Patent ID: 8417808

Claim:
A device linkage control apparatus which identifies a frequency of associated use between devices among a plurality of devices, and controls, in linkage with each other, a set of the devices having a high frequency for being used in association with each other, the apparatus comprising: a life data accumulation unit operable to accumulate life data indicating a usage history of the plurality of devices; an episode creation unit operable to create, from the life data, a plurality of episode data, based on episode data creation rules which determine devices that have been used in association with each other, the plurality of episode data having, as data, a plurality of the devices that have been used in association with each other; an episode analysis unit operable to create, from the plurality of episode data, a frequent pattern tree representing, as a tree structure, a frequency at which the device sets are used in association with each other; a life pattern interpretation unit operable to identify, according to the frequent pattern tree, a combination of device sets as life pattern information, the device sets having a high frequency for being used in association with each other; and a control unit operable to control, in linkage with each other, the device sets having a high frequency for being used in association with each other, wherein, with regard to subtrees having nodes of the frequent pattern tree as roots, the episode analysis unit constructs the frequent pattern tree with a structure in which element data having a highest frequency becomes a root of a subtree, the life pattern interpretation unit identifies, based on the frequent pattern tree, a device A and a device B, which have a high frequency for being used in association with each other, as a combination having a high association frequency, even when each of device A and device B are combined and used in association with other devices, and the control unit controls, in linkage with each other, at least device A and device B, and wherein the episode analysis unit (i) creates new episodes by extracting subtrees having, as new roots, nodes which are offspring of a node equivalent to a root of the frequent pattern tree, tracking nodes within each of the extracted subtrees starting from the root, and combining element data stored in the nodes, (ii) recursively performs the subtree extraction and the episode creation on the created episodes until there are no more subtrees, and (iii) reconstructs the frequent pattern tree by integrating recursively constructed subtree frequent pattern trees, into positions in the frequent pattern tree, and the control unit controls, in association with each other, devices corresponding to nodes separated from each other by a predetermined number of nodes in the reconstructed frequent pattern tree, the devices being controlled as associated devices.