Patent ID: 7249124

Claim:
An adaptive information-retrieval system enabling a high-speed search to be performed on a computer, which includes using inquiry information corresponding to an inquiry and feature information added to contents to be retrieved, the inquiry information including at least one of image, sound and text, and at least a part of the inquiry information and the feature information including a vector relating to the at least one of image, sound and text; evaluating means for evaluating the contents by using the inquiry information and the feature information and for adaptively evaluating the contents by assigning the vector an attribute value from an available set of attribute values corresponding to at least one of the inquiry information and the feature information; and searching means for searching a database based on evaluated content results from the evaluation means, retrieving information based thereon and, presenting retrieved information to a user, wherein the searching means selects a search method by calculating a speedup ratio as an index of search time.