WO2018088160A1

WO2018088160A1 - Message output device, pos terminal, program, and message output method

Info

Publication number: WO2018088160A1
Application number: PCT/JP2017/037806
Authority: WO
Inventors: 和也佐野
Original assignee: Ｎｅｃプラットフォームズ株式会社
Priority date: 2016-11-09
Filing date: 2017-10-19
Publication date: 2018-05-17
Also published as: JP2018077338A

Abstract

In the present invention, the text data of an output message is stored in a storage device. The message is displayed on a display as text on the basis of the text data. Speech for the message is synthesized on the basis of the same text data and output from a speaker.

Description

Message output device, POS terminal, program, and message output method

The present invention relates to message output to customers, users, etc., and more particularly to message output for both message screen display and voice output.

In recent years, the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan has increased. Along with this, opportunities to conduct business transactions with foreigners are increasing, and opportunities to explain products and services to foreigners are increasing. Duty-free shops also need to explain tax-exempt procedures. There are two types of tax exemption procedures: one at a duty free store and one at customs. The duty-free shop has a procedure in which the duty-free shop creates a purchase record slip, affixes it to the purchaser's passport, etc., and stamps it. In addition, there is a procedure in which the duty-free shop receives and stores the purchaser's pledge from the purchaser. If a foreign purchaser wishes to do tax exemption, the duty free shop will need to explain the procedure to the foreigner.

As a method for such explanation, there is a method in which a document explaining the tax exemption procedure in a foreign language is printed in advance and a printed matter is presented to the purchaser. There is also a method to assign employees who can explain tax exemption procedures in foreign languages. As another method, a message for explaining the tax exemption procedure may be displayed on the screen of a POS (Point Of Sales) terminal.

Patent Document 1 is cited as a document describing a technique related to the present invention. Patent Document 1 discloses a transaction processing apparatus that performs operation guidance in an output form corresponding to personal information of a user. “For the language information indicating the language of the user as personal information, the guidance display screen of the liquid crystal display device 5 in the corresponding language and the operation guidance data of the voice operation guidance are recorded” (Patent Document 1). It can be seen from the description in paragraph (0029) that both data for the guidance display screen and data for operation guidance by voice are prepared.

Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-244103

In the technique of pre-printing a document with a foreign language message, such as explanation in foreign language for tax exemption procedures, and presenting the printed matter to a foreign purchaser, etc., the printed matter is presented without delay when a foreign purchaser appears. Therefore, for example, it is necessary to place and manage printed matter near the POS terminal. In this case, the number of documents to be managed increases in accordance with the number of languages to be supported, and accordingly, a place (for example, a bookshelf) necessary for managing printed materials becomes wide.

In the method of assigning employees who have foreign language conversation ability, it is necessary to assign employees who have conversation ability in the language to be supported at each store. This approach limits employee recruitment. Also, labor costs tend to increase.

In the method of displaying a message on the screen of the POS terminal, it is not necessary to prepare a place for managing the printed matter, and it is not necessary to place an employee having a foreign language conversation ability in the store. In this method, if the message data to be output on the screen and the data of the message to be output by voice are prepared separately, when adding or changing a message, both the data for screen output and the data for audio output are new. You need to prepare something. This makes it difficult to maintain after the POS terminal is installed.

The present invention has been made in view of such a situation, and a problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide a POS terminal capable of suppressing the management cost for duty-free sales.

In order to solve the above-described problems, the present invention has, as one aspect thereof, a storage device for storing text data of a message to be output, a display for displaying the message as characters based on the text data, and the text There is provided a message synthesizing unit that synthesizes the voice of the message based on data, and a message output device including a speaker that outputs the voice synthesized by the voice synthesis engine.

In another aspect of the present invention, a procedure for storing text data of a message to be output in a storage device, a procedure for displaying the message as a character on the basis of the text data, and the procedure based on the text data There is provided a program for causing a computer to execute a procedure for generating synthesized voice of a message and a procedure for outputting the synthesized voice from a speaker.

According to another aspect of the present invention, as another aspect, a step of storing text data of a message to be output in a storage device, a step of displaying the message as a character based on the text data, and a step of displaying the message based on the text data. There is provided a message output method including the steps of generating synthesized voice of a message and outputting the synthesized voice from a speaker.

According to the present invention, both the message displayed as characters on the display and the message output as voice can be changed at a time only by changing the text data. For this reason, the cost at the time of operating a message output device can be reduced.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of a message output apparatus 1 according to the first embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the message output device 1. FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram of the POS terminal 10 according to the second embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 4 is an example of the guidance message data 2A. FIG. 5 is an example of the operator information 2B. FIG. 6 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the POS terminal 10 when displaying a guidance message according to the language used by the operator. FIG. 7 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the POS terminal 10 when displaying a guidance message according to the language used by the customer and outputting a synthesized voice of the guidance message. FIG. 8 shows an example of the customer language selection screen 20. FIG. 9 is an example of the nationality-language table 2D storing the correspondence relationship between the country indicated by the nationality information and the official language of the country. FIG. 10 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the POS terminal 10 when printing a purchase pledge.

(First embodiment)
A message output apparatus 1 according to a first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. The message output device 1 is an information processing device. Specifically, a personal computer, a workstation, and a POS (Point Of Sales) terminal can be considered. The message output device 1 includes a storage device 2, a control device 3, a display 4, a speech synthesis engine 5, and a speaker 6.

Storage device 2 is a readable / writable storage device such as HDD (Hard Disk Drive), SSD (Solid State Drive) or the like. The storage device 2 stores an operating system (Operating System, OS) for operating a message output device as an information processing device, a driver program for the display 4, and a program operating on the OS, for example, POS application software. It is good also as storing the speech synthesis engine 5 mentioned later as an application program.

Further, the storage device 2 stores message data 2A. The message data 2A is a text file and is text data in which a message to be output is described in a natural language such as Japanese, English, or Chinese. In this case, the message data 2A is intended to include the text data "Hello" in Japanese. This text data is a character string composed of five character data.

The control device 3 executes information processing including operation control such as operation of each part of the message output device 1, logical operation, arithmetic operation and the like. The control device 3 includes a CPU (Central Processing Unit) and a main storage device. The control device 3 reads the OS from the storage device 2 and executes it, and further executes various programs including the driver program and the speech synthesis engine 5 on the OS.

Display 4 is a display device such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) or CRT® (Cathode® Ray® Tube). The display 4 displays an image signal output from the control device 3.

The speech synthesis engine 5 converts the text data received from the control device 3 into an electrical signal representing the voice when the text data is read out and outputs the electrical signal to the speaker 6. There are various methods for speech synthesis, but any method may be used in the speech synthesis engine 5. For example, waveform-connected speech synthesis, that is, a method of synthesizing a desired speech by fragmenting previously recorded human speech and connecting these fragments as necessary. Alternatively, formant synthesis, that is, a method of generating a waveform by adjusting various parameters related to sound such as base frequency, timbre, and noise level without using human speech, and synthesizing a desired speech may be used. .

The speaker 6 converts the electrical signal received from the speech synthesis engine 5 into physical vibration and outputs the sound.

Next, the operation of the message output device 1 will be described with reference to FIG.

First, the control device 3 reads the message data 2A from the storage device 2 (step S1). Next, the controller 3 reads the message data 2A, and displays the text data "Hello" in it at the display 4 (Step S2). In addition, the control device 3, the same text data "Hello" also pass to the speech synthesis engine 5. Speech engine 5, human text data "Hello" received artificially synthesized speech when the speech, and outputs an electrical signal of the synthesized speech to the speaker 6 (step S3). Speaker 6 which has received the electrical signal is sounded, and outputs "Hello" of synthesized speech (step S4).

Thus, the message output device 1, the display output mode, i.e., the display of "Hello" as a character in the display 4, and the output form of speech, i.e., the output of the "Hello" as synthesized speech in the speaker 6 both, performed on the basis of the same message data "Hello". For this reason, the output contents of both the display output and the voice output can be changed only by changing the text data in the message data 2A. Specifically, the text data in the message data 2A stored in the storage device 2 may be edited and changed using an input device such as a keyboard (not shown).

(Second Embodiment)
A POS (Point Of Sales) terminal 10 according to a second embodiment of the present invention will be described. The POS terminal 10 is a POS system terminal, and in particular, a terminal for installation in a duty-free shop that performs duty-free sales. In duty-free sales, a foreign buyer may be asked to present a passport, or a purchase pledge may be requested. In these cases, the POS terminal 10 reads the guidance message from the storage device at an appropriate timing during the tax exemption transaction, and outputs either or both of the purchaser (customer) and the salesperson (operator) as the destination. At that time, the same guidance message is output in two output forms, that is, screen display and audio. The purchaser sees the guidance message on the screen or listens to the voice of the guidance message, and performs the duty-free sales procedure while receiving the guidance. The POS terminal 10 assumes various languages as languages used by customers and operators. For this reason, the POS terminal 10 outputs a guidance message having the same content in various languages. In the present embodiment, it is assumed that the POS terminal 10 supports Japanese, English, and Chinese for both operator and customer languages.

Referring to FIG. 3, the POS terminal 10 includes a storage device 2, a control device 3, a customer display 4A, an operator display 4B, a voice synthesis engine 5, and a speaker 6. Parts corresponding to those in the first embodiment are denoted by the same reference numerals. Both the customer display 4A and the operator display 4B correspond to the display 4. In addition to these, the POS terminal 10 includes a receipt printer 11, a passport reader 12, and a keyboard 13.

Storage device 2 is a readable / writable storage device such as HDD (Hard Disk Drive), SSD (Solid State Drive) or the like. The storage device 2 stores an operating system (Operating System), a customer display 4A, an operator display 4B, a receipt printer 11, a driver program for the passport reader 12, and POS application software that operates on the OS. The speech synthesis engine 5 is stored as a program that runs on the OS.

Also, the storage device 2 stores a guidance message 2A, operator information 2B, caution data 2C, and nationality-language table 2D.

The guidance message 2A includes guidance messages M1, M2, M3,... Shown in FIG. Each of the guidance messages M1, M2, and M3 is a set of a plurality of messages that mean substantially the same content. However, substantial contents of the guidance messages M1, M2, and M3 are different from each other regardless of language differences.

For example, the guidance message M1 includes guidance messages M1-JP, M1-EN, and M1-CN, which are text data in Japanese, English, and Chinese, respectively. The guidance message M1-JP translated into English is the guidance message M1-EN, and the translation into Chinese is the guidance message M1-CN. For example, the guidance message M1 is a set of messages that prompt the operator to start the checkout process, and the messages with the corresponding contents in Japanese, English, and Chinese are sequentially displayed in the guidance messages M1-JP, M1. -EN, M1-CN.

On the other hand, the content of the guidance message M2 is different from the content of the guidance message M1. For example, the content of the guidance message M2 is a description of first and second input methods to be described later. Except for language differences, the guidance messages M2-JP, M2-EN, and M2-CN have substantially the same contents. The same applies to the guidance messages M3, M3-JP, M3-EN, and M3-CN.

Each of the guidance messages M1-JP, M1-EN, and M1-CN may be a single text file, or the guidance message M1 is a single text file, and the guidance messages M1-JP and M1-EN are included therein. M1-CN may be included. The same applies to the guidance messages M2-JP, M2-EN, M2-CN, M3-JP, M3-EN, and M3-CN.

Each guidance message of the guidance message 2 </ b> A is displayed as at least one of the customer display 4 </ b> A and the operator display 4 </ b> B and is output as a voice from the speaker 6 via the voice synthesis engine 5.

The operator information 2B is information about the operator of the POS terminal 10, that is, the person who operates the POS terminal 10. Here, the operator specifically refers to a salesperson of a duty-free shop, an employee of a shop where the POS terminal 10 is installed, and the like. For example, as shown in FIG. 5, the operator information 2B includes a person-in-charge number for identifying the operator, a person-in-charge name that is the name of the operator, and a use language indicating a language that the operator can recognize for each operator. Including. Here, the languages used by the persons in

charge

1, 2, and N are Japanese, English, and Chinese, respectively. Prior to duty-free sales using the POS terminal 10, the person-in-charge number, person-in-charge name, and language used for each operator who may use the POS terminal 10 are stored in the storage device 2.

Note 2C is data for printing a purchase pledge printed by the receipt printer 11 described later. The buyer's pledge must include the same precautions in both Japanese and the customer's language. The precaution 2C is text data describing precautions of the purchase pledge in each language assumed as the language used by the customer. As described above, since the POS terminal 10 assumes Japanese, English, and Chinese as the languages used by the customer, the precaution 2C includes Japanese text data, English text data, Contains Chinese text data.

The nationality-language table 2D is a table that stores the relationship between the nationality information read from the passport and the official language in the country corresponding to the nationality information.

The control device 3 executes information processing including operation processing such as control of operations of each part of the POS terminal 10, logical operation, arithmetic operation, and the like. The control device 3 includes a CPU (Central Processing Unit) and a main storage device. The control device 3 reads the OS from the storage device 2 and executes it, and further executes various programs including the driver program and the speech synthesis engine 5 on the OS.

Customer display 4A is a display device such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), CRT (Cathode Ray Tube). The customer display 4A displays the image signal output from the control device 3. The customer display 4A is a display for displaying a screen toward a customer, that is, a purchaser of a duty-free shop. The customer display 4A is a touch panel. There are various operation methods such as a matrix switch, a resistive film method, a surface acoustic wave method, an infrared method, an electromagnetic induction method, a capacitance method, etc., but any operation method may be used.

Similarly, the operator display 4B is a display device such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a CRT® (Cathode® Ray® Tube). The operator display 4B displays an image signal output from the control device 3. The operator display 4B is a display for displaying a screen for an operator, that is, a sales representative of a duty-free shop. Similar to the customer display 4A, the operator display 4B is also a touch panel, and the same is true regardless of the operation method.

The speech synthesis engine 5 and the speaker 6 are the same as those in the first embodiment.

The receipt printer 11 is a printer for printing receipts and purchase pledges.

The passport reader 12 is a device that reads information on a passport holder from printing of a passport paper or from an IC (Integrated Circuit) chip embedded in the passport. The reading method may be a method of optically reading information such as nationality information, passport number, etc. by a scanner OCR (Optical Character 文字 Recognition), or character recognition, or an international civil aviation organization (International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO) internationally standardized passport information for machine reading consisting of 44 columns and 2 lines may be optically read and converted into character information, or an IC (Integrated Circuit embedded in a passport) ) Data may be read from the chip by electromagnetic means.

The keyboard 13 is an input device for an operator to input numbers, characters, symbols, etc. to the POS terminal 11.

Next, the operation when displaying a guidance message according to the language used by the operator on the POS terminal 10 will be described with reference to FIG. As described in the operator information 2B in FIG. 5, a person-in-charge number is assigned to each operator in advance. The operator who wants to operate the POS terminal 10 inputs his / her person in charge number from the keyboard 13 (step S11). The control device 3 reads the language used corresponding to the input person-in-charge number from the operator information 2B (step S12). And the control apparatus 3 reads the guidance message described in the read use language from the guidance message 2A of the memory | storage device 2, and displays it on the operator display 4B (step S13). For example, assume that the operator information 2 </ b> B of FIG. 5 is stored in the storage device 2. At this time, if the person-in-charge number entered by the operator is 0001, the corresponding language used is Japanese. Here, when the POS terminal 10 is at the timing to display the guidance message M1 of FIG. 4 to the operator, the control device 3 assumes that the guidance message M1 corresponds to the Japanese language used in the guidance message M1. -JP is read and displayed on the operator display 4B. Since the language used by the operator of the person in charge number 0001 is Japanese, the operator can read and understand the displayed guidance message M1-JP.

Next, the operation of the POS terminal 10 when displaying a guidance message and outputting a voice according to the language used by the customer will be described with reference to FIG.

First, the operator performs a predetermined operation via the operator display 4B of the POS terminal 10 (step S21).

Upon receiving this operation, the control device 3 displays a guidance message M2 for the customer on the customer display 4A. The guidance message M2 is a message for prompting the customer to input his / her own language and explaining the method.

POS terminal 10 has two methods for designating and inputting a customer language. The first input method uses the touch panel function of the customer display 4A. The second input method uses a passport reader 12. For this reason, the guidance message M2 describes both the operation method based on the first input method and the operation method based on the second input method.

The customer's language is unknown at the beginning. For this reason, the guidance message M2 is written in a language that the POS terminal 10 supports for customers, that is, Japanese, English, and Chinese. In step S13 described above, only guidance messages in a specific language among the guidance messages M1 are displayed, but here, all of the guidance messages M2-JP, M2-EN, and M2-CN are displayed. It is good also as displaying an image and a moving image with the description by such character display or instead of character display. These images and moving images show how the demonstrator, which is a sample of the operation, performs language designation input.

The customer who sees the displayed guidance message M2 inputs the language used by the customer into the POS terminal 10 using either the first or second input method.

After the display of the guidance message M2 or simultaneously with the display of the guidance message M2, the control device 3 displays the customer language selection screen 20 on the customer display 4A. As shown in FIG. 8, the customer language selection screen 20 displays an area in which the language name is written using the language. This area is called a language selection area. The number of language selection areas displayed on the customer language selection screen 20 depends on the number of languages that the POS terminal 10 supports for customers. As described above, the POS terminal 10 supports three types of languages such as Japanese, English, and Chinese as customer languages. For this reason, the customer language selection screen 20 of FIG. 8 shows three language selection areas, a Japanese selection field 21, an English selection field 22, and a Chinese selection field 23.

When the customer selects the first input method, the customer presses one of the language selection areas displayed on the customer language selection screen 20 in accordance with the explanation regarding the first input method in the guidance message M2 (step S22). ). The language corresponding to the language selection area pressed by the customer is notified to the control device 3 by the touch panel function of the customer display 4A.

Further, the control device 3 starts accepting input from the passport reader 12 after displaying the guidance message M2 or simultaneously with displaying the guidance message M2. When the customer selects the second input method, the customer reads his / her passport with the passport reader 12 in accordance with the explanation regarding the second input method in the guidance message M2 (step S23). The passport reader 12 reads customer nationality information from the passport and passes it to the control device 3. The control device 3 acquires a language corresponding to the nationality information read from the passport, for example, based on the nationality-language table 2D as shown in FIG.

The control device 3 determines the language selected by one of the first and second input methods as the guide language (step S24). Then, the control device 3 displays text data corresponding to the guidance language among the guidance messages M3-JP, M3-EN, and M3-CN on the customer display 4A (step S25).

Further, the control device 3 inputs the guidance message M3-JP, M3-EN, M3-CN corresponding to the guidance language to the speech synthesis engine 5. If the guidance message M3-EN is displayed on the customer display 4A in step S25, the control device 3 similarly inputs the guidance message M3-EN to the speech synthesis engine 5. The speech synthesis engine 5 generates synthesized speech based on the text data of the input guidance message and outputs it from the speaker 6 (step S26).

In this way, the POS terminal 10 displays the guidance messages M3-JP, M3-EN, and M3-CN corresponding to the guidance language on the customer display 4A, while the same guidance message used for the display. Generates and outputs synthesized speech based on the text data. In other words, the POS terminal 10 does not need to prepare voice data having the same contents separately from the text data for the guidance message displayed on the customer display 4A. For this reason, a guidance message can be changed easily.

Next, with reference to FIG. 10, the operation of the POS terminal 10 when printing the purchase pledge is described. When conducting a duty-free transaction, the purchaser must submit a purchase pledge to the duty-free shop. In many cases, the purchaser (customer) does not prepare a purchaser's pledge when conducting a tax-free transaction, so the duty-free shop needs to prepare paper. For this reason, the POS terminal 10 has a function of printing a purchase pledge.

First, the control device 3 obtains customer nationality information (step S31). As a method for acquiring nationality information, for example, the customer can read nationality information from his / her passport with the passport reader 12 in the same manner as in step S23 described above. The operator may take a passport from the customer and the operator may read it out. Next, the control device 3 acquires a language corresponding to the read nationality information based on the nationality-language table 2D, and determines the language as a note-writing language (step S32). Finally, the control device 3 selects the text data written in the note writing language from the notes 2C, and prints the purchase pledge on the receipt printer 11 (step S33).

In this way, if a purchaser's pledge is printed according to the language used by the customer at the POS terminal 10, it is not necessary to prepare a purchaser's pledge in advance for each language, thereby reducing management costs. Can do.

As mentioned above, although this invention was demonstrated according to embodiment, this invention is not limited to this.

In the second embodiment, the customer language selection input has been described as being performed by the customer, but may be performed by the operator. The customer language selection screen 20 may be displayed on the operator display 4B, and the language used by the customer may be input using the touch panel function of the operator display 4B. Further, although it has been described that the customer reads the passport using the passport reader 12, the operator may leave the passport from the customer and the operator may read using the passport reader 12.

POS terminal 10 has been described as corresponding to three languages, Japanese, English, and Chinese, but the combination of the corresponding languages may be composed of other languages. For example, a combination such as English, Chinese, or Korean may be used. Further, the number of corresponding languages is not limited to three. Even if a single language is supported, both the screen display and the synthesized speech can be changed at a time by simply updating one guidance message. The same applies to the case where the number of languages is 2 or less and 4 or more.

The POS terminal 10 has been described as including an operator display 4A and a customer display 4B, which are displays with a touch panel, as an input device for operators and customers, but the input device for operators and customers is not limited to this. For example, instead of providing these touch panels, the POS terminal 10 may include an operator keyboard and a customer keyboard together with these touch panels, or a keyboard shared by the operator and the customer. Also good. An input device other than the keyboard, for example, a mouse may be further provided.

This application claims priority based on Japanese Patent Application No. 2016-218857 filed on November 9, 2016, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein.

1 Message output device 2 Storage device

2A Guidance message

2B Operator information 2C Notes 2D Nationality-language table 3 Control device 4 Display 5 Speech synthesis engine 6 Speaker 10 POS (Point Of Sales) terminal 11 Receipt printer 12 Passport reader 20 Customer language selection Screen 21 Japanese language selection area 22 English language selection area 23 Chinese language selection area

Claims

A storage device for storing text data of messages to be output;
A display for displaying the message as characters based on the text data;
Voice synthesis means for synthesizing the voice of the message based on the text data; and
A message output device comprising a speaker that outputs the voice synthesized by the voice synthesis engine.
The storage device stores first text data representing the message in a first language and second text data representing the message in a second language different from the first language;
According to the input result for language selection performed in advance, one of the first and second text data is selected,
The message output device according to claim 1, wherein the display displays the selected text data, and the voice synthesis unit synthesizes the voice of the message based on the selected text data.
As an input means for performing the language selection, a touch panel display having a touch panel function is provided,
The touch panel display includes a first language selection area for displaying the name of the first language in the first language, and a second language for displaying the name of the second language in the second language. Language selection area and
The message output device according to claim 2, wherein the language selection is performed based on presence or absence of contact with the first and second language selection areas.
The storage device further stores a table that associates the correspondence between nationality and language,
A passport reader is provided as an input means for performing the language selection,
The message output device according to claim 2 or 3, wherein a language corresponding to the nationality information read from the passport by the passport reader is used as an input result of the language selection.
A POS (Point Of Sales) terminal which is the message output device according to any one of claims 1 to 4.
A procedure for storing text data of a message to be output in a storage device;
A procedure for displaying the message as characters on the display based on the text data;
Generating a synthesized speech of the message based on the text data; and
A program for causing a computer to execute a procedure for outputting the synthesized speech from a speaker.
Storing text data of a message to be output in a storage device;
Displaying the message on the display as characters based on the text data;
Generating a synthesized speech of the message based on the text data; and
A message output method including the step of outputting the synthesized speech from a speaker.