WO2006126116A2

WO2006126116A2 - Processing a user input signal for determining a content selection criterion

Info

Publication number: WO2006126116A2
Application number: PCT/IB2006/051449
Authority: WO
Inventors: Bartel M. Van De Sluis; Adolf Proidl; Lukasz Szostek
Original assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
Priority date: 2005-05-23
Filing date: 2006-05-09
Publication date: 2006-11-30
Also published as: WO2006126116A3

Abstract

The invention relates to a method of processing a user input signal (248) produced by a user input device (210) in response to a user input, the method comprising the steps of : (120) obtaining an input parameter of the user input signal, the input parameter being related to a physical characteristic of the user input, (130) determining, with the aid of the input parameter, a content selection criterion for selecting content on the basis of a content characteristic . The invention also relates to an apparatus (250) comprising a data processor (255) for processing a user input signal (248) produced by the user input device (210) in response to the user input, and a system comprising the user input device and the apparatus. The method is applied to select TV programs according to their similarity or genre. The time length of the user signal defines the similarity or the genre of the selected TV programs .

Description

Processing a user input signal for determining a content selection criterion

The invention relates to a method of processing a user input signal produced by a user input device in response to a user input. The invention also relates to an apparatus comprising a data processor for processing a user input signal produced by a user input device in response to a user input, and a system comprising the user input device and the apparatus.

US2002/0108113 discloses a remote control device for displaying content events, such as broadcast TV shows, radio broadcasts that are recommended, using a fuzzy- now function of time. The function may yield a weighting value based on the current time and start/end time of the event. The remote control device has a "more suggestions" button for cycling through a list of stored suggestions concerning the recommended content events. If a user presses the "more suggestions" button, a television set will automatically calculate a subsequent recommendation or cycle to the next recommendation in the list. Then, the television set automatically tunes to a recommended TV show.

The user may only trigger the television set to select and present the next recommendation using the "more suggestions" button. The recommendation is carried out automatically, and the user has no way to influence the recommendation of the next event.

It is desirable to provide a method of processing a user input signal produced by a user input device, such that the selection of the next content is not simply triggered, but a process of the selection is influenced as well. The method of the present invention comprises the steps of: obtaining an input parameter of the user input signal, the input parameter being related to a physical characteristic of the user input, determining, with the aid of the input parameter, a content selection criterion for selecting content on the basis of a content characteristic. For example, the physical characteristic is a period of time during which the user interacted with the user input device, e.g. a period of time during which a button was held down. In another example, the physical characteristic is a pressure force of a user's finger on the button. The input parameter of the user input signal may correspond to a length of the user input signal, or to an amplitude of the user input signal, respectively, or the input parameter is derived from a combination of both.

The input parameter of the user input signal is analyzed to derive the content selection criterion. For instance, a functional dependency is used that relates to the user input parameter and the content selection criterion. As another example, the dependency of the content selection criterion is looked up in a suitably configured table with values of the input parameter and corresponding content selection criteria. Thus, the input parameter is translated into the content selection criterion. The content selection criterion allows a content selection by analyzing one or more content characteristics of the content. The method allows initiating the selection of the content and influencing the selection process in a single action. The user may influence the content selection through specifying, within the single action, one or more desired characteristics of the content to be selected. The user is therefore not required to additionally operate the user input device so as to influence the content selection process. It may suffice that the user input device has only one simple UI (User Interface) element that the user may use for triggering and controlling the content selection at the same time.

The apparatus of the present invention comprises a data processor for processing a user input signal produced by a user input device in response to a user input, the data processor being configured to obtain an input parameter of the user input signal, the input parameter being related to a physical characteristic of the user input, wherein the data processor is further configured to determine, with the aid of the input parameter, a content selection criterion for selecting content on the basis of a content characteristic.

The apparatus allows determining the content selection criterion as it has been described above with reference to the method of the present invention.

These and other aspects of the invention will be further explained and described, by way of example, with reference to the following drawings:

Figure 1 is an embodiment of the method of the present invention; Figure 2 is a functional block diagram of an embodiment of the system according to the present invention. The present invention allows a user to select content easily, intuitively and with minimal effort. The user may interact with a user input device to trigger the content selection carried out by an apparatus. The content selection is performed on the basis of a content selection criterion. By specifying the content selection criterion, the user may control the content selection.

Figure 1 is an embodiment of the method of the present invention. The user input device produces a user input signal in response to a user input. The user input device has means for communicating with the apparatus so that the apparatus may receive the user input signal in step 110. The user may interact with the user input device in many ways. For instance, the user input device may have a button that the user may press when he likes to select content or wants to get a (further) recommendation. The button may also be implemented in a touch screen for displaying the button and sensing when the button is pressed. In another example, the user input device may be voice-controlled to receive a user's voice command and recognize that the voice command relates to the content selection. In yet another example, the user input device may be gesture-controlled to receive a user's gesture command and recognize that the command relates to the content selection. The user input may be based on other interaction methods as well.

Upon the user interaction with the user input device, the user input device generates the user input signal in accordance with the physical characteristic of the user input. For instance, when the button is pressed for a certain period of time, the user input signal will have a corresponding length. In another example, the user input signal has an amplitude or frequency depending on the loudness of the user's voice. In further examples, the user input signal may depend on a frequency of the button presses with a specified period of time, a force with which the button is pressed (e.g. a pressure-sensitive button), an angle at which the button is pressed (e.g. a joystick- like button). There are, of course, many other possibilities for generating the user input signal suitable for the purposes of the present invention.

Furthermore, the user input signal including information about the user interaction is processed in step 120. An input parameter is derived from the user input signal. The input parameter may be the amplitude of the user input signal, or the phase/frequency of the user input signal that was modulated in accordance with the physical characteristics of the user input, etc. The input parameter may also vary with time because, for instance, the loudness of the user's voice increased/decreased over some period of time. The input parameter is used in step 130 to determine a content selection criterion. The input parameter may be pre-mapped on available content selection criteria. When the user parameter is derived, a corresponding content selection criterion is determined. For instance, the input parameter is a time length of the user input signal. The dependency of the content selection criterion on the input parameter may be expressed, e.g. as in Table 1.

TABLE 1

In Table 1 , the input parameter has a plurality of (threshold) values. Each threshold value of the input parameter has a corresponding value of the content selection criterion. For example, the user input signal having a length of 1 sec. corresponds to a content selection criterion "Alike" content or, in another example, to a content selection criterion "Genre A". Thus, Table 1 is an example of the translation of the input parameter into the content selection criterion.

In one embodiment, the user input signal may have more than one input parameter related to the physical characteristic of the user input. In that case, the user input device is suitably configured to allow simultaneously more than the user input with the respective physical characteristic. For instance, the user input device is a joystick- like device that has both a pressure sensor and an angle sensor. Such a user input device may generate a user input signal at a frequency which is dependent on the pressure exerted on the user input device, and at an amplitude which is dependent on the angle at which the pressure was applied. Therefore, the user may use the user input device to generate a multi-parameter user input signal in a single interaction. For instance, one input parameter may determine a similarity content selection criterion ("alike", "similar", "different"), and the other input parameter may be used to specify a period of broadcasting a TV news program ("today", "yesterday", "last week"). With such a user input, the user may specify various combinations of the content selection criteria, e.g. TV programs "alike" and "today" or TV programs "similar" and "yesterday". The content selection criterion may express a content similarity measure or a content difference measure of content characteristics of content items. The similarity measure or the difference measure may be implemented in various ways. For instance, the similarity measure may indicate whether content items have the same genres (science fiction, comedy, thriller, etc.) or the same context (the same director or actors in movies, etc.). The similarity measure may also be calculated on the basis of features extracted from the content by content analysis algorithms.

The content selection criterion may also relate to a content rating in accordance with a user preference profile. The content rating may have values between 0 (if the content is totally out of scope of user preferences) and 100% (e.g. if the content is of a favorite genre of the user). For instance, if the user presses the button for a long time (e.g. 10 sec), the content selection criterion may be a low content rating value, which means that the user likes to select content which he usually does not watch/listen to (that is, the user likes to be surprised). In step 140, the content selection criterion is used for the content selection.

The content selection may be realized in various manners. The content may be provided with meta-data indicating a genre of the content, e.g. EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data or TV- Anytime data. If the genre of the content matches with the content selection criterion (which specifies the genre as well), the content may be selected. Alternatively, the content may be analyzed to determine a genre of the content before the content is selected.

In fact, the content selection may start automatically after the content selection criterion has been determined. The user may not be required to press any button additionally. It may suffice that only a single user interaction (e.g. one button press) allows the user to select the desired content. If the content selection criterion is associated with the similarity (difference) measure, the similarity (difference) between content items may be calculated. For instance, a user may watch a TV program that is currently broadcast, and he may press the button on a remote control unit to trigger the selection of another TV program. If the user thinks that the other TV program is similar to the currently watched TV program, he may press the button so that the content selection criterion "Similar" is generated. The similarity is determined between the currently watched TV program and other TV programs currently broadcast. The similarity calculation may be based on genres of the TV programs, language, topic (religion, presidential elections, etc.), or other descriptions. It is known from EPl 328939 to determine the similarity measure between content items. The content (content item) may comprise visual information (e.g. video images, photos, graphics), audio information, text information, and other digital data, e.g. meta-data according to the MPEG-7 standard which may be used to describe and search digitized materials by means of sampling, as well as by using lexical search terms. The expression "audio data" (or audio information), or "audio content", is hereinafter used as data pertaining to audio comprising audible tones, silence, speech, music, tranquility, external noise or the like. The audio data may be in formats like the MPEG-I layer II (mp3) standard (Moving Picture Experts Group), AVI (Audio Video Interleave) format, WMA (Windows Media Audio) format, etc. The expression "video data" (or video information), or "video content" is used as data which are visible such as a motion picture, "still pictures", video text, etc. The video data may be in formats like GIF (Graphic Interchange Format), JPEG (named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group), MPEG-4, etc. The text information may be, for example, in the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) format, PDF (Adobe Acrobat Format) format, or HTML (HyperText Markup Language) format. The meta-data may be in the XML (Extensible Markup Language) format, MPEG7 format, stored in a SQL database or any other format.

An embodiment of a system of the present invention is shown in Figure 2. The system comprises the user input device 210 configured to produce the user input signal, and the apparatus 250. Basically, the apparatus 250 may receive the user input signal from the user input device 210 and derive the input parameter from the received user input signal, or the apparatus 250 may receive the input parameter that was already derived by the user input device 210 in advance.

In one embodiment, the user input device 210 comprises a microcontroller 220, an input means 230, a transmitter 240 and an optional display 245. The microcontroller 220 may have an embedded random access memory 221 (read-only memory which is used for program storage) and an input/output function 223 for coupling the microcontroller with other means of the user input device 210.

The input means 230 may be a keyboard with a button 231, e.g. a well-known QWERTY computer keyboard, a pointing device, a TV remote control unit with the button 231 , a joystick, a voice-controlled User Interface with a microphone, a gesture-controlled User Interface with a web camera, etc. For example, the pointing devices are available in various forms such as a computer (wireless) mouse, a light pen, a touchpad, a joystick, a trackball, etc. The display 245 may be a conventional LCD screen for displaying information from the microcontroller 220. The skilled person may implement the blocks of the user input device 210 by suitably configuring known technical solutions.

When the user operates the input means 230, e.g. via the button 231, the input/output function 223, the microcontroller 220 and the transmitter 240 are adapted to receive a raw signal from the input means 230, e.g. an audio signal from the microphone, and to generate the user input signal 248 with one or more input parameters related to the physical characteristic of the user input, e.g. formatted digital audio data. The microcontroller 220 may be configured to control the generation of the user input signal, e.g. formatting of the raw signal. The transmitter 240 is adapted to transmit the user input signal 248, for instance, wirelessly (e.g. via an infrared signal) or via terrestrial, cable or another link.

Optionally, the microcontroller 220 is configured to pre-process the raw user input signal to extract the input parameter 249 and incorporate it into the user input signal 248 for the simultaneous transmission. It is also possible that the transmitter 240 is adapted to transmit only the input parameter, and the user input signal does not comprise any original information from the raw signal. For instance, the transmitter 240 may transmit only a value of the amplitude or frequency of the user input signal. In one embodiment, microcontroller 220 is adapted to cause the display 245 to display the input parameter 249 derived by the microcontroller 220. Such a display would provide the user with a real-time feedback about the derived input parameter. The apparatus 250 may comprise a data processor 255, a receiver 260, and an optional memory 270. The data processor may be a well-known central processing unit (CPU) suitably arranged to implement the present invention and enable the operation of the apparatus as explained herein.

In one case, in which the microcontroller 220 pre-processes the user input signal, the receiver 260 is adapted to receive the pre-processed user input signal 248 with the extracted input parameter 249. In a second case, in which the microcontroller does not derive the input parameter, the receiver 260 is adapted to receive just the user input signal 248 without the previously derived input parameter. In the second case, the data processor 255 extracts the input parameter from the user input signal 248 received via the receiver 260. In any case, the data processor obtains the input parameter at the end.

The input parameter may be translated into the content selection criterion in many manners. One option is to use a table with the input parameter values and the content selection criteria. The table may be stored in the memory 270. One example of such a table has been explained with reference to Table 1. Another option may be to configure the data processor to execute an algorithm for converting the input parameter into the content selection criterion. For instance, the memory 270 may store such an algorithm. The established content selection criterion enables a selection of content.

The apparatus may be adapted to (remotely) communicate with a display unit 280. The display unit 280 is adapted to display the content selection criterion determined by the data processor 255. The display unit 280 may be any conventional means for presenting video information to the user, for example, a CRT (cathode ray tube), LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) rear-projection technology, a DLP (Digital Light Processing) television/projector, a plasma screen display device, etc. By displaying the content selection criterion, it is achieved that the user may immediately see the result of the user input. For instance, if the user is not satisfied with the content selection criterion generated by the data processor 255, he may provide another user input through the user input device 210 to override the generated content selection criterion. Let it be assumed that the embodiment is used in which the duration of the user's press on the button 231 influences the similarity of the content item to be selected next (after a currently selected content item). While pressing the button 231, the display unit 280 provides instant on-screen feedback to the user. The feedback may show to the user whether the next content item will be "alike", "similar" or "different" in accordance with the respective content selection criterion. To select audio content or video content, the data processor 255 may be configured to use the content selection criterion to filter out suitable content from a content database 290. The data processor 255 may generate suitable queries to the content database 290 on the basis of the content selection criterion. The content database may be local or remote to the apparatus 250. The apparatus 250 may comprise a transceiver incorporating the receiver 260 so that the apparatus 250 may communicate with the content database 290 via a satellite, terrestrial, cable, Internet (streaming, Video On Demand, peer-to-peer) or another link.

The content database 290 may store the content on different data carriers such as audio or video tapes, optical storage discs, e.g. CD-ROM discs (Compact Disc Read Only Memory) or DVD discs (Digital Versatile Disc), floppy and hard-drive disks, etc. in any format, e.g. MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group), MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital

Interface), Shockwave, QuickTime, WAV (Waveform Audio), etc. For example, the content database may comprise a computer hard disk drive, a versatile flash memory card, e.g. a "Memory Stick" device, etc. Alternatively, the apparatus may be adapted to transmit the content selection criterion to another device suitable for the content selection, e.g. a set-top box or a TV set with a HDD drive. The other device may be adapted to cause a presentation (display and/or audio reproduction) of the selected content to the user. The presentation may range from simply presenting a title of the selected content to a textual description with a key frame or auto-starting the selected content in a PiP or a full screen.

The apparatus 250 may be incorporated into any of various consumer electronics devices such as television sets (TV sets) with a cable, satellite or other link, videocassette or HDD recorders, home cinema systems, portable CD players, remote control devices such as iPronto remote control, cell phones, etc.

A "computer program" is to be understood to mean any software product stored on a computer-readable medium, such as a floppy disk, downloadable via a network, such as the Internet, or marketable in any other manner.

Variations and modifications of the described embodiment are possible within the scope of the inventive concept. For example, in one embodiment, the system according to the present invention is implemented in a single apparatus, or it comprises a service provider and a client. Alternatively, the system may comprise devices that are distributed and remotely located from each other.

The data processor may execute a software program to enable the execution of the steps of the method of the present invention. The software may enable the apparatus of the present invention independently of where it is being run. To enable the apparatus, the data processor may transmit the software program to, for example, the other (external) devices. The independent method claim and the computer program claim may be used to protect the invention when the software is manufactured or exploited for running on the consumer electronics products. The external device may be connected to the processor, using existing technologies, such as Blue-tooth, IEEE 802.11[a-g], etc. The data processor may interact with the external device in accordance with the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) standard.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. A method of processing a user input signal (248) produced by a user input device (210) in response to a user input, the method comprising the steps of:

(120) obtaining an input parameter of the user input signal, the input parameter being related to a physical characteristic of the user input, - (130) determining, with the aid of the input parameter, a content selection criterion for selecting content on the basis of a content characteristic.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the content selection criterion relates to a difference measure or a similarity measure of content characteristics of content items.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein one of the content items is a subsequent content item to be selected.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the content selection criterion relates to a content rating in accordance with a user preference profile.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of enabling presentation of the content selection criterion.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step (140) of enabling selection of content by using the content selection criterion.

7. The method of claim 6 or claims 3 and 6, wherein the content selection is automatically triggered when the content selection criterion is determined.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising the step of enabling presentation of the selected content.

9. An apparatus (250) comprising a data processor (255) for processing a user input signal (248) produced by a user input device (210) in response to a user input, the data processor being configured to obtain an input parameter of the user input signal, the input parameter being related to a physical characteristic of the user input, wherein the data processor is further configured to determine, with the aid of the input parameter, a content selection criterion for selecting content on the basis of a content characteristic.

10. A system comprising - a user input device (210) configured to produce a user input signal (248) in response to a user input, and an apparatus (250) comprising a data processor (255) for processing the user input signal produced by the user input device, the data processor being configured to obtain an input parameter of the user input signal, the input parameter being related to a physical characteristic of the user input, wherein the data processor is further configured to determine, with the aid of the input parameter, a content selection criterion for selecting content on the basis of a content characteristic.

11. A computer program including code means adapted to implement, when executed on a computing device, the steps of the method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 8.