Context-Aware Smart Appliance Status Summaries for Relevant Alerts

Solution Overview

Problem

Managing a large number of smart devices becomes complex, as users are overwhelmed with lengthy status updates from automated assistants, which consume computational resources and hinder meaningful user interaction, as not all device statuses are relevant or interesting to the user.

Innovation Solution

Implement a system that filters and summarizes smart device statuses based on user context, past interactions, and device types, generating textual snippets to provide a concise and relevant status report, which can be presented via audio or visual interfaces, allowing users to focus on unusual or important device states and enabling easy control of devices.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Loss of information

If comprehensive status recitation of all smart devices is provided, then completeness of information is improved, but user attention and computational resources are wasted on non-pertinent statuses

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecompleteness of device status informationVSAvoidcomputational resource consumption

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSLoss of energy

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the pertinent device status information from the complete set of device statuses. The automated assistant identifies and extracts only those statuses that are relevant to the user's current context, goals, and previous interactions, discarding non-pertinent information. This extraction approach maintains information completeness for relevant items while eliminating waste on irrelevant items.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent applies local quality by making the information provision selective rather than uniform. Different device statuses are treated differently based on their pertinence to the user's context. Pertinent statuses are provided in detail, while non-pertinent statuses are omitted or summarized, creating a non-uniform information distribution that optimizes resource usage.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #3Local quality

2Loss of information

If comprehensive status recitation of all smart devices is provided, then completeness of information is improved, but user engagement and meaningful interaction are hindered

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecompleteness of device status informationVSAvoiduser engagement with automated assistant

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the pertinent device status information from the complete set of device statuses. The automated assistant identifies and extracts only those statuses that are relevant to the user's current context, goals, and previous interactions, discarding non-pertinent information. This extraction approach maintains information completeness for relevant items while eliminating waste on irrelevant items.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

Instead of providing all device statuses and expecting users to find relevant information, the patent inverts the approach by proactively filtering and presenting only the relevant statuses. This inversion transforms the user experience from searching through comprehensive but overwhelming information to receiving curated, actionable information directly.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #13The other way round (Inversion)

3Loss of information

If detailed status information for multiple devices is provided, then information completeness is improved, but the length and complexity of the response increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecompleteness of device status informationVSAvoidcomplexity of status report

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the pertinent device status information from the complete set of device statuses. The automated assistant identifies and extracts only those statuses that are relevant to the user's current context, goals, and previous interactions, discarding non-pertinent information. This extraction approach maintains information completeness for relevant items while eliminating waste on irrelevant items.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent segments the device status information based on pertinence to user context. Instead of presenting a monolithic list of all device statuses, the information is segmented into pertinent and non-pertinent categories, with only the pertinent segment being presented in detail. This segmentation reduces complexity while preserving essential information.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Data Source

PatentUS20240372737A1Summarily conveying smart appliance statuses

Publication Date: 2024.11.07 GOOGLE LLC

AI summary

Implementing methods to provide a shortened textual summary that includes status information that is most pertinent to the user for a plurality of connected smart devices. The method includes determining a list of current statuses for a plurality of enabled smart devices and filtering the list to remove statuses that may not be of interest to the user. The filtering of the list is based on a current context of the requesting user and one or more previous contexts of the user. The resulting filtered statuses are then converted to textual snippets, summarized, and provided to the user via one or more output devices.