US 11,853,297 B2
Methods and apparatus for retrieving information via an intermediate representation
Ghodratollah Aalipour Hafshejani, San Jose, CA (US); and Arpit Sharma, Santa Clara, CA (US)
Assigned to Walmart Apollo, LLC, Bentonville, AR (US)
Filed by Walmart Apollo, LLC, Bentonville, AR (US)
Filed on Mar. 23, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/188,650.
Application 18/188,650 is a continuation of application No. 17/163,141, filed on Jan. 29, 2021, granted, now 11,650,980.
Prior Publication US 2023/0222120 A1, Jul. 13, 2023
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 16/242 (2019.01); G06F 16/2452 (2019.01); G06F 16/332 (2019.01); G06F 40/295 (2020.01); G06F 40/30 (2020.01); G06F 40/35 (2020.01); G06F 40/279 (2020.01); G06F 40/151 (2020.01); G06Q 30/0601 (2023.01)
CPC G06F 16/243 (2019.01) [G06F 16/24522 (2019.01); G06F 16/3329 (2019.01); G06F 40/151 (2020.01); G06F 40/279 (2020.01); G06F 40/295 (2020.01); G06F 40/30 (2020.01); G06F 40/35 (2020.01); G06Q 30/0627 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system, comprising:
a communication system;
a database; and
a computing device operably connected to the database and the communication system, wherein the computing device is configured to:
receive a user's natural language question from the communication system,
transform the user's natural language question into an intermediate representation, wherein the intermediate representation is a predicate selected from a set of predicates, wherein each of the set of predicates is associated with a number of input arguments and is determined based on a manner the database is queried,
retrieve information from the database based on the intermediate representation, and
provide the information to the user over the communication system in response to the user's natural language question.