Patent ID: 7937402

Claim:
A natural language based location query system comprising: a receiving device which receives a request for natural language query for a location of an target entity having a specified geographical relationship to a known entity in the natural language query from a user terminal; an access device which accesses a location ontology database and a location query language database using the known entity, wherein the location ontology database includes an index that geographically relates the target entity to the known entity, and the location query language database includes a syntax for a query to access a database having a location of the target entity, wherein the location query language database is generated by creation of domain query language and common query language, wherein the domain query language is created by collecting question sentences for each domain, extracting syntax and a constant table from the question sentences, and combining the extracted syntax and a query action corresponding to the syntax, and the common query language is created by calculating a similarity among all domain query languages, and extracting a common query language; a natural language query processing device including at least one of a fuzzy processing unit and an indirection processing unit which parses the natural language query to determine the known entity of the natural language query and performs at least one of a fuzzy processing and an indirection processing on the received request for natural language query by searching the location ontology database and the location query language database for the known entity with the access device, and retrieves location information corresponding to the known entity from a location database, wherein the fuzzy processing unit processes a fuzzy description in the parsed request by searching the location ontology database, the location query language database and a user query history, and the fuzzy processing unit comprises at least one of a unit that deletes redundant words based on a grammar feature, a unit that detects and completes incomplete words based on the location ontology, and a unit that finds words omitted by the user by using context-aware technology based on the user's query history, and the indirection processing unit converts an indirect description in the query into a corresponding category name in the location ontology database by searching the category table in the location ontology database; and a sending device which sends the location information of the known entity to the user terminal.