Patent Issued for Chatbot Development And Deployment Platform (USPTO 10,817,265)

2020 NOV 06 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventor Collins, Coty M. (Columbus, OH), filed on August 31, 2018, was published online on November 9, 2020, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 10,817,265 is assigned to Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company (Columbus, Ohio, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Various aspects of the present invention relate generally to chatbots, and specifically to the technological field of development and deployment of generic chatbots.

“A chatbot is an application that responds to a user’s messages according to predetermined logic. Basically, a user sends a message to the chatbot through some sort of messaging application (e.g., typing in a message window, speaking into a voice system that translates the voice to text, etc.). In response, the chatbot decodes certain words to determine a response to send back to the user. Simple chatbots decode words directly from the message, while more complex chatbots determine an intent from the message and respond accordingly. Some chatbots couple to a third-party backend to augment responses to the user.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent: “According to aspects of the present invention, a computer-implemented process for developing a chatbot comprises launching a graphical user interface (GUI) implementing a drag-and-drop work environment for building chatbots and creating a chatbot flow within the graphical user interface. To create the chatbot flow, a developer interacts with the GUI to generate an initial node that defines a starting point in a conversation between an initiator and a corresponding chatbot. Further, the developer interacts with the GUI to generate a chat node that links to the initial node. The chat node defines logic for processing a request from the initiator and for generating a response to the request based upon a topic associated with the chatbot flow. The process further comprises interacting with the GUI to generate a chatbot object file from the chatbot flow, wherein the chatbot object file is generated by linking the user-created chatbot flow to at least one library of common chatbot code elements. Further, the chatbot object file includes platform agnostic logic and is free of a platform specific executable code.

“According to further aspects of the present disclosure, a process for deploying a chatbot comprises executing a platform that maps agnostic logic to specific commands of the platform and receiving an object file for a chatbot, where the object file includes logic agnostic to the platform. Further, the process comprises initializing a chatbot instance on the platform based on the received object file and the platform by mapping the agnostic logic of the object file to the specific commands of the platform and associating an interface to a user interface associated with the chatbot instance.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A computer-implemented process for developing a chatbot, the process comprising: launching a graphical user interface implementing a drag and drop work environment for building chatbots; generating a user-created chatbot flow within the graphical user interface by: interacting with the graphical user interface for generating an initial node, the initial node defining a starting point in a conversation between an initiator and a corresponding chatbot; and interacting with the graphical user interface for generating a chat node, wherein the chat node links to the initial node, the chat node defining logic for processing a request from the initiator and for generating a response to the request based upon a topic associated with the user-created chatbot flow; creating a generic chatbot object file that, when instantiated on any desired deployment platform, deploys a chatbot instance by: interacting with the graphical user interface to generate the generic chatbot object file from the user-created chatbot flow, wherein the generic chatbot object file is generated by linking the user-created chatbot flow to at least one library of common chatbot code elements that are platform agnostic; wherein the generic chatbot object file contains platform agnostic logic and is free of platform specific executable code; and the platform agnostic logic of the generic chatbot object file maps to deployment platform-specific executable commands; and generating a chatbot instance by: reading the generic chatbot object file to identify the platform agnostic logic of the chatbot; translating the generic chatbot object file into the chatbot instance, the chatbot instance being platform dependent and associated with a selected platform, by linking the platform agnostic logic to platform-specific logic of the selected platform; and deploying the chatbot instance on the selected platform.

“2. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 further comprising: defining, for a select one of the initial node and the chat node, a detail specification that defines actions to be performed before and/or after executing logic of the select one of the initial node and the chat node.

“3. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 further comprising: defining, for a select one of the initial node and the chat node, a flow specification that defines logic executed by the select one of the initial node and the chat node based upon a predicted conversational intent of an initiator interacting with the chatbot instance.

“4. The computer-implemented process of claim 1, wherein: creating a generic chatbot object file comprises: linking the user-created chatbot flow to at least one software connector; and saving the generic chatbot object file in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file format.

“5. The computer-implemented process of claim 1, wherein: linking the platform agnostic logic to platform-specific logic of the selected platform comprises linking the platform agnostic logic to at least one of node packages and a specific bot framework.

“6. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 further comprising: initializing the chatbot instance deployed on the selected platform, wherein linking the platform agnostic logic to platform-specific logic of the selected platform is carried out by mapping the platform agnostic logic of the generic chatbot object file to corresponding specific commands of the platform; and associating an interface with the chatbot instance.

“7. The computer-implemented process of claim 6 further comprising: receiving an update to the generic chatbot object file; implementing the update on the chatbot instance; and initializing a new chatbot instance on the selected platform based on the update to the generic chatbot object file.

“8. The computer-implemented process of claim 6 further comprising: designating the chatbot instance as a first chatbot instance; designating the interface associated with the first chatbot instance as a first interface; initializing a second chatbot instance on the selected platform based on the generic chatbot object file; and associating a second interface with the second chatbot instance, wherein the second interface is identical to the first interface.

“9. The computer-implemented process of claim 8 further comprising: initiating a conversation between the first chatbot instance, the second chatbot instance, and a user.

“10. The computer-implemented process of claim 9 further comprising: receiving a whisper request from the user in the conversation for a whisper communication to the first chatbot instance; and passing the whisper request to the first chatbot instance.

“11. The computer-implemented process of claim 6 further comprising: initiating a conversation between the chatbot instance, a first user, and a second user.

“12. The computer-implemented process of claim 11 further comprising: receiving a whisper request from the first user or the second user in the conversation for a whisper communication to the chatbot instance; and passing the whisper request to the chatbot instance.

“13. The computer-implemented process of claim 6 further comprising: associating an interface to a third-party back end associated with the chatbot instance.

“14. The computer-implemented process of claim 6 further comprising: associating an interface to a natural language processor associated with the chatbot instance.

“15. A system for developing a chatbot, the system comprising: a processor coupled to a memory comprising a program for developing a chatbot, wherein the program instructs the processor to perform: launching a graphical user interface implementing a drag and drop work environment for building chatbots; generating a user-created chatbot flow within the graphical user interface by: interacting with the graphical user interface for generating an initial node, the initial node defining a starting point in a conversation between an initiator and a corresponding chatbot; and interacting with the graphical user interface for generating a chat node, wherein the chat node links to the initial node, the chat node defining logic for processing a request from the initiator and for generating a response to the request based upon a topic associated with the user-created chatbot flow; creating a generic chatbot object file that, when instantiated on any desired deployment platform, deploys a chatbot instance by: interacting with the graphical user interface to generate the generic chatbot object file from the user-created chatbot flow, wherein the generic chatbot object file is generated by linking the user-created chatbot flow to at least one library of common chatbot code elements that are platform agnostic; wherein the generic chatbot object file contains platform agnostic logic and is free of a platform specific executable code; and the platform agnostic logic of the generic chatbot object file maps to deployment platform-specific executable commands; and generating a chatbot instance by: reading the generic chatbot object file to identify the platform agnostic logic of the chatbot; translating the generic chatbot object file into the chatbot instance, the chatbot instance being platform dependent and associated with a selected platform, by linking the platform agnostic logic to platform-specific logic of the selected platform; and deploying the chatbot instance on the selected platform.

“16. The system of claim 15, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: defining, for a select one of the initial node and the chat node, a detail specification that defines actions to be performed before and/or after executing logic of the select one of the initial node and the chat node.

“17. The system of claim 15, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: defining, for a select one of the initial node and the chat node, a flow specification that defines logic executed by the select one of the initial node and the chat node based upon a predicted conversational intent of an initiator interacting with the chatbot instance.

“18. The system of claim 15, wherein: creating a generic chatbot object file comprises: linking the user-created chatbot flow to at least one software connector; and saving the generic chatbot object file in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file format.

“19. The system of claim 15, wherein: linking the platform agnostic logic to platform-specific logic of the selected platform comprises linking the platform agnostic logic to at least one of node packages and a specific bot framework.

“20. The system of claim 15, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: receiving an update to the generic chatbot object file; implementing the update on the chatbot instance; and initializing a new chatbot instance on the selected platform based on the update to the generic chatbot object file.

“21. The system of claim 15, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: designating the chatbot instance as a first chatbot instance; designating the interface associated with the first chatbot instance as a first interface; initializing a second chatbot instance on the selected platform based on the received generic chatbot object file; and associating a second interface with the second chatbot instance, wherein the second interface is identical to the first interface.

“22. The system of claim 21, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: initiating a conversation between the first chatbot instance, the second chatbot instance, and a user.

“23. The system of claim 22, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: receiving a whisper request from the user in the conversation for a whisper communication to the first chatbot instance; and passing the whisper request to the first chatbot instance.

“24. The system of claim 15, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: initiating a conversation between the chatbot instance, a first user, and a second user.

“25. The system of claim 24, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: receiving a whisper request from the first user or the second user in the conversation for a whisper communication to the chatbot instance; and passing the whisper request to the chatbot instance.

“26. The system of claim 15, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: associating an interface to a third-party back end associated with the chatbot instance.

“27. The system of claim 15, wherein the program further instructs the processor to perform: associating an interface to a natural language processor associated with the chatbot instance.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Collins, Coty M. Chatbot Development And Deployment Platform. U.S. Patent Number 10,817,265, filed August 31, 2018, and published online on November 9, 2020. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,817,265.PN.&OS=PN/10,817,265RS=PN/10,817,265

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