JP2009047451A - Information search system and information search method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information search system for searching and detecting hierarchically-different locations existing at the same coordinate in two-dimensional coordinate system without using three-dimensional information. <P>SOLUTION: The information search system 1 includes a user terminal 10, and a server apparatus 100 for storing search object information. In the server apparatus 100, a registration section 120 applies a different location ID to a combination of location information indicated by the two-dimensional coordinate and location additional information on the location, and registers them to a storage section 110. If a search processing section 101 receives a search request from the user terminal and detects the information on the location from the storage section 110, the location ID is referred, and the location information with the different location ID is detected as the different location. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention constructs a topological location information system that describes relationships between locations (positions) and location attributes, and responds with a result that matches the conditions when searching from the user terminal using the location information as a key. The present invention relates to an information search system and an information search method.

  Conventionally, when a search result related to position information is responded in an information search system, a method of responding by associating coordinates of a two-dimensional map with a search result has been used. For example, as an effective search service using a map, there is a nearby store information proposal service associated with a route search.

In addition, a method for constructing a three-dimensional map mainly for an urban space is being researched toward digitalization of a three-dimensional map obtained by adding a dimension to a two-dimensional map. A route guidance system using three-dimensional spatial information based on such a three-dimensional map has also been proposed, and application to an information retrieval system is also expected.
JP 2006-242583 A JP 2005-308456 A

  However, the above-described two-dimensional coordinate system cannot describe the hierarchical structure of a building, so there is a problem in that different locations that exist at the same coordinate but are hierarchically different cannot be treated as different locations. .

  In order to solve this problem, it is possible to use a three-dimensional expression that can appropriately describe different locations on the two-dimensional map that are the same but hierarchically different. However, there is a problem that there is almost no conventional accumulated knowledge about the height information required for three-dimensional representation, and it is difficult to convert the hierarchical structure in the building into three-dimensional spatial information. .

  The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problem, and its object is to be able to detect by searching a location that exists in the same coordinates in a two-dimensional coordinate system but is hierarchically different without using three-dimensional spatial information. An information retrieval system and an information retrieval method are provided.

  In order to solve the above problem, the present invention provides an information search system including a user terminal and a server device that stores information to be searched, the server device including position information indicated by two-dimensional coordinates, , Registration means for assigning different position identification information and registering it in the storage means for each combination with the position additional information related to the position, and detecting the information about the position from the storage means based on the search request received from the user terminal In this case, there is provided an information search system comprising: search processing means that refers to the position identification information and detects position information having different position identification information as a position having a different location.

  Further, the present invention is characterized in that, in the above-described invention, the additional position information is position hierarchy information in position information indicating the same coordinates of the two-dimensional coordinates.

  In the invention described above, the registration unit associates user identification information given in advance to a user with the position identification information corresponding to the position where the user of the user identification information is located. And the search processing means receives the search request specified by using the predetermined information as a keyword and the information indicating the location of the user as a return value from the user terminal. Position identification information corresponding to the predetermined information is detected on the basis of the predetermined information and the user identification information stored in the storage means and information associated with the position identification information, and the position indicated by the detected position identification information The information and the position additional information are returned to the user terminal as information indicating the location of the user.

  In the invention described above, the registration unit associates user identification information given in advance to a user with the position identification information corresponding to the position where the user of the user identification information is located. For each of the user identification information, user-related information related to the user identification information is stored in association with the user identification information, and the search processing means is stored in the user terminal. When a search request specified by using predetermined information as a keyword and the user-related information as a return value is received, the predetermined information included in the search request and the user identification information and the position identification information stored in the storage means, or the user Based on the identification information and the information on the association of the user related information, the user related information corresponding to the predetermined information is detected, and the detected user related information is detected. Characterized in that it responds to the user terminal.

  Further, according to the present invention, in the invention described above, the registration unit associates, for each position identification information, the position related information related to the position indicated by the position identification information in association with the position identification information. When the search request is received from the user terminal using the predetermined information as a keyword and the position-related information as a return value, the search processing means receives the predetermined information included in the search request and the storage. The position identification information corresponding to the predetermined information is detected based on the position identification information stored in the means and the information associated with the position related information, and the position related information associated with the detected position identification information is detected by the user terminal. It is characterized by responding to

  The present invention is also an information search method in an information search system comprising a user terminal and a server device that stores information to be searched, wherein the server device includes position information indicated by two-dimensional coordinates, For each combination with position additional information related to position, assigning different position identification information and registering in storage means, transmitting a search request from the user terminal, and the server apparatus received from the user terminal When detecting information related to a position from the storage means in response to a search request, referring to the position identification information, and detecting the position information having a different position identification information as a position having a different location. This is an information retrieval method.

  According to the present invention, by adding position additional information which is additional information to a two-dimensional map and using location information describing a position (location), detection is performed based on the location information. It is possible to detect a location where the position additional information is different in coordinates, for example, a location that is hierarchically different.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram showing an information search system 1 according to this embodiment. The information search system includes a user terminal 10 operated by a user when performing an information search, and a server apparatus 100 that performs a search in response to a search request from the user terminal 10 and responds with information that matches a search condition. .

  The user terminal 10 is, for example, a personal computer or a mobile phone terminal, and software such as a web browser for connecting to the server device 100 and requesting a search is installed in advance and stored in an internal storage area.

  The server apparatus 100 includes a search processing unit 101, a storage unit 110, and a registration unit 120. The search processing unit 101 analyzes a search request (search query) received from the user terminal 10, searches for information to be searched from the storage unit 110, acquires result information that matches the search conditions, and acquires the user terminal 10. Respond to. Here, the search request by the user terminal 10 of the present embodiment uses SPARQL, which is an RDF (Resource Description Framework) query language.

  The information stored in the storage unit 110 is RDF semi-structured data including basic user information 102, location information 105, user extension information 104, and device information 103, and information about the user and position (location) is described by this data. Is done. The registration unit 120 receives information from the user terminal 10 or an apparatus such as an environmental sensor described later, records the information in the storage unit 110, and performs registration.

  The basic user information 102, location information 105, user extension information 104, and device information 103 in FIG. 1 are described as independent data systems. In RDF, arbitrary elements in the independent data systems are represented by predicate nodes. Reference using That is, the user basic information 102 will be described with reference to FIG. 2. Information on the user ID node 201, information on the device information predicate node 301 to the device ID node 302 stored in the device information 103, and biometric ID Information of biometric information predicate node 401 to node 402, information of location information predicate node 501 to location ID node 600, and information of device ID node 302, biometric information ID node 402, and location ID node 600 indicated by each predicate node Is associated with the basic user information 102.

 Similarly, the location information 105 will be described in association with FIG. 2. The information of the location ID node 600 and the information under the predicate node starting from the location ID node 600 are associated with each other. Similarly, the user extended information 104 is information in which the information of the biometric information ID node 402 and the information under the predicate node starting from the biometric information ID node 402 are associated with each other. Similarly, the device information 103 is information in which the information of the device ID node 302 is associated with the information under the predicate node starting from the device ID node 302.

  By adopting such a data configuration, for example, as shown in FIG. 2, it is possible to extract a description about a specific user from a plurality of elements and configure a local data system about the user.

  Hereinafter, the data structure by RDF will be described with reference to FIG. For example, the user ID node 201 is an identifier that uniquely specifies a user. The device ID node 302 is an identifier assigned to each device possessed by the user, and the device information predicate node 301 is a predicate node indicating that the device ID node 302 represents device information.

  The location ID node 600 is an identifier indicating the location where the user is located, and the location information predicate node 501 is a predicate node indicating that the location ID node 600 represents location information. The adjacent location predicate node 701 is a predicate node indicating a location adjacent to the location of the location node 600, and the location ID node 610 is an identifier indicating a location adjacent to the location ID node 600.

  The nearest station predicate node 602 and required time predicate nodes 6021-1 and 6021-2 are predicate nodes indicating information serving as location attributes indicating location attributes. The relationship between predicate nodes and nodes is similarly configured for other elements. Since RDF is semi-structured data as described above, location attributes can be added and deleted as necessary.

  FIG. 3 shows an example of topological location information in the storage unit 110 of the server apparatus 100 of the present embodiment. In order to describe the location attribute and the relationship between locations as the location information 105 in FIG. 1, in this embodiment, the location attributes are a location type predicate node 601, a nearest station predicate node 602, an environment information predicate node 603, an address predicate node. 604, name predicate node 605 and the like are described, and the relationship between the locations is described by the adjacent location predicate node 701 described above. With this description, for example, as shown in FIG. 3, “ABC Mansion” existing at the same coordinate in the two-dimensional coordinate system has hierarchically different information on “Room 203”, “Room 205”, and “Room 302”. Can be given as additional information regarding the position, that is, additional position information, and a different location ID (position identification information) is assigned to each combination of position information of the same coordinates on the two-dimensional coordinates and position additional information. Thus, hierarchically different positions (locations) can be described as different information. Thereby, even if the position is the same coordinate on the two-dimensional coordinate, it is possible to detect it as a different location without using the three-dimensional coordinate space.

  Next, the operation of the information search system 1 in this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In FIG. 4, a server device 100, a user terminal 11, a user terminal 12, an environment sensor 801, and an environment sensor 802 are connected to each other via a network. Here, it is assumed that the user terminal 11 and the user terminal 12 have the same configuration as the user terminal 10 of FIG.

(Data registration process)
First, the user 1 operates the user terminal 11 to transmit information indicating that he / she is located in the location 1001 to the server apparatus 101, and the registration unit 120 of the server apparatus 101 that has received the transmission receives the received information. Record and register in the storage unit 110. Similarly, the user 2 operates the user terminal 12 to transmit information indicating that the user 2 is located at the location 1002 to the server apparatus 101, and the registration unit 120 of the server apparatus 101 that has received the transmission stores the received information. Record and register in unit 110. For the location 1001 and the location 1002, information such as the location type, the nearest station, the address, the name, the adjacent location predicate node 701, and the like shown in FIG.

  Further, in order to configure the data of the device ID node 302 shown in FIG. 2, information indicating devices owned by the user 1 and the user 2, for example, mobile phones and information on the telephone numbers thereof, are stored in the user 1 and the user 2. The user terminal 11 and the user terminal 12 may be transmitted from the user terminal 11 and the user terminal 12 to the server apparatus 100 and may be registered in the storage unit 110 through the registration unit 120.

  The environment sensor 801 acquires environmental information of the location 1001, for example, information such as temperature and humidity, and transmits the acquired information to the server apparatus 100. The registration unit 120 of the server apparatus 101 that has received the transmission receives the received information. Register in the storage unit 110. Similarly, the environmental sensor 802 acquires environmental information of the location 1002, for example, information such as temperature and humidity, and transmits the acquired information to the server apparatus 100. The registration unit 120 of the server apparatus 101 that receives the transmission receives the received information. Record and register in the storage unit 110. Thereby, for example, an environment information predicate node (a node corresponding to the environment information predicate node 603 in FIG. 2) is added to the location ID nodes of the location 1001 and the location 1002, as in the environment information predicate node 603 shown in FIG. Will be.

  In addition, in order to configure the data of the biometric information ID node 402 shown in FIG. 2, the user 1 and the user 2 are equipped with sensors that measure biometric information, for example, biometric information such as body temperature, blood pressure, and pulse. Information measured by the sensor may be transmitted to the server device 100 and registered in the storage unit 110 through the registration unit 120.

(Information retrieval process 1)
When the user 2 is the user indicated by the user ID node 201 in FIG. 2, the user ID node 201 is described as semi-structured data as shown in FIG. 2 by registering information in the storage unit 110. And At this time, an example in which the user 1 searches for the nearest station from the location of the user 2 and the required time from the station will be described. In the following description, the user ID of the user 2 is described as the code 201 of the user ID node 201.

  The user 1 operates the user terminal 11 to transmit a SPARQL search request (search query) using the user ID (201) of the user 2 as a search key and the nearest station and the required time as a return value. The search processing unit 101 of the server device 100 analyzes the search request, reads the user ID, and searches the storage unit 110 based on the read user ID. Based on the search, the search processing unit 101 detects “Tokyo Station” as the nearest station from the RDF data structure shown in FIG. 2, “10 minutes required by walking”, and “3 minutes required by bus”, and detects them. These pieces of information are transmitted to the user terminal 11 as a response.

(Information retrieval process 2)
Next, an example in which a user's telephone number existing at a location whose location ID is 600 by the user 1 is searched will be described. In the following description, the user ID of the user 2 is described as a code 201 of the user ID node 201, and the location ID of the location 1002 is described as a code 600 of the location ID node 600.

  First, the user 1 operates the user terminal 11 to transmit a SPARQL search request (search query) using the location ID (600) of the location 1002 as a search key and a telephone number as a return value. The search processing unit 101 of the server device 100 analyzes the search request, reads the location ID, and searches the storage unit 110 based on the read location ID. As a result of the search, the user 2 with the user ID 201 located at the location with the location ID 600 is detected from the data structure of the RDF shown in FIG. “080-xxx-yyyy” ahead of the predicate node of “telephone leaf number” is detected. Then, the search processing unit 101 transmits the information “080-xxx-yyyy” detected by the search to the user terminal 11 as a response.

  Note that even if the location ID (600) of the location 1002 is not known, for example, “ABC Mansion No. 203 in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo” shown in FIG. , The location ID (600) is detected from “ABC Mansion No. 203 in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo”, and the above-described detection is performed based on the detected location ID (600) to detect the telephone number of the user 2 It can also be.

With the above configuration, the user can perform information detection based on location information described topologically via the user terminal. As described above, the location information is described by semi-structured data such as RDF, for example, and location attribute information can be added in addition to the location name and address. Location search based on environmental information such as temperature and humidity, that is, detection between a plurality of elements extracted from semi-structure data. For this reason, it is possible to provide a search service such as a store search that has hierarchical information according to the user's preference by a search using the location attribute.
In addition, with the above configuration, instead of using the three-dimensional position information in the description of the location information, the position information obtained by topologically connecting the information group having the location ID as a core is used. It is possible to perform a search using position information that describes the topologically.

  Further, a program for realizing each step of the information search process 1 and the information search process 2 described in FIG. 4 is recorded on a computer-readable recording medium, and the function of the processing unit in the server apparatus 100 is realized. The information retrieval process 1 and the information retrieval process 2 may be performed by recording a program for recording on a computer-readable recording medium, causing the computer system to read and execute the program recorded on the recording medium. Here, the “computer system” may include an OS and hardware such as peripheral devices. Further, the “computer system” includes a homepage providing environment (or display environment) if a WWW system is used. The “computer-readable recording medium” means a flexible disk, a magneto-optical disk, a ROM, a writable nonvolatile memory such as a flash memory, a portable medium such as a CD-ROM, a hard disk built in a computer system, etc. This is a storage device.

  Further, the “computer-readable recording medium” means a volatile memory (for example, DRAM (Dynamic DRAM) in a computer system that becomes a server or a client when a program is transmitted through a network such as the Internet or a communication line such as a telephone line. Random Access Memory)), etc., which hold programs for a certain period of time. The program may be transmitted from a computer system storing the program in a storage device or the like to another computer system via a transmission medium or by a transmission wave in the transmission medium. Here, the “transmission medium” for transmitting the program refers to a medium having a function of transmitting information, such as a network (communication network) such as the Internet or a communication line (communication line) such as a telephone line. The program may be for realizing a part of the functions described above. Furthermore, what can implement | achieve the function mentioned above in combination with the program already recorded on the computer system, and what is called a difference file (difference program) may be sufficient.

  Concerning location information, it is expected to be used for information retrieval based on location information by constructing a data system that describes relationships between locations and location attributes.

It is a block diagram which shows the structure of the information search system by this embodiment. It is the figure which showed the structure of the information memorize | stored in the memory | storage part of the server apparatus in the embodiment. It is the figure which showed the structure of the location information memorize | stored in the memory | storage part of the server apparatus in the embodiment. It is a figure for demonstrating the information search process in the embodiment.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Information search system 10 User terminal 100 Server apparatus 101 Search processing part 110 Storage part 102 User basic information 103 Device information 104 User extended information 105 Location information 120 Registration part

Claims (6)

An information search system comprising a user terminal and a server device that stores information to be searched,
The server device
Registration means for assigning different position identification information and registering it in the storage means for each combination of the position information indicated by the two-dimensional coordinates and the position additional information relating to the position;
Search processing means for detecting position information having different location identification information with reference to the position identification information when detecting position information from the storage means in response to a search request received from the user terminal When,
An information retrieval system characterized by comprising: The information search system according to claim 1, wherein the position addition information is position hierarchy information in position information indicating the same coordinates of the two-dimensional coordinates. The registration means includes
User identification information given in advance to the user and the position identification information corresponding to the position where the user of the user identification information is associated are registered in the storage means,
The search processing means includes:
Predetermined information included in the search request and user identification information stored in the storage means when receiving a search request specified by using the predetermined information as a keyword and information indicating the location of the user as a return value from the user terminal Information indicating the location of the user by detecting position identification information corresponding to the predetermined information on the basis of the association information of the position identification information and the position identification information, and position information indicated by the detected position identification information and additional position information. The information retrieval system according to claim 1, wherein the information retrieval system responds to the user terminal as The registration means includes
User identification information given in advance to the user and the position identification information corresponding to the position where the user of the user identification information is associated are registered in the storage means,
Further, for each user identification information, user related information related to the user identification information is stored in association with the user identification information,
The search processing means includes:
When a search request specified by using the predetermined information as a keyword and the user-related information as a return value is received from the user terminal, the predetermined information included in the search request, the user identification information stored in the storage unit, and the position identification The user-related information corresponding to the predetermined information is detected based on the information or the user identification information and the association information of the user-related information, and the detected user-related information is returned to the user terminal. Item 3. The information search system according to Item 1 or 2. The registration means includes
For each of the position identification information, position related information related to the position indicated by the position identification information is registered in the storage unit in association with the position identification information,
The search processing means includes:
When receiving a search request specified by using the predetermined information as a keyword and the position related information as a return value from the user terminal, the predetermined information included in the search request, the position identification information stored in the storage unit, and the position related 2. The position identification information corresponding to the predetermined information is detected based on the information association information, and the position related information associated with the detected position identification information is returned to the user terminal. To 4. The information search system according to any one of 4 to 4. An information search method in an information search system comprising a user terminal and a server device that stores information to be searched,
The server device assigns different position identification information for each combination of the position information indicated by the two-dimensional coordinates and the position additional information related to the position, and registers it in the storage unit;
Transmitting a search request from the user terminal;
When the server device detects information related to a position from the storage unit in response to a search request received from the user terminal, the position identification information is referred to, and position information with different position identification information is detected as a position with a different location. The steps of
An information search method characterized by including:

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