JPH10171822A - Media adapted information sharing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide information by an optimum media and optimum information quantity while changing the expression method of the same retrieved result in accordance with a user by adding a communication environment state, the degree of user's understanding, urgency, the sort of contents, etc., to a retrieving keyword as retrieving conditions. SOLUTION: An inputted keyword is sent to a utilization condition acquiring part 2, a user characteristic acquiring part 21 extracts the degree of user's understanding from a user's characteristic data base 31 and a communication environment state acquiring part 22 acquires a communication line state, a traffic state, a user's terminal state, a server's state, and so on. A contents sort judging part 24 judges a media suitable for the inputted keyword from information stored in a media characteristic data base 33. The optimum media and information quantity are calculated and selected and media conversion and information quantity conversion are applied to retrieving information stored in the data base so as to be suited to the calculated and selected contents.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to an LA in an office.
N, a device of a multimedia information sharing system used by a plurality of people on the Internet or the like.

An outline of a conventional multimedia information sharing system will be described with reference to FIG. The search unit 53 searches the multimedia data 54 in response to the user's search request (keyword) from the input device 51, and outputs the search result data from the output device 52. In such a conventional system, the same data (the same media and contents) is always provided to all users.

[0003] In such a conventional multimedia sharing system, since the data provided as a search result is the same for all users, when the data has a large capacity such as a moving image or a high-quality still image, There is a problem that it is difficult to transmit within a response time that the user can accept. In addition, since the data provided as a search result is the same for all users, there are cases where the contents already known to some users may be duplicated, making it difficult to perform efficient information search. Further, there is a problem in that all data is provided even when only the summarized contents are requested, and it takes time to refer to the data.

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Accordingly, the present invention is directed to an optimum medium for each user (a medium which is most easily understood by the user or a medium desired by the user).
And the optimal amount of information (including the content desired by the user with the minimum information necessary for the user to understand the content,
Amount of information that does not include redundant content that is not required by the user)
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a multimedia information sharing device that can provide search results.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, the multimedia information sharing apparatus of the present invention uses a communication environment condition (communication line, traffic state, user terminal state, server state). Etc.), collect the level of understanding of the user, determine the degree of urgency (response time until information desired by the user), further identify the type of content, the obtained communication environment status, user A function to select the media that meets each user's request from the degree of understanding, urgency, type of content, etc., calculate the amount of information to be displayed on the media, and to select the media and the amount of information based on the information It is characterized by having a function of performing media conversion and information amount conversion on the search purpose information in the database so as to match.

According to the multimedia information sharing apparatus of the present invention, in addition to the search keyword, the above-described communication environment status, user's understanding, urgency, content type, and the like are added as search conditions. Even for the same search result, the expression method can be changed by the user, and it is possible to provide multimedia information with an optimum medium and an optimum information amount.

[0007]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Next, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the whole multimedia information sharing apparatus of the present invention. In this figure, 1
Is an input device, 2 is a use condition acquisition unit, 3 is an optimum media calculation unit, 4 is a history storage unit, 5 is a user characteristic extraction unit, 6 is a search unit, 7 is a media conversion unit, and 8 is an output device. The input device 1 includes a user characteristic input unit 11 and a search requirement input unit 12. The use condition acquisition unit 2 includes a user characteristic acquisition unit 21, a communication environment status acquisition unit 22, an urgency determination unit 23, and a content type determination unit 24.

[0010] The keyword input by the user to the search requirement input unit 12 is sent to the use condition acquisition unit 2. When the condition of the degree of urgency is input together with the keyword, the information is also sent to the use condition acquisition unit 2. If the urgency level is set to be high, separate charges are used to use high-speed large-capacity lines, the priority of server processing is increased, the contents are summarized or omitted, or the quality is reduced and the data volume is reduced. Reduce response time by reducing, converting to media with less data volume, or using other methods.

The user characteristic acquiring unit 21 of the use condition acquiring unit 2 extracts the user's understanding level from the user characteristic database 31. At this time, the data referred to in the user characteristic database 31 is set according to the user's background, expertise, desired media (individual preferences or characteristics, etc., but by this setting, for example, as a search result for a blind person) You can specify the explanation by voice). These pieces of information are registered in advance from the user characteristic input unit 11 of the input device 1. Further, the use history (the number of searches and the access interval using the same keyword) may be referred to.

The communication environment status acquisition section 22 of the use condition acquisition section 2
Then, the status of the communication line (network configuration and operation status), the status of the traffic, the status of the user terminal (type of available media, type of OS, CPU performance, amount of available memory, display of moving images and still images) Performance, audio output performance, text display performance, network board performance, terminal load, etc.), server status (server load, etc.), etc. are acquired. As a method of obtaining the information, a method of obtaining information from a network operation unit (not shown), a method of checking a communication environment state by executing a dedicated command when a search request is made, and a first data transfer There are a method of measuring the transfer time at times and using the result as the communication environment status for the second time or later, a method of estimating the communication environment status from the past data transfer history, a method of transmitting terminal information from the user terminal, and the like.

The urgency determination unit 23 of the use condition acquisition unit 2
The degree of urgency (response time until acquisition of information desired by the user) is determined based on input from the user. As means for determining, in addition to the input from the user, it can be calculated by inferring from a future schedule or a regular event schedule.

Content type judging section of usage condition acquiring section 2
At 24, a medium suitable for the input keyword is determined from the information of the media characteristic database 33. For example, a still image (for example, a map) is easy to understand for the description of a place, if there is no knowledge about the search result, a detailed explanation is provided in a video, and if there is a knowledge, a summary description in text is suitable. A decision is made.

[0013] The use condition acquired by the use condition acquisition unit 2 is sent to the optimum media calculation unit 3 together with the keyword. The optimum media calculation unit 3 calculates the optimum media and the amount of information. Specifically, from the information of the user's background and expertise acquired by the user characteristic acquiring unit 21, ranking is performed on whether the information includes basic contents or summarized contents. Also, the degree of understanding of the information can be inferred from the number of searches and the access interval for the same keyword. If the number of searches for the same keyword is small, you need detailed search results,
If the number of searches is large, it is determined that the summarized contents are sufficient.
Further, if the time has elapsed since the previous search, it is considered that the memory is faint, and it is determined that detailed explanation is necessary.

Further, the priority of the media is determined based on the information of the desired media. The communication environment status acquisition unit 22
The transferable data amount is calculated from the obtained response time and the desired response time of the determination result of the urgency determination unit 23. The acquisition result of the communication environment status acquisition unit 22 includes the user terminal information, and an unusable medium is also known, so that the medium is excluded. Further, based on the determination result of the content type determination unit 24, a priority order of media suitable for expression is given.

The above results are integrated to obtain an optimum medium and an optimum information amount. In the information of the optimum medium, the priority of the type of the medium is described, and the optimum amount of information is described for each medium. After calculating the optimum medium and the optimum information amount, the optimum medium calculation unit 3 issues a search request to the search unit 6. If the search unit 6 has a function of designating the type of media and the amount of information, the search unit 6 also sends, as a search request, information on the optimum medium and the optimum amount of information in addition to the keyword. If you don't have this feature, just send keywords. Further, the optimum media calculation unit 3 sends a conversion instruction to the media conversion unit 7. The conversion instruction includes information on an optimum medium and an optimum information amount.

The search unit 6 is a multimedia database.
All data matching the search request is extracted from 34 and sent to the media conversion unit 7. The media conversion unit 7 determines the necessity of conversion of the data sent from the search unit 6 based on the conversion instruction information sent from the optimum media calculation unit 3, performs conversion if necessary, and outputs the data. Send data to If the conversion is not required, the data is sent to the output device 8 without performing the conversion. Examples of the conversion in this case include conversion between media (conversion from text to audio, conversion from audio to text, conversion from video to still image, etc.), conversion within media (color number of video or still image) , Size, etc., reduction of video or audio quality, summary of contents, partial omission, etc.)
Etc.

On the other hand, the histories of the optimum media calculation unit 3, the search unit 6, and the media conversion unit 7 are stored in the history database 32 by the history storage unit. The user characteristic acquisition unit 21
The search results of the history database 32 are classified for each user and stored in the user characteristic database 31.

Next, the operation of the above-described embodiment of the media adaptive information sharing apparatus according to the present invention will be described. Here, it is assumed that a user newly assigned to a certain department searches for “method of using a conference room”. This user
It is assumed that no search has been performed for “method of using a conference room”, and information indicating that there is no knowledge in the history up to now is stored in the user characteristic database 31.

When the user first searches from an office terminal device capable of processing a large amount of multimedia data, the user characteristic acquiring section 21 determines that the user does not have knowledge of the search result, and the communication environment. Status acquisition unit 22
Then, it is determined that all media can be handled and large-capacity data is possible, and the urgency determination unit 23 does not specify any urgency because there is no particular designation, and the content type determination unit 24 determines Regarding "How to use the meeting room", a detailed explanation in a video is suitable for people who do not know the search results, and a simple explanation with text instructions is suitable for those who have knowledge of the search results Are extracted from the media characteristic database 33.

These results are integrated in the optimum media calculation unit 3. In this case, since there is no knowledge about the search result, there is no limitation on the amount of media and data from the communication environment condition, and there is no designation of the urgency, it is calculated that the detailed explanation in the video is suitable. Under this condition, the search unit 6 searches for video data related to “method of using the conference room” and sends it to the media conversion unit 7. In this case, since there is no need for conversion, it is sent to the output device as it is.

If the same user performs another search for “method of using a conference room” again in the same communication environment on the next day, it is determined that he / she has knowledge of the result, and the contents describing the procedure in text form Is output. Furthermore, if the same user performs a search while driving a car, the result is output by voice because the description by voice is suitable. If the data for the audio description does not exist in the multimedia database 34, the data is output after the media conversion unit 7 performs the audio conversion.

The operation of the media-adaptive information sharing apparatus according to the present invention as described above is summarized as a flowchart shown in FIG. First, it is checked whether or not a user request other than the search keyword has been input (step 41). If there is a user request other than the search keyword (step 42) and if there is no user request (step 43), information is stored in the user characteristic database 31 for each case. It is checked whether or not there is a search keyword. If the search information is only the search keyword (step 47), the user database information (step 46) or the user request (step 44) is added to the search information. The case where all the user database information is included (step 45) is classified.

Next, following steps 44 to 47, it is checked whether or not the data of each search result matches the optimum medium (step 48). If they match, the search result is sent to the user as it is. (Step 49), if not, convert the search results to the best media
The result is sent to the user (step 50).

[0024]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Since the amount of transfer data can be changed depending on the communication environment, it is possible to provide multimedia information at a response speed within a range permitted by the user, and further, to provide a search result in consideration of the user's understanding level. This eliminates redundant explanations of the contents already known, and can provide information in a summarized form in an emergency, so that efficient reference is possible.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall block diagram of a multimedia information sharing device of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the multimedia information sharing device of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an outline of a conventional multimedia information sharing system.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Input device 2 Usage condition acquisition part 3 Optimal media calculation part 4 History storage part 5 User characteristic extraction part 6 Search part 7 Media conversion part 8 Output device 11 User characteristic input part 12 Search requirement input part 21 User characteristic acquisition part 22 Communication environment Status acquisition unit 23 Urgency determination unit 24 Content type determination unit 51 Input device 52 Output device 53 Search unit 54 Multimedia data

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An information sharing device for sharing, distributing, and publishing multimedia information, grasps a communication environment state to be used, collects a user's understanding level, determines an urgency level, and furthermore, Function to identify the type of information, the function to select the media that meets each user's request from the acquired communication environment status, the degree of understanding of the user, the degree of urgency, the type of content, etc., and calculate the amount of information to be displayed on the media And an information sharing device having a function of performing media conversion and information amount conversion on search target information in a database so as to be adapted to a medium and an information amount selected based on the information. .