FIESTO: An ontology-based method to control devices using natural language

With the recent rapid growth of science and technology, various kinds of electronic devices are frequently used in people´s daily life. Traditionally, graphical user interfaces are always applied in most of the electronic devices. However, it is inconvenient to use them while functions contained in devices become more complicated for some people, especially those without professional knowledge or aged. Therefore, it is natural that people want to operate or control these devices in a more convenient way. A new operation method called FIESTO is presented in this paper, which allowed users controlling devices using their own natural language commands. FIESTO extracts contained functions and related parameters from commands after a series of processing, and then guides available devices execute tasks. Ontology is used as a key technique in the project. A prototype system in the printer field is also developed by using the method. It is still in its infancy, but its effectiveness is confirmed by an evaluation to it. The experiment shows the method´s potential application in other filed.