-2-FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an improved interactive television system. More particularly, the invention relates to a help desk (information desk) chat bot and a daily manager in a television system. The daily manager may also take the form of a medicine scheduler, a budget manager, and an event scheduler.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Interactive television system may contain a wide variety of simultaneously executing applications. The different applications may need to alert the viewer of important events, such as incoming messages, expiring timers, favorite show beginnings, and the like.
US Patent 4,688,192 provides an electronic dictionary device capable of displaying synonym/s and / or antonyms of a word entered through an input means. The dictionary comprises dictionary memory having multiple data memory locations. A word can be searched in the data memory locations and displayed as a synonym or antonym for the word entered through the input device.

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US Patent 4,158,236 discloses a portable electronic dictionary housed in a hand held micro-computer into which alpha-numerical characters can be entered with the help of an input device for displaying an associated stored sequence of characters.
US Patent 4,016,542 relates to a data storage and transmission system comprising a data-gathering device with a keyboard. The potable device or electronic notebook has an interface formatter for providing data from the data-gathering device. The electronic notebook can store a large amount of data from a remote computer, which can be displayed for reference.
US Patent 4,041,467 discloses a transcriber system for automatically generating and editing text from a short hand machine. The system comprises a recording station with a short hand machine and a tape recorder; and a transcriber station with a computer, a disk file, a keyboard display and an automatic typewriter. The editing is carried out with the help of a word cursor that is co-related to the outlines of the short hand machine.

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US Patent 7,095,403 relates to a user interface with vowel and consonant character groups. The keys of one group is separated from the keys of other group. The keys for the second group are sub-divided into different phonetic consonant groups or alphabetic consonant groups for a keypad entry system of character input.
US Patent 6,480,830 discloses an active calendar system for automatically analyzing calendar entries of users and for sending machine-readable message to destination in accordance with the calendar entry.
On receiving a user submitted calendar entry that describes a planned event, the calendar identifies the event category for transmitting the message to the destination.
US Patent 5,664,063 provides a method of informing automatically some meeting attributes to a calendar user when a meeting notice is posted to a calendar program.

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US Patent 4,708,490 relates an electronic advance date warning system. It comprises means for lighting selected date warning areas on the front surface including conventional calendar information, circuit means for selectively activating / deactivating the lighting means to light the selected areas and control and memory means for programming the circuit means and means for reviewing the programmed dates and warning dates against the each programmed date.
US Patent 4,489,958 discloses a personal time manangement instrument in the form of a personal time management sheet. It has an activated section and a calendar section providing a schedule of activities for the entire week over similar working hours each day. A permanent record can be provided for what was planned and what has already been done, on day-to-day basis. This can be in the form of a book comprising a plurality of sheets for personal time management.

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US Patent 7,096,425 relates to a dictionary or information entry apparatus with an alpha-numeric input unit, a word dictionary for storing a plurality of key words for providing services requiring quick and accurate entry and use of information in a plurality of fields.
US document 2005/0149966 A1 discloses an alert manager in an interactive television system for displaying an alert for an event or for alerting viewers of the arrival of a text message or an e-mail.
In one embodiment of this document the television screen displays an initial screen with contents like broadcast, applications, functions and other contents. An icon and a text messenger to indicate an event alert are displayed by the alert manager.
The alert manager may display alerts corresponding to one or more events simultaneously or separately. The alert manager may display the icon and / or text for a set period of time or the viewer may remove the icon and / or text by pressing an alert button on a remote control.

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In an interactive television system the viewer may wish to interact with the events immediately, simply cancel the event, or interact with the event at a later time. The events may last for either limited or indefinite time durations. While the television alerts the viewer of the event, the alert should not overly obscure the currently displayed content, e.g., broadcast channel, application, and / or function. This is because the alert may become an unwelcome viewer distraction. And managing alerts should not be overly complicated.
Accordingly, a need remains for an improved interactive television that includes an alert manager that allows the viewer to program and service event alerts with minimum distraction and easy interaction.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
One object of the present invention therefore, is to provide an interactive television system with a help desk (information desk) chat bots option for helping the user to search for information, which the user is looking for. The information can be meaning of a word, knowledge of a word, tourist places to visit, technology information like how things work or general mathematical conversion.

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Another object of the present invention is to provide a daily manager for maintaining long records of daily activities like purchases etc., during a calendar month.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a daily manager so that the user can invoke one of its functionalities like a budget manager, a medicine scheduler and event manager or a time manager.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
According to this invention there is provided an improved Interactive television system having a controller comprising a user interface module for receiving input commands from a user and for enabling a chat bot operation or a daily manager operation, and available options thereof; a database storage unit for storing database for the chat bot and updates for the daily manager; and a control unit for processing said user inputs for searching or updating the database, and for displaying the query or operation results obtained after processing the user inputs.
The controller for the interactive television system is coupled to a video processor and a sound processor for controlling video and sound related operations in the television system.

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The controller performs the tasks of a user interface module, a database module and a control unit module for taking the user events and display the information after storing / retrieving and processing the events and calculating for the management of different tasks.
Help desk (information desk) chat bot is a chatting robot that understands the user command analyze it and gives a suitable response to the user. It is a serious branch of AI and its purpose is to help the user in getting information like search bot, academic bot and knowledge bot.
The user can search for different words which user listens to or views while watching news or any other informative programs on television. This chat bot makes the television more interactive and a good learning tool for everybody. Easier access to the information while watching television and being offline is available to the user. Television acts as a standalone system. No need to connect to the Internet or look for a dictionary for new words meanings etc.
Different kinds of search options available to the user like - academic / knowledge and search for word meanings. The information bot will help the user to obtain information about a place, tourist places to visit in a country, technology information like how stuffs work, general mathematical conversions like feet to meters, etc.

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Housewives, especially in India, manage bills of milk, food etc. by ticking the date in the calendars and at the end of the month they count the number of days of purchase from calendar and then calculate the cost by manual calculation. This is a manual and tedious work and moreover this is not error free. They need to maintain long records. Daily manager of the present invention can manage such monthly purchase bills, using remote keys of the television provided for the purpose.
The daily manager may also include a medicine scheduler for patients or for scheduling any urgent or important activity; a budget manager for indicating variation in expenditure during a month or for comparing it with that of previous month; and a time manager to inform the user about any activity to be performed at a given time.
As already mentioned the chat bot for a television system is a chatting robot that can understand what users are saying, analyze it and provide a suitable response. It 's considered to be serious branch in AI developing as the purpose from programming a chat bot is to help people in getting information like:

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1) Selling chat bots which helps users to know item prices and offers.
2) Help desk (information desk) chat bots user may find it in large libraries
websites or programs.
3) Entertaining chat bots: This is only made for fun and for chatting.
In the present invention a help desk (information desk) chat bot is used in a television. This information bot will help the user to search for the information, which the user is looking for say meaning of a word, knowledge about a place, tourist places to visit in a country, technology information-how stuffs work, general mathematical conversions like feet to inches and meters etc.
User can search for different words which user listens to or views while watching news or any other informative programs on television. This chat bot makes the television more interactive and a good learning tool for everybody. Easier access to the information while watching television and

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being offline is available to the user. Television acts as a standalone system. No need to connect to the Internet or look for a dictionary for new words meanings etc. Different kinds of search options available to the user like -academic / knowledge and search for word meanings.
This information bot will have its own database, which will have the brief information about general queries, and searches, which are static and are not changing with time so they don't require any updates. There will be an efficient and intelligent search algorithm, which will search from the information bot database, and the information from the database is picked and viewed on the display device.
The television will remain a standalone system. No need to connect the television to the Internet to get the information. Most used and desired information will be available in the database of the information bot in the form of brief text.

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There are different kinds of Help / information bots selection options are given to the user to select from the television menu.
The user can select any one of the following to get the information:-1). Academic Bots: -
These bots are directly or indirectly related to the academic community such as Professor's sites or academic laboratories. This will give academic related search options to the user.
2). Knowledge Bots: -
Knowledge bots database offers a significant number of intelligent agents giving information about a country, its weather conditions, tourist places, information about its culture, national language, birds and animals etc. List of information to be added in this bot is endless.

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This database of search bots contains many fine examples of the most efficient state-of-the-art way to search for different words user listens to or view while watching news or any other informative programs on television using bofs intelligent process steps.
Bills of milk, food, etc are managed especially in India by ticking the date in the calendars and at the end of the month they count the number of days of purchase from calendar and then calculate the cost by manual calculation. This is a manual and tedious work and moreover this is not error free. They need to maintain long records. In the present invention this can be implemented by a daily manager and scheduler in a television system.
A. Daily Manager: -
There will be a monthly calendar in television showing all days, these days can be marked on which items were purchased simply using remote keys specified for this purpose of television. User has to enter the daily rate for each of these items. And at the end of the month it will give the total expenditure for each item.

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B. Medicine Scheduler: -
The idea also includes the concept of the medicine scheduler for patients. Patients / attendants have to enter the time and medicine name that has to be taken. After this television will give alarm signal "its time to take particular medicine". This is very useful as now everybody is busy so patients do not need anybody's help for taking medicine. The television is switching on with the alarm if it is in "power off" state to give the scheduler message. Moreover this service can be used for scheduling and giving alarm for any urgent and important activity.
C. Budget Manager: -
• Expenditures during a month can be shown by bar graphs, so that user can know the variation throughout the month and this can be compared with previous months. So a user can manage his expenditures. Here some arithmetic calculations like mean, median etc. can be made so that user can see more clearly the variations of expenditure.

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• A user can also fix his budget limit and whenever he is to cross his budget limit, an alarm signal can be invoked to alert him so that he can spend carefully.
D). Time Manager / Event Scheduler: -
For children their time-table can be made on the television and at the start time of an event an alarm signal can be invoked like - "its time to do your homework" to inform them about the activity to be done at the present time.
BREIF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS
The invention can now be described in detail with the help of the figures of the accompanying drawings in which
Figure 1 shows the sequence in an alert manager of the prior art system.
Figure 2 shows a block diagram of the television system in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

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Figure 3 is a basic block diagram of a television system of the present invention showing the control modules.
Figure 4 Flowchart showing "Chat-bot" operation and options in a television.
Figure 5 Flowchart showing "Daily Manager" operation and options in a television.
Figures 6 (a)
to 6 (e) show examples of chat bot query in a chat window displayed on the television system.
Figure 7 Flowchart showing "Medicine Scheduler" operation and options in a television.
Figure 8 Flowchart showing "Budget Manager" operation and options in a television.

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Figure 9 Flowchart showing "Event Manager" operation and options in a television.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
Figure 1 shows an alert manager 300 in a prior art system where a content like broadcast content, application, functions, etc, are displayed in an initial screen 302. An icon 308 and a text message 312 indicating one or more event alerts in respect of one of more events 310 are displayed by the manager 300 in screen 304 separately or simultaneously.
The structure of an improved, interactive television system of the present invention is shown in Figures 2 and 3.
The hardware implementation of a preferred embodiment in a television system of the present invention is illustrated in Figure 2.
The system is provided with a controller 12 to enable the system for chat bot or daily manager operation options.

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Figure 3 illustrates in block diagram form the structure of control modules for the television system of the present invention. A user interface module 2 receives an input from a user for enabling operation of either a chat bot or a daily manager. The command from the user will be accepted by one window. The chat bot will respond to the corresponding query.
The user interface module 2 displays a graphical interface for the selected option (chat bot or daily manager). The user input is then processed and desired output of the given input is displayed.
Controller 12 also performs the task of a database storage unit 3 provided to store and retrieve the information about the chat bots and daily manager. After query / operation is received MICOM tries to find or update the database. The database has record of information for the chat bot. For the daily manager the database is updated so that a timer can be invoked at event time.

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The television system maintains a separate database to store the information for chat bot daily manager. If user has input some query in chat bot user interface 2 then database is searched to find the corresponding answer. In case of budget manager user's input like daily rate of a commodity etc. is stored in the database for further use.
The controller 12 further performs the tasks of a control unit 4 like controlling all interactions between the different modules, processing the events and carrying out calculations for the management of different tasks. Control unit 4 receives the user input, processes the input and then searches or updates the database. Finally the control unit 4 displays the query / operations result.
Controller 12 is coupled to a video processor 14 and a sound processor 16 for controlling the video and sound related operations of the television system 10.
Whenever user has given some input for chat bot budget manager interface then this part controls all processing like budget calculation, time related calculations etc. and then outputs the result through user interface module 2.

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CHAT BOT:
User Scenarios:
1) Press the "ChatBot " Hot key on the remocon or select the Chat bot option from the Main Menu-> Set up
-> Misc->Chat Bot (ON) from the ON/OFF drop down menu.
2) Small window on the bottom Right hand side of the TV will open with the welcome message from the
chatbot "Hello. Please enter your query ".
3)The user can enter the query in the form of pre defined commands in the chat window which chatbot only can understand.Only pre defined commands are acceptable otherwise "Invalid command" message is diaplyed.
4) User can type his/her command after the "Me:" prompts on the chat window in the
format.
5) User can type HELP and enter key for seeing all the valid commands available for use.
Some of the Valid Command set for chat bot query are given in table below


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A method for operation of a chat bot in a television system with its options is illustrated in the flow chart of Figure 4. First the chat bot option is enabled. In chat bot, options like academic bot, knowledge bot or search bot is selected. The selected option is then checked and the database is searched for the entered query. When the query is found the query result is displayed on the television screen.
Figure 5 illustrates in a flowchart form a method for operation of a daily manager and its options in a television system. Here the daily manager option is enabled first. A plurality of options like budget manager, time manager and medicine manager can then be selected. The selected option is then checked and details entered for updating the database. The desired activity is invoked by timer and the activity is processed and displayed on the television screen.
A set of user parameters and options available can be used for daily manager operation.
Figures 6(a), 6(b), 6(c) and 6(d) illustrate four examples of chat bot query in a chat window with the query result displayed on the television screen.

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Figure 6(e) shows UI scenario - Chat Bot and Daily Manager.
The flowchart of Figure 7 shows the method of operating medicine scheduler in a television system. First a medicine scheduler option is selected. The user is prompted to set the name of patient and name of the medicine and time of medicine. The alarm can be switched ON with a set volume or it can remain in switched OFF position. The timer is started and run, and the timer time out is checked. After the alarm goes, or in the absence of alarm the pop-up on screen display (OSD) alert goes the patient closes the alarm / alert message.
Figure 8 shows the method of operating a budget manager in a television system. After selecting the budget manager option the user is prompted to set a budget limit. The previous value can be taken as a default value.
The user is then prompted to set the daily rate of a commodity. Milk is used as default commodity and user can set other commodity also. The alarm can be set in ON position with a set volume. A monthly chart is used for setting the date as start of the month. The timer is started and run with increment date. Consumed commodity of the day can be stored and the total expenditure calculated for comparing with the set budget.

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If the total expenditure exceeds the budget limit an alarm / alert can be invoked and appropriate action can be taken to spend carefully.
The method of operating an event scheduler is shown in Figure 9. The event scheduler option is selected and the user is prompted to set the name and time of the events. The alarm can be set ON with a set volume or OFF and a timer can be started to run upto the timer value which corresponds to the event time. The alarm / pop-up on screen display (OSD) alert message will go after which the event can be cleared by the user.

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WE CLAIM
1. An improved interactive television system having a controller comprising a
user interface module for receiving input commands from a user and for
enabling a chat bot operation or a daily manager operation, and available
options thereof; a database storage unit for storing database for the chat bot
and updates for the daily manager; and a control unit for processing said
user inputs for searching or updating the database, and for displaying the
query or operation results obtained after processing the user inputs.
2. The interactive television system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said
controller is coupled to a video processor and a sound processor for
controlling video and sound related operations in said television system.
3. A method for operating a television system with a chat bot option for
answering user's query, comprising the steps of:
- enabling a chat bot operation on said television system;
- selecting available chat bot option;
- checking said selected option;
- searching said database; and
- displaying the query result when found on the television screen.

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4. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein said selected chat bot option is
an academic bot.
5. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein said selected chat bot option is
a knowledge bot.
6. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein said selected chat bot option is
a search bot.
7. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein said searching step comprises
using a set of pre-defined commands.
8. A method for operating a television system with a daily manager option
for carrying out a plurality of tasks, comprising the steps of:
- enabling a daily manager operation on said television system;
- selecting an available daily manager option;
- checking said selected daily manager option;
- entering the details for updating the database; and
- processing said updated data for displaying the result of the operation
on the television screen.

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9. The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein a set of user parameters and options available can be used for daily manager operation.
10.The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein said selected daily manager options is a medicine scheduler.
11.The method as claimed in claim 10, wherein after selecting the medicine scheduler option the user is prompted to set the name of the patient and name of the medicine and time with the alarm in ON position with a set volume or with the alarm in OFF position; a timer is started and run and upon time out said alarm or a pop-up on screen display alert message goes to alert the patient.
12.The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein said selected daily manager option is a budget manager.
13.The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein after selecting the budget manager option the user is prompted to set a budget limit and a daily rate of the commodity; an alarm is set in ON position with a set volume or in OFF position; a monthly chart is shown and the date set as start of the month; a timer with increment date is run and consumed commodity of a date is stored for calculating the total expenditure and comparing with set budget limit for alerting the user by an alarm or alert message when said budget limit is exceeded.
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14.The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein said selected daily manager option is an event scheduler.
15. The method as claimed in claim 14, wherein after selecting the event
scheduler option the user is prompted to set the name and time of the
event; start and run a timer with the timer value equivalent to event time,
for alerting the user with an alarm or pop-up on screen display alert
message for the time of the event.
16. An improved interactive television system, substantially as herein
described and illustrated in the accompanying drawings.

An improved interactive television system (10) is provided with a controller (12) comprising a user interface module (2) for receiving input commands from a user and for enabling a chat bot operation or a daily manager operation, and their available options like medicine scheduler, budget manager, and event scheduler. The controller (12) also performs the tasks of a database storage unit (3) for storing database for the chat bot and updates for the daily manager. A control unit (4) processes said user inputs for searching or updating the database, and for displaying the query or operation results obtained after processing the user inputs.