Panasonic Corporation

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Satoshi Matsuura

Jun Ozawa

Takeshi Imanaka

Hiroshi Kutsumi

Takahiro Kudo

Takashi Tsuzuki

Kazutoyo Takata

Kouji Miura

Tsuyoshi Inoue

Mitsuteru Kataoka

Mototaka Yoshioka

Hidemi Henmi

Kenji Mizutani

Makoto Nishizaki

Atsushi Yoshida

Atsushi Tanaka

Eiichi Naito

Shoichi Araki

Masahiro Takatori

Hideyuki Yoshida

Yoshiyuki Okimoto

Shouichi Araki

Tetsuji Abe

Masaaki Sano

Tetsuji Miwa

Eiji Noguchi

Masayuki Mukai

Fuyuki Abe

Shigeru Kamata

A related word presentation device includes a program information storage unit that stores program information of each program; and an information dividing unit that generates, for each of the attributes of the words included in the program information, at least one group which includes a reference word belonging to the attribute and a set of words which co-occur with the reference word in a program. A degree-of-relevance calculating unit stores attribute-based association dictionaries each of which indicates, for the corresponding attribute of words, (i) the words and (ii) the degrees of relevance between the words calculated based on the frequency of co-occurrence in each of groups. A search condition obtaining unit obtains the search word and the attribute; a substitute word obtaining unit selects substitute words from the attribute-based association dictionary for the obtained attribute; and an output unit presents the selected substitute word.

Interactive program search apparatus

An information retrieval apparatus, which can present to a user only a related word matching a user search intent, includes: an associative dictionary storage unit for storing words included in plural pieces of text to be searched and relevance degrees between the words; an appearance frequency storage unit for storing an appearance frequency that is the number of pieces of text in which the words stored in the associative dictionary storage unit appear, among the plural pieces of text to be searched; and a related word obtaining unit that obtains a related word to be presented to the user, from the relevance degree between the search word entered by the user and another word among the words, the appearance frequency, and the user search intent.

Informationn retrieval apparatus

An information search support device includes: a cluster selection history information accumulation unit which accumulates content information of each cluster and cluster selection history information indicating a cluster selected by a user; a degree of certainty calculation unit which calculates a degree of certainty indicating a degree to which a vague search target of the user has been identified, based on the cluster selection history information accumulated; a search target estimation unit which obtains a condition for estimating the search target; a search-omitted information extraction unit which extracts search-omitted information that is included in the cluster that is not selected and is estimated from the obtained condition; and a search-omitted information addition unit which adds, to the cluster selected by the user, the extracted search-omitted information, in the case where the degree of certainty is equal to or higher than a predetermined threshold.

Information search support method and information search support device

To provide a content searching device which can efficiently present to the user a topical related keyword. A content searching device (), which searches content from a content database with a use of a related keyword, includes: a related segment calculating unit () which calculates, for each content attribute, a related segment which is defined in order for first content and second content to be included in a same time segment, the related segment being calculated based on whether or not a degree of difference, for each content attribute, calculated out of a plurality of first keywords and a plurality of second keywords meets a predetermined reference value, the plurality of the first keywords each describing the first content to be stored in the content database (), and the plurality of the second keywords each describing the second content having been stored in the content database (); and a dictionary updating unit () which updates a degree of relevance stored in a dictionary database (), the degree of relevance being updated with a use of the related segment, and the degree of relevance, among the plurality of keywords, being calculated for each content attribute.

Content searching device and content searching method

A target estimation device that appropriately estimates a function targeted by a user from among functions of an operated apparatus includes: an item inputting unit () that obtains an item; a function representation storing unit () that stores function names of the operated apparatus; an identical word detecting unit () that detects a category of a word identical between each of the function names and the item; an operation intention calculating unit () that changes a method for calculating similarities between the item and the respective function names, for each of the function names, depending on the detected category, and that calculates the similarities as degrees of intentions of the user who has selected the item, using the changed calculation method; and a target estimation unit () that estimates a function so that the function having a higher degree of an intention is the function targeted by the user.

Target estimation device and target estimation method

An operation assisting apparatus includes: an option-function distance storage unit that stores a semantic distance between each of the options displayed on a menu screen and each of functions positioned at an end in the hierarchical structure; an operation history storage unit that stores the operation history of the options sequentially selected by the user; an estimation unit that estimates, based on a semantic distance between a selection option selected by the user and each of the functions, and a semantic distance between an unselected selection option that has been selectable but not selected and each of the functions, a degree of probability that the function is the function desired by the user; and an operational assistance determination unit that determines, based on the result of the estimation, a detail of an output such that functions with higher probability will be presented with higher precedence in selectability.

Operation assisting apparatus and operation assisting method

An image search device is provided which relatively easily outputs images that a user wishes to use for interpolation from among a large volume of stored image content data. The image search device includes: a degree-of-association database () which stores degrees of association between images; an input unit () which receives a first image and a second image; an interpolation range computing unit () which computes interpolation range including first photographing location of the first image and second photographing location of the second image; an imaging content inferring unit () which infers imaging content of interpolation images based on the degree of association between the first image and an image belonging to the interpolation range and the degree of association between the second image and the image belonging to the interpolation range; an interpolation image obtaining unit () which obtains interpolation images from among candidate images using the inferred imaging content; and an output unit () which outputs the interpolation images.

Image search device and image search method

An information providing system that provides information to a traveling user, includes a visit history record unit which detects that the user visits a place which is away from a user's living area in order to generate a travel history, and records, as a visit history, the travel history together with a visit area which represents the visited place. Moreover, the information providing system includes a visit history database, a facility information database which provides the user with the information regarding the visit area recorded in the visit history database, and a facility information search unit.

Information providing device

A contents retrieval device () presenting an appropriate related keyword to a user even when an object user wishes to retrieve dynamically changes. The contents retrieval device () includes a contents estimation unit () retrieving contents according to a search keyword, a document space database () storing document spaces according to an occurrence frequency of the keyword, a document space selection unit () selecting a the narrowing-down document space and an expansion document space from the document space database () according to the search keyword and the occurrence frequency of the document space indicating a degree of relevance with the contents according to the search keyword, a related keyword estimation unit () selecting keywords corresponding to the narrowing-down document space and the expansion document space as a narrowing-down keyword and an expansion keyword, respectively, and an output unit displaying the selected narrowing-down and expansion keywords.

Contents retrieval device for retrieving contents that user wishes to view from among a plurality of contents

A current position determination unit determines a current position of a user; a facility candidate search unit specifies, as a candidate for a visited place, a facility that is located within a predetermined area including the current position determined by the current position determination unit; an electronic money unit and a payment amount calculation unit detect a payment amount of the user; and a most-likely visited facility identification unit identifies a most-likely visited place by selecting from a plurality of facilities a facility corresponding to the payment amount detected by the electronic money unit and the payment amount calculation unit, when the plurality of facilities are specified by the facility candidate search unit.

Visiting place identification device and visiting place identification method

A named entity extracting apparatus that extracts a named entity suitable for a user by enabling an order to be set in which the named entity is extracted from texts includes: an extraction order reading unitthat acquires a named entity pattern name stored in association with an extraction order in an extraction order storage unit; a named entity extracting unitthat extracts the named entity from input texts using a named entity pattern corresponding to the named entity pattern name acquired by the extraction order reading unit; and an extraction end judging unitwhich outputs, in the case where extraction has not ended, a text on which the extraction is in progress to the extraction order reading unit, and continues the named entity extraction processing.

Named entity extracting apparatus, method, and program

For cooking data provided via a communication network, use track records of the cooking data corresponding with their actual use status are accurately managed. When receiving a request for transmission of cooking data from a terminal (S), a server transmits the cooking data to the terminal (S, S), and at this time receives use history data with a microwave oven for previously transmitted cooking data (S). The server manages use track records of the cooking data based on use history data received from terminals.

Actual cooking result management method, content management method, server, and cooking apparatus

The users are allowed to easily retrieve contents data such as recipe data. A personal computer () receives recipe data from a server () via a communication network (), and stores the received recipe data in a memory card (). The personal computer updates recipe hierarchical information () in the memory card (), i.e., information which indicates classified levels of recipe data based on retrieval keys, with reference to overall hierarchical information (), i.e., information which indicates the hierarchical relation of retrieval keys in the whole recipes, so that the newly stored recipe data is included in the recipe hierarchical information.

Terminal apparatus, server, content data storage method, and program for executing the method

A mobile terminal that appropriately predicts an application that a user is likely to use that includes: an input device that selects and executes any of two or more applications; a GPS reception unit; a behavior pattern extraction unit that creates a usage prediction rule of the application executed on the input device , in association with a usage location detected by the GPS reception unit; and an information display control unit that specifies, based on the usage prediction rule, an application corresponding to the current location detected by the GPS reception unit , and causes a display to display the specified application as a prediction result.

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Kyoto, Japan

Satoshi Matsuura