible to set bits.
This makes it possible to change the synthesized voice for each area.

[0042]

As described above, according to the information transfer method using e-mail according to the first aspect of the present invention, a step of transferring an e-mail including character information and attribute information relating to voice, And receiving the attribute information, and converting the character information into voice information based on the attribute information, so that the user does not actually emit a voice, By converting text information to voice information based on the information, the user can easily communicate the emotions at the time of sending the e-mail with the e-mail without feeling uncomfortable, facilitating communication using e-mail. Can contribute a great deal.

According to the information transfer method using electronic mail of the present invention, a step of creating attribute information relating to character information and voice, and a step of converting the character information to voice information based on the attribute information And the step of transferring the e-mail including the voice information, so that the same effect as the first aspect of the present invention can be obtained.

Further, according to the information transfer method using electronic mail of the present invention according to claim 5 and claim 10, the step of converting the character information into character information using spoken language is performed. Later, since the character information using the spoken language is converted into voice information based on the attribute information,
Along with the above effect, when outputting synthesized speech information,
Although it is an e-mail, it is possible to form a state in which a sense of reality is further enhanced with the sender.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically showing the structure of an e-mail.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an e-mail system according to one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an internal configuration of a sentence-speech conversion unit 26;

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a procedure for creating and transmitting a mail.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a procedure for outputting a received mail.

FIG. 6 is another flowchart showing a procedure for creating and transmitting a mail.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Header 11 Attribute information 12 E-mail text 26 Sentence-speech conversion part 31 Document conversion part 32 Speech synthesis part 33 Spoken language storage part 34 Voice quality data storage part

Claims (10)

[Claims] An electronic mail including character information and attribute information relating to voice; receiving the character information and the attribute information; and converting the character information into voice information based on the attribute information. And an information transfer method using e-mail. 2. The information transfer method using electronic mail according to claim 1, wherein the attribute information includes information indicating an emotion. 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the attribute information includes information unique to the sender. 4. The information transfer method using electronic mail according to claim 3, wherein the unique information of the sender includes at least one of age and gender. 5. The step of converting the speech information into speech information, the speech information being converted into speech information based on the attribute information after the speech information is converted into speech information using speech. Information transfer method using the described e-mail. 6. A step of creating attribute information relating to character information and voice, a step of converting the character information into voice information based on the attribute information, and a step of transferring an e-mail including the voice information. Information transfer method using e-mail provided. 7. The information transfer method using electronic mail according to claim 6, wherein the attribute information includes information indicating an emotion. 8. The information transfer method using electronic mail according to claim 6, wherein the attribute information includes information unique to a sender. 9. The information transfer method using electronic mail according to claim 8, wherein the unique information of the sender includes at least one of age and gender. 10. The method according to claim 6, wherein the converting includes converting the character information into character information using a spoken language, and then converting the character information using the spoken word into voice information based on the attribute information. Information transfer method using the described e-mail.