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Contents
1. 0018 In one aspect a method for providing a user with instructions for correcting a problem with a device such as a printer includes retrieving stored data which includes records of prior user actions with a device From the records a string of user actions is extracted for example by selecting a time window in which to examine the records and parsing the stored records within that time window to identify Sep 20 2007 individual actions The string of user actions is compared with at least one predetermined sequence of user actions an ideal sequence which has been established for correction of a predefined problem with the device On the basis of the comparison an evaluation can be made as to whether a prior user has attempted the predetermined sequence In particu lar the result of the comparison can be used as an indicator of whether a prior user has attempted the predetermined sequence A procedure can then be implemented to avoid repeating the prior attempt such as modifying the instruc tions provided to a user from those provided during the first attempt with a view to enabling the user to avoid repeating an unsuccessful set of actions 0019 The evaluation of whether a prior user has attempted the recovery event may include computing a measure of similarity between a real sequence of actions and an ideal sequence of actions The similarity measure may take into account various factors which cause a sequence of user a2. 0005 U S Pat No 6 556 926 entitled SYSTEM FOR DETERMINING WHEN A COMPONENT IN A PRINTER SHOULD BE REPLACED by Haines discloses a com puter that monitors one or more printers over a network in order to determine when components in each of the printers should be replaced If the computer determines that a component should be replaced the computer can automati cally transmit an order for a new component to a vendor 0006 U S Pat No 6 782 495 entitled METHOD FOR ANALYZING PRINTER FAULTS by Bernklau Halvor discloses a method of diagnosing a printer problem which includes correlating a wide range of printer data types with suggested solutions Printer diagnostic data which may include usage information and printer status information collected over a period of time is parsed into individual components The components are then input into a set of rules Each rule compares each component with a corre sponding reference value to generate a comparison result correlates the comparison result with a set of actions includ ing solutions and if there is a correlation between the comparison result and a solution providing the solution 0007 U S Published Patent Application No 2003 0088528 published May 8 2003 entitled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PRINTER SUGGESTED TRAINING by Parry discloses a system and a method for printer suggested training using fuzzy logic analysis A printer tracks printer usage relative to the featur
3. 0024 An event generally refers a sequence of actions with the general purpose of obtaining a goal 0025 A recovery event generally refers to a sequence of actions with the goal of correcting a problem with the device An ideal recovery event generally refers to a pre defined sequence of ideal actions for correcting a known problem with the device In general the predefined sequence includes at least two user actions to be performed in a given order and often at least three such actions It is to be appreciated that some actions which constitute recovery actions when performed in a recovery event may also be performed in a normal event which is not a recovery event such as in replenishing paper supplies 0026 A user interaction refers to the interactions of a user with the device in a troubleshooting attempt A user interaction may consist of one or more recovery events 0027 A troubleshooting session may be considered to run from the first detection of a problem by the printer to the resolution of that problem Where the time at which the problem occurred is not registered by the printer the trouble shooting session can be considered to run from the first detection by a user or from some arbitrary point in time which may or may not precede the first recovery action It can consist of one or more recovery events that take place within one or more user interactions 0028 The actions and the order in which they
4. as a warning when giving instructions to be followed to solve the problem In one aspect instruc tions relating to prior user actions are incorporated into instructions produced proactively by the printer in response to a printer malfunction diagnosed by the printer In another aspect instructions relating to prior user actions may be provided in the context of user queries when a user is searching for solutions to solve a certain problem of that printer In another aspect the method includes informing the user during the troubleshooting if the printer recognizes that the user is performing a sequence of actions already per formed in part by other users 0035 FIG 1 illustrates an exemplary printing system including a printer 10 which is configured with both printer specific hardware and software for performing the exem plary method described herein The printer 10 includes conventional mechanical components 12 14 a processor 16 a communication interface I O 18 a memory 20 and a user interface 22 all interconnected by a bus 24 0036 The communication interface 18 is arranged to couple with an external network such as local area network LAN or wide area network WAN and or the Internet via suitable wired or wireless links to implement input output communications between image forming device 10 and external devices such as one or more host devices e g work stations 26 Print jobs arrive at the printer from the work
5. 0039 The instructions for the processor 16 can be instan tiated as a computer program product The computer pro gram product can be a computer readable medium such as a disk computer chip or other electronic storage medium having a computer readable program code thereon The computer readable program code includes the instructions executed by the processor 16 0040 The processor 16 serves as a troubleshooting com ponent which includes a plurality of modules including a US 2007 0220365 Al fault detection module 30 which detects printer malfunc tions a recording module 32 which records data from the printer comprising user actions with the printer including data on actions relating to an attempt to repair a printer malfunction recovery actions a parser 34 which extracts a sequence of recorded user actions a comparator 36 which compares the sequence of recorded user actions with one or more stored ideal recovery events each comprising a sequence of ideal user actions in order to compute a measure of similarity between the sequence of recorded user actions and the ideal recovery event and an instruction module 38 which generates appropriate instructions for the user based on the computed similarity measure all of which may be interconnected by the bus 24 Reports on the detected user actions may be stored in the memory 20 in the form of RAM hard disk memory or other data storage medium The instructions may be provided to th
6. 0128 02 OFD ROT CFD 0129 03 GA GA GA 0130 The value of the non normalized kernel K Eqn 1 between each such observed sequence and the ideal sequence assuming parameters A 0 5 and n 3 are listed in the first row of TABLE 1 as follows US 2007 0220365 Al TABLE 1 ol 02 o3 K 0 039062 0 007812 0 K 0 772667 0 316228 0 K 1 423016 0 819716 0 0131 By way of illustration the value of the first cell may be computed by considering the following matching subsequences in TABLE 2 TABLE 2 U P o1 OFD ROT INT 0 125 3 0 125 OFD ROT CFD 0 0625 24 0 0625 OFD INT CFD 0 0625 0 0625 ROT INT CFD 0 125 0 125 K3 OFD ROT INT CFD GA OFD ROT INT CFD 903 MM MM 0303 0 015625 0 00390625 0 00390625 0 015625 0 0390625 0132 In order to have similarity measured independently of sequence length the normalized version Eqn 5 can be used which ensures that the value is always between 0 and 1 After normalization kernel values K are as shown in the second row of TABLE 1 0133 Taking a linear combination of the normalized or partially normalized values of the kernels for all subse quence lengths up to a value n using Eqn 6 with u control ling the relative importance given to subsequences of increasing lengths and assuming u 0 5 the maximum value is now 1 75 the values of K obtained are as shown in the third row of TABLE 1 EXAMPLE 2 0134 This example applies the method to the clearing of a pape
7. are printed a fault occurs a door is opened All of these actions may be detected by the recording module 32 of the troubleshooting processor In one embodiment on a regular or intermittent basis typically during printer idle times recorded actions are examined and information extracted therefrom by the parser 0077 The next step is to detect sequences of actions which constitute an event step S126 This includes the identification of sub streams windows where one or more events could have occurred by segmentation of the continuous stream of information coming from the parser of the printer This differentiation between events may utilize several automated strategies for clustering a sequence of actions and labelling them with a common event tag The sequences of actions which are of interest include human interventions on the printer While most faults and human mechanical interventions are detected some may not be sensed by the printer These actions can be considered as holes in the actual event Moreover not all the technical problems which a printer may suffer result in a fault detected by the printer In general there are minor technical defi ciencies that are not sensed by the printer These include print quality problems which while not blocking use could trigger the user to attempt some troubleshooting actions US 2007 0220365 Al 0078 It should also be noted that the actions that con stitute a recovery ev
8. be difficult If the value chosen is too large then only very few subsequences will match and pairwise simi larity will always be close to 0 If it is too small on the contrary important information on the respective ordering of symbols may be lost and pairwise similarity will be overestimated The most common way to tackle this prob lem consists in actually taking as value a linear combination of the normalized or partially normalized values of the kernels for all subsequence lengths up to a value n Eqn 6 n Eqn 6 Kys D X iP KG D i l 0099 with u controlling the relative importance given to subsequences of increasing lengths Information on recur rent events on the printer as extracted in the steps described above can be provided to users when they reach the printer e g when they first find out that a problem has occurred or during their intervention on the printer e g while the user is trying to fix a problem US 2007 0220365 Al 0100 If a fault has occurred and the troubleshooting system 16 is able to detect that a sequence of actions similar to the suggested procedure has been attempted more than a given number of times and more than others this may be indicated to the user as an estimation that there is another problem that has to be solved first or that the procedure has not been followed properly by other users 0101 If no fault has been detected but the troubleshoot ing system 16 is still able
9. recovery actions proposed by the printer to the user when a fault is detected and the troubleshooting knowledge base 0074 Several methods for modelling the data are con templated In a first method the ideal sequences of recovery events of the kind described above can be manually coded by analysing the content This is feasible although time consuming in the domain of printer malfunctions since sequences may be in the order of hundreds of actions as is evident from the content of an online knowledge base In an alternative embodiment an expert encoding the events is supported by a structural and linguistic analysis of the instructions describing recovery procedures The linguistic analysis may be provided by a processing module with instructions for numbering of the steps or for the identifi cation of verbs in the imperative form e g move the finisher to the left or open tray 1 The thus formulated sequence strings for a series of typical recovery events may be stored in the printer memory to be retrieved when a printer malfunction occurs 0075 At the time of a printer malfunction the method includes extracting information from recorded data which may include the selection of sequences to be analysed and the identification of predominant events step S126 0076 It will be appreciated that actions may occur con tinuously at the printer only a few of which relate to troubleshooting events For example documents
10. set of user instructions taking into account the actions which were not successful in correcting the mal function For example the processor may identify a different set of ideal actions for curing the fault or another fault corresponding to the symptoms and provide a set of ideal actions related to that fault and or may advise the user that a particular user action did not correct the problem The method returns to step S112 The method may end at step S134 when the user corrects the fault or at step S136 when a user calls a service technician 0050 As will be appreciated a precursor step to the method thus described includes the creation of reference strings representing ideal events and storing them in memory 20 0051 For example when the user is trying to resolve the problem of paper jam by clearing the paper jam in the finisher interface one event may comprise the following sequence of actions 0052 1 Move the finisher on the right hand side of the printer to the right away from the printer 0053 2 Open the finisher top cover on the finisher interface 0054 3 Remove the jammed paper If the paper is torn make sure to remove any torn pieces of paper inside the printer 0055 4 Close the finisher top cover 0056 5 Move the finisher to the left toward the printer 0057 From the records 44 of user interaction data cap tured in the memory 20 of the printer the troubleshooting component 16 can ex
11. such as replacing the toner or removing a paper jam may still not have solved the problem This is one example of a process that the troubleshooting system is readily able to warn users against i e doing that sequence of action does not solve the problem as for example ten users have already tried the same sequence of actions This example then is used to illustrate all the possible events that can be associated with this error and the principle of how the sequence kernels are applied 0105 The Alphabet An alphabet is defined so as to be able to describe the actions taken at the printer This is a simplified example where most of the remaining actions are reduced to the Generic Action GA It will be appreciated that in an actual system GA will be replaced with a variety of different symbols 0106 OFD Open Front Door 0107 CFD Close Front door 0108 INT Insert New Toner Sep 20 2007 0109 ROT Remove Old Toner 0110 GA Generic Action 0111 X fOFD CFD INT ROT GA 0112 An example of a reference string With respect to the example which consists of replacing the toner cartridge the reference sequence of actions ideal sequence may be 0113 r OFD ROT INT CFD 0114 When dealing with this problem several different cases of events can be envisaged The first one exhibits the exact sequence of actions However there could be users who produce a noisy event e g incomplete if they do not succeed or
12. to correct the problem 0083 In this scenario no precise information on where to start searching for repeated events in the logged string is available A solution is to consider a meaningful reference time in the past for example the beginning of the working day to as shown in FIG 4 or a selected number of hours prior to the current time The segmented string will there fore contain all actions from the beginning of e g the current day Since no fault has been identified in this case there is no indication of what the ideal sequence could be so the string of actions will be directly compared with the reference set of all ideal sequences If a user action is repeated the resulting one or more events that will exceed a given threshold of similarity will then be the ones looked for counting the actual occurrences of them in the next step 0084 A further step step S128 is to detect the repeated execution of a sequence of actions It will be appreciated that there may be sequences of actions performed in the normal course of operations e g to load paper trays that might be similar to recovery events Two possible solutions to this problem are contemplated which can be combined or used independently The first solution consists of modelling explicitly not only recovery events but also events corre sponding to normal non fault operations The actual sequence of actions can then be matched against both fault and non fault ideal
13. to detect that a sequence of actions close to an ideal sequence has been attempted more than a given number of times and more than others this may be indicated to the user as an estimation that there is a problem that other users have already tried to fix 0102 If a fault has occurred and the troubleshooting system 16 does not detect outstanding recurrent sequences of actions it may continue to attempt to detect recurrent events while the user is performing actions on the printer using candidate events prepared during idle times 0103 Without intending to limit the scope of the exem plary embodiment the following examples illustrate appli cation of the method to changing the toner and to clearing a paper jam EXAMPLE 1 0104 As a first example an illustration of how the sequence kernels are applied will now be described with reference to changing the toner Changing the toner may be performed in response to a message on the printer or to an image quality problem This example has been used for simplicity being the shortest troubleshooting sequence While being a simple and simplified example the changing the toner event is nonetheless applicable since it has been observed that different users changed the toner several times in the hope of addressing a print quality problem and without knowing that other users had already tried that many times It should be remembered that the users following the exact sequence of actions
14. users in some instances Machine problems commonly have escalating stages of solutions either because the same symptoms may be caused by different faults with different solutions or the same fault may have a number of different solutions some more simple than others Thus the online knowledge base of a printer typi cally shows a number of solutions which should be tried in order with the simplest solutions being presented to the user first and gradually progressing to the most complex solu tions Not all problems solutions may be available in the knowledge base For example instructions to clear a jam may be the first level for a fault that indicates a jam However the problem may actually be caused by dirty sensors so the next level of troubleshooting which may not be shown on the printer may be to clean the sensors 0004 Because of these different levels of solutions a user trying a particular solution may not solve the problem Thus because of the shared usage of the printer when a problem occurs a number of users may follow the instructions provided by the printer yet be unable to solve the problem Successive users may thus try to solve the problem without knowing of the prior failed attempts of other users This can Sep 20 2007 result in a waste of user s time customer dissatisfaction down time ofthe printer and reduced trust in the instructions provided by the on line support system INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE
15. 114 the user may perform some or all of the set actions provided by the printer Or the user may perform another set of actions with the intent of rectifying the problem If the user does not correct the problem at step S114 the user may leave the printer area without informing subsequent users that any recovery actions have been performed Steps S104 S106 S110 S112 and S114 may thus be repeated by one or more other users At step S116 which may be performed continuously or intermittently prior to and throughout the method the printer generates data corresponding to actions at the printer including detectable user actions performed at step S114 At step S118 the data is recorded e g by the recording module 32 At step S120 the processor 16 e g the parser 34 periodically examines the data and identifies a sequence of separate elements corresponding to actions At step S122 the processor e g the comparator 36 identifies a time window comprising a candidate string of elements which may include elements corresponding to recovery actions by the user In the case that the printer identifies that a problem has occurred or a user notifies the printer that a problem has occurred at previous step S110 the window start time may be fixed by the identification or notification time Where no problem is recognized an arbitrary window start time is established 0046 At step S124 the processor e g the comparator 36 compares the ident
16. CLFC RPC RIPC OULD CULD GA Exact String 0172 r LDM LBT OB RJP CB OULD RJP OLFC RPC RIPC CLFC CULD CDM Modified String Examples 0173 ol LDM LBT OULD RJP OLFC RPC RIPC CLFC CULD OB RJP CB CDM 0174 o2 LDM LBT OB RJP CB OULD OLFC RPC RIPC CLFC RJP CULD CDM 0175 Table 6 shows Non normalized kernel values Eqn 1 with n 3 and A 0 5 normalized values Eqn 4 and linear combination of different subsequence lengths with u 0 5 TABLE 6 String Kernel Values R ol o2 K 0 300663 0 155302 0 208734 K 1 0 528086 0 709776 K 1 75 1 150438 1 374164 n 0176 It will be appreciated that various of the above disclosed and other features and functions or alternatives thereof may be desirably combined into many other differ Sep 20 2007 07 0 028076 0 316298 0 828646 ent systems or applications Also that various presently unforeseen or unanticipated alternatives modifications variations or improvements therein may be subsequently made by those skilled in the art which are also intended to be encompassed by the following claims 1 A method for assisting a user to correct a problem with a device comprising extracting from records comprising user actions on a device a string of user actions on the device comparing the string of user actions with at least one predetermined sequence of user actions for correction of a predefined problem with the device based on th
17. R SELECTS WINDOW AND SEQUENCE STRING SELECT STRING WAS SELECT STRING TO BE ANALYZED A FAULT DETECTED TO BE ANALYZED USE STRING OF WHILE THE FAULT EVENTS FROM A HOLDS TAKE THE FIXED MOMENT WHOLE STRING OF E G START OF DAY ACTIONS AFTER IT COMPARATOR IDENTIFIES REPEAT SEQUENCES OF ACTIONS COMPARATOR IDENTIFIES OMITTED ACTIONS INSTRUCTION MODULE RECEIVES INFORMATION FROM COMPARATOR AND GENERATES MODIFIED INSTRUCTIONS FIG 2B Patent Application Publication Sep 20 2007 Sheet 4 of 4 US 2007 0220365 A1 Fault ao wo Fault 54 53 Occurs Corrected FIG 4 Fault Fault Occurs Corrected to ty t2 t3 t4 te t5 tg U1 U2 U3 U4 US 2007 0220365 Al METHOD FOR AVOIDING REPETITION OF USER ACTIONS BY USING PAST USERS EXPERIENCES BACKGROUND 0001 The exemplary embodiment relates to methods for correcting a problem with a device such as a printer In particular it relates to the interactions between a user and the device which are informed by prior user interactions thereby reducing the repetition of unsuccessful user actions 0002 Office printers and multifunction devices MFDs with printing capabilities are typically shared resources which are utilized by multiple users who have access to their services When a printer malfunctions a user will often attempt to solve the problem themselves before seeking the assistance of an experienced technician Typical problems ari
18. SFB SFO OFTC CFTC 1423 0148 Other examples of incomplete sequences may be 0149 0o3 OFTC CFTC SFB 0150 o4 SFO OFTC SFB 0151 o5 GA GA SFO OFTC CFTC OFTC RIP CFTC SFB GA 0152 o6 SFO SFB SFO OFTC RIP CFTC SFB 0153 An example of a noisy sequence may be 0154 o7 SFO OFTC OT1 CT1 RIP CFTC SFB 0155 Non normalized kernel values K Eqn 1 with n 3 and A 0 5 and normalized values K are given in TABLE 5 together with values obtained by a linear combination K of different subsequence lengths with u 0 5 Eqn 6 US 2007 0220365 Al TABLE 5 Kernel ol 02 03 04 o5 o6 K 0 065430 0 007812 0 007812 0 003906 0 065674 0 049805 K 1 0 088486 0 244339 0 122169 0 476697 0 501571 K 1 75 0 315813 0 682923 0 513650 0 989104 1 065886 n EXAMPLE 3 A Modified Event 0156 For the action of Clear Duplex Module Upper Left Door Remove and Reinstall the Copy Print Cartridge the Alphabet may include 0157 LDM lower duplex module 0158 LBT lower bypass tray 0159 OB open baffle 0160 RJP remove jammed paper 0161 CB close baffle 0162 OULD open upper left door 0163 RJP remove jammed paper 0164 OLFC open left front cover 0165 RPC remove print cartridge 0166 RIPC reinstall print cartridge 0167 CLFC close left front cover 0168 CULD close upper left door 0169 CDM close duplex module 0170 GA generic action 0171 X LDM CDM LBT OB CB RJP OLFC
19. US 20070220365A1 a2 Patent Application Publication ao Pub No US 2007 0220365 A1 as United States Castellani et al 54 METHOD FOR AVOIDING REPETITION OF USER ACTIONS BY USING PAST USERS EXPERIENCES 75 Inventors Stefania Castellani Meylan FR Nicola Cancedda Grenoble FR Maria Antonietta Grasso Grenoble FR Jacki O Neill Hebden Bridge GB Correspondence Address Patrick R Roche FAY SHARPE FAGAN MINNICH amp McKEE LLP SEVENTH FLOOR 1100 SUPERIOR AVENUE CLEVELAND OH 44114 2579 US 73 Assignee XEROX CORPORATION 21 Appl No 11 378 34 62 EXTERNAL TROUBLESHOOTING p lt KNOWLEDGE BASE 10 PRINTER 18 16 TROUBLESHOOTING SYSTEM INSTRUCTION MODULE 43 Pub Date Sep 20 2007 22 Filed Mar 17 2006 Publication Classification 51 Int CI G06F 11 00 2006 01 52 USS CL eene a kasa unun 714 46 57 ABSTRACT A method for assisting a user to correct a problem with a device such as a printer includes extracting from records comprising user actions on the device a string of user actions on the device The string of user actions is compared with at least one predetermined sequence of user actions for correction of a predefined problem with the device Based on the comparison an evaluation is made as to whether at least one prior user has attempted the predetermined sequence and if so a procedure is implemented to avoid a user repeating the pri
20. al event selected in the previous step 0095 An alternative to estimate the number of occur rences of each event consists in performing a partial nor malization of the value of the sequence kernel between the actual action sequence and the ideal sequences The value of the sequence kernel as presently defined depends on the length of the matched sequences the longer they are the larger the chances that they will share subsequences and the higher the value of the kernel In many applications it is appropriate to normalize the kernel and make it independent of the sequence length This is usually done by replacing K s t with K s t K s ty sqrt K s s K t t Eqn 5 0096 With this normalization the value of K has a value of between 0 and 1 However when estimating the number of occurrences of an ideal sequence in the reference sequence a different partial normalization is more conve nient By taking K s 0 K s 0 K t 0 0097 where t is an ideal sequence for K a value proportional to the number of occurrences of r in s is obtained Rather than providing an exact indication of the number of occurrences this estimate can usefully comple ment the heuristics based on inter event and intra event time intervals mentioned above It will be appreciated that this estimate is not possible if a simple edit distance is used instead of the string kernel 0098 Identifying the length n of the subsequences to be matched can
21. all symbols appearing in gaps Moreover no difference is made according to which specific symbol is matched or skipped 0088 In Eqn 3 there are two sets of decay factors and Am the first of which is used to penalize gaps and the second used to score matches Each decay factor set includes a value for each symbol action in the alphabet The match score Amo for a symbol a can then be set to a value based on the discriminating power of o If statistics on the number of occurrences of o in fault and non fault events are available an estimate of the conditional probability that an action belongs to a recovery event given that it contains an occur rence of a can conveniently be used as n o 0089 Assume for example that the alphabet contains a symbol RPJ for Remove Paper Jam The decay factor for matches can be set c fault RPJ 1 c RPJ 2 Eqn 4 m RPJ p faultl RPJ 0090 where p fault o is the probability of an action being related to a fault c RPJ is the number of times that RPJ appears in a training set of real user actions which includes both recovery and normal actions c fault RPJ is the number of times RPJ appears in the corpus of stored ideal recovery sequences and a simple Laplace smoothing is applied In the likely event that almost all occurrences of RPJ belong to events tagged as fault 4 pps will receive a large value close to 1 0091 Conversely the decay score Ag o w
22. are per formed in a recovery event may be user selected or directed by the printer or an associated or remote support service 0029 The exemplary embodiment provides a printer help system which leverages knowledge about the past experi ence of other users interacting with the printer This helps to prevent or reduce some cases of wasteful repetitions of user actions when troubleshooting problems 0030 In various aspects the system and method allow a user who encounters a problem at a printer to be informed if other users have already tried a sequence of actions 0031 In one aspect the method includes recording all or selected user actions with a particular printer in particular the actions linked to troubleshooting sessions such as actions for removing a paper jam and maintenance opera tions such as periodic change of the toner or of the color cartridges From these records information about past troubleshooting experiences of users with the particular printer can be extracted The extracted information can be used to determine 0032 a Whether any users have at least partially followed troubleshooting instructions a sequence of ideal recovery actions given by the device and have not fixed the problem 0033 b Whether any users have tried recurrent sequences of actions even if not suggested as a trouble shooting procedure Sep 20 2007 0034 The extracted information may be offered to a subsequent user e g
23. ator of whether a prior user has attempted the stored sequence BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 0013 FIG 1 is a block diagram of a printing system according to the exemplary embodiment 0014 FIG 2 is a flow diagram of steps in an exemplary method for reducing repetition in a fault correction process 0015 FIG 3 illustrates a timeline showing selection of a window for examining printer data in accordance with a first embodiment of the exemplary method and 0016 FIG 4 illustrates a timeline showing selection of a window for examining printer data in accordance with a second embodiment of the exemplary method DETAILED DESCRIPTION 0017 Aspects of the exemplary embodiment relate to a method and a system for correcting a problem with a device such as a printer and to a method of developing such a system While the exemplary embodiment is described with particular reference to printers it is to be appreciated that the device can be any device subject to malfunction which is typically utilized by several users Printers are exemplary of such devices in that they are often utilized in organizations as shared devices and as such tend to be situated in com munal places easily accessible by their users such as cor ridors and alcoves They are frequently shared by a number of users and the on printer troubleshooting instructions along with users work practices tend to lead to shared responsibility for fixing minor problems
24. computing at least one of a string kernel value and a minimum edit distance between the string of user actions and the predetermined sequence of actions 22 A computer readable medium comprising instructions which when executed on a processor extract from records comprising user actions on a device a string of user actions on the device compare the string of user actions with at least one predetermined sequence of user actions for correction of a predefined problem with the device based on the comparison evaluate whether at least one prior user has attempted the predetermined sequence and implement a procedure for avoiding a repeat of the prior attempt 23 A method for forming a system for assisting a user to correct a problem with a device comprising assigning elements of a finite alphabet to user actions associated with a device the actions including actions taken to correct problems with the device for each of a plurality of ideal sequences of user actions for correcting problems with the device identifying a sequence of elements corresponding to the actions and storing the sequences in memory providing instructions for comparing a string of user actions on the device expressed in the finite alphabet with at least one of the stored sequences to compute a measure of similarity for use as an indicator of whether a prior user has attempted the stored sequence
25. ctions to deviate from an ideal recovery event such as the fact that certain user actions are not recorded the inclusion of actions which do not form a part of in an ideal recovery event the repetition of actions the extent to which certain actions are likely to be related to normal events unrelated to a recovery event and the like Thus the evaluation of whether a user has attempted an ideal recovery event may be a predictive determination in many instances 0020 In another aspect a system for providing instruc tions to a user of a device includes a display for providing instructions to a user a processor which retrieves stored data comprising records of user actions with the device the processor including instructions for identifying from the data a set of actions and instructions for comparing the set of actions with a set of ideal actions which comprise a recovery event and instructions for determining whether a prior user has attempted the recovery event 0021 As used herein a printer can include any device for rendering an image on print media such as a copier laser printer bookmaking machine facsimile machine or a mul tifunction machine Print media can be a usually flimsy physical sheet of paper plastic or other suitable physical print media substrate for images A print job or docu ment is normally a set of related sheets usually one or more collated copy sets copied from a set of original p
26. e comparison evaluating whether at least one prior user has attempted the predetermined sequence and implementing a procedure to avoid repeating the prior attempt 2 The method of claim 1 wherein the comparing of the string of user actions with the predetermined sequence of actions includes computing a measure of similarity between the string of user actions and the predetermined sequence 3 The method of claim 2 wherein the computing of the measure of similarity includes at least one of computing a string kernel value and computing a minimum edit distance between the string of user actions and the predetermined sequence 4 The method of claim 3 wherein the computing of the string kernel includes weighting user actions according to the likelihood of their occurrence in correction of a problem relative to the likelihood of their occurrence in normal events 5 The method of claim 3 wherein the computing of the string kernel includes comparing subsequences of the string of user actions and subsequences of the predetermined sequence and penalizing gaps in the subsequences of the string of user actions 6 The method of claim 1 further comprising comparing the string of user actions with at least one predetermined sequence of user actions associated with a normal user interaction with the device to eliminate from the evaluation strings of user actions which are more likely to be associated with normal interactions than with c
27. e user on a graphical or audible display 40 of the graphical user interface GUI 22 The instructions may be provided automatically or in response to a user query The user interface 22 may include a user input device 42 such as a keyboard and or a touch screen whereby a user can interact with the printer for example to report a printer malfunction to interact with an on line help system or the like The GUI 22 may be configured to display alphanumerical characters for convey ing visual information to a user For example error condi tions status information print information and instructions for correcting a printer malfunction or other information can be conveyed using the display 40 An exemplary display 40 is implemented as a liquid crystal display LCD The modules 30 32 34 36 38 of the troubleshooting component 16 are configured to follow a set of instructions 44 either embedded therein or stored in memory 20 0041 One or more sensors 50 52 are arranged to detect information on a user action and communicate a record of the action to the recording module 32 According to one embodiment sensors 50 52 may be configured to detect the interfacing of a user with respect to printer hardware 12 14 such as a sensor which detects the opening of an access door a manipulation of a user accessible operational component or the like Exemplary sensors 50 52 are heat light motion or pressure sensitive although other sensor confi
28. ent typically occur within a time interval that is significantly shorter than the intervals between actions that belong to different events This time proximity can be exploited to cluster actions into recovery events Additionally if the identity of the users performing the actions has been captured this information may also be used for clustering actions into events by associating them to users The user information may be captured for example when a user enters his personal code before making a copy or when a print job arrives at the printer from a user s workstation with a file header which provides user informa tion 0079 Two methods are proposed for detecting a candi date window W containing one or more events Step 122 In the first a fault is detected by the printer step S108 or Step 106 and some instructions are presented to the user step S112 This scenario is illustrated in the time line shown in FIG 3 where t represents time At time t a fault occurs At time t the printer recognizes the fault has occurred The printer may be configured for detecting a number of faults and automatically suggesting troubleshoot ing actions for example when it detects a paper jam At t5 the printer displays an error message Following the mes sage of a fault one or more users may perform actions in order to resolve the problem according to the instructions they are provided For example at time tu a first user U1 begins a ser
29. er actions includes user actions recorded subsequent to a detection of a fault by the device 16 The method of claim 1 wherein the string of user actions includes user actions recorded subsequent to a predetermined reference time 17 The method of claim 1 wherein the device is a printer 18 The method of claim 1 wherein the extracting comparing and evaluating and implementing are executed by a processor 19 The method of claim 1 wherein the records further comprises device information and wherein the device infor mation comprises device operational and fault status infor mation generated over a period of time 20 A system comprising a user interface for interacting with a user memory which stores instructions for identifying a string of actions on a device instructions for comparing the string of actions with a predetermined sequence of actions and instructions for interacting with a user based on the comparison a processor which retrieves records comprising user actions on the device the processor executing the instructions for identifying a string of actions the Sep 20 2007 instructions for comparing the string of actions with at least one predetermined sequence of actions for cor recting a problem and the instructions for interacting with the user 21 The system of claim 20 wherein the instructions for comparing the string of actions with a predetermined sequence of actions comprise instructions for
30. es of the printer and the type of print jobs performed Using a fuzzy logic protocol the printer then selects an appropriate training package based upon the tracked usage A message is then generated and sent to a network administrator or other user suggesting the selected training package BRIEF DESCRIPTION 0008 Aspects of the exemplary embodiment relate to a method and a system for assisting a user to correct a problem with a device And to a method of forming such a system 0009 In one aspect a method for assisting a user to correct a problem with a device includes extracting from records comprising user actions on a device a string of user actions on the device comparing the string of user actions with at least one predetermined sequence of user actions for correction of a predefined problem with the device and based on the comparison evaluating whether at least one prior user has attempted the predetermined sequence If so the method includes implementing a procedure to avoid repeating the prior attempt 0010 In another aspect a system includes a user interface for interacting with a user A memory stores instructions for identifying a string of actions on a device instructions for comparing the string of actions with a predetermined sequence of actions and instructions for interacting with a user based on the comparison processor retrieves records comprising user actions on the device the processor execut ing t
31. gurations may be utilized to detect the actions of a user 0042 Repair instructions are available to the printer in an on line knowledge base 60 which may be stored in memory 20 Printer problems commonly have escalating stages of solutions either because the same symptoms may be caused by different faults with different solutions or the same fault may have a number of different solutions some more simple than others Thus the online knowledge base 60 may include a number of solutions which are generally arranged to be tried in order from the most simple to the most complex Each of the solutions may include a sequence of ideal user actions 0043 The troubleshooting system 16 allows a user to be made aware of solutions which have been tried by other users or presented with solutions which have not been previously tried from those available in the database 60 By exploiting information on users mechanical interaction with the printer users can be prevented from unnecessarily repeating actions which have been unsuccessfully carried out before This can result in a reduction in wastage of users Sep 20 2007 time improved customer satisfaction reduced down time of the printer and increased trust in the on line instructions 0044 A method of assisting a user of the printer to identify and correct a problem with a printer which may be performed using the system illustrated in FIG 1 is illustrated in FIG 2 and may include
32. he instructions for identifying a string of actions the instructions for comparing the string of actions with at least US 2007 0220365 Al one predetermined sequence of actions for correcting a problem and the instructions for interacting with the user 0011 In another aspect a computer readable medium includes instructions which when executed on a processor extract from records comprising user actions on a device a string of user actions on the device compare the string of user actions with at least one predetermined sequence of user actions for correction of a predefined problem with the device based on the comparison evaluate whether at least one prior user has attempted the predetermined sequence and implement a procedure for avoiding a repeat of the prior attempt 0012 In another aspect a method for forming a system for assisting a user to correct a problem with a device includes assigning elements of a finite alphabet to user actions associated with a device the actions including actions taken to correct problems with the device For each of a plurality of ideal sequences of user actions for correct ing problems with the device a sequence of elements corresponding to the actions is identified and stored in memory Instructions are provided for comparing a string of user actions on the device expressed in the finite alphabet with at least one of the stored sequences to compute a measure of similarity for use as an indic
33. ies of actions If this does not bring the printer to a non faulty state then the user may give up and other users U2 and U3 could repeat the process at times ts and te respectively At time tg the printer may provide a new set of instructions following identification of repeated unsuccess ful actions by the users at time t At time tg another user U4 or one of the prior users U1 U2 U3 begins to correct the fault At time to the fault is corrected At time t o the printer detects that the fault has been corrected and no longer displays the error message 0080 The method in this case may rely on the fault information from the printer to restrict the window W of actions to consider In the simplest case a number of users carry out detectable actions which may be equivalent to ideal action steps stored in the knowledge base thus making each user interaction a sort of repetition of a sequence of events The start t4 of the troubleshooting session can be considered as the occurring when a first user U1 attempts to correct a fault already detected by the printer and ends at t when the fault is no longer detected by the printer The reference window W of considered actions is therefore periodically computed at fixed intervals or at intermittent time intervals e g during idle periods ofthe printer when no user is interacting with it and proceeds from the time of the fault detection t until the current moment t of computation The st
34. ified string of actions with one or more sequences of ideal actions stored in memory 20 This step may involve computing a measure of similarity between a real sequence of actions and an ideal sequence of actions as described in greater detail below 0047 At step S126 a predominant event may be identi fied from the actions recorded within the time window A US 2007 0220365 Al predominant event can be a sequence of consecutive user actions which meets a threshold measure of similarity with an ideal recovery event This step may provide a single candidate predominant event or a few of them However it does not indicate how many of these have occurred in the given period of time At step S127 the string is segmented into events By segmenting the sequence of actions into events this allows the number of such events to be counted in a subsequent step 0048 At step S128 the comparator may from the com parison identify one or more recovery actions or events which have not resulted in the correction of the fault e g actions which are repeated at least once This may include counting events by matching similarity against a predomi nant event This step may include counting how many similar events have occurred once a predominant event has been detected 0049 At step S130 the comparator may identify action steps of the ideal sequence which were omitted by a user at step S114 At step S132 the processor may generate a different
35. ill be assigned a value inversely proportional to p fault o in order to penalize skipping a highly relevant symbol In other words if two sequences differ by an occurrence of RPJ this is penalized more than if two sequences differ for an occur rence of say OTI for Open Tray 1 which occurs frequently in normal non fault sequences of actions A simple approach is to set Ag o 1 Am o 0092 A further step step S128 is to count how many similar events have occurred once a predominant event has been detected The previous step S126 provides a candi date predominant event or a few of them However it does not indicate how many of these have occurred in the given period of time Thus the sequence of actions is segmented into events step S127 in order to proceed to such enu meration Sep 20 2007 0093 In one embodiment a simple heuristic to segment the sequence into events consists of looking at the elapsed time between actions In general it can be assumed that actions contained in a same event are closer to one another than actions belonging to different ones For example in FIG 3 and 8 i e the time interval among two user actions belonging to the same event are smaller than represent ing the time between the last action from user U1 and the first action of user U2 0094 Once the actual events are detected as clusters of actions they can then be again measured against the can didate ide
36. ily very close to ideal sequences Several types of discrepancy can occur including 0059 Incomplete events an event is started but not concluded 0060 Redundant events an event includes a repetition of one or more actions 0061 Modified events an event where the order of some of the actions has been changed 0062 Noisy events an event which contains one or more actions that are not part of an ideal sequence 0063 The comparator 36 compares the detected string of actions with one or more ideal sequences of actions which may be stored in the printer internal knowledge base 60 or accessed from an external knowledge base 62 In order to match ideal sequences with real sequences a metric is defined over the sequences to be compared which accounts at least in part for discrepancies of the types illustrated above Specifically the exemplary method at step 126 includes computing a measure of similarity between a real sequence of actions and an ideal sequence of actions 0064 In one embodiment a sequence kernel frequently also referred to as string kernel is utilized by the comparator 36 String kernels provide the ability to recognize similari ties among strings even when the symbols are not in perfect sequence They permit the detection of strings that represent events which are incomplete modified redundant or noisy as in the interaction data typical in a printer A further discussion of string kernels is provided b
37. nt deletion and insertion operations that are required to transform one of the two sequences such as the ideal sequence of actions into the other e g the real sequence of actions 0072 In the present case it is useful to match individual ideal sequences against a real sequence which may contain several events However when comparing a single ideal sequence with a real sequence encoding multiple noisy events the edit distance does not take into account the presence of multiple noisy occurrences of the ideal sequence in the real sequence In other words the edit distance may detect that a certain recovery event an ideal sequence of actions has been attempted but it would be unable to estimate how many times it was attempted Sep 20 2007 0073 As noted above a precursor to the exemplary method involves the creation of reference strings represent ing ideal troubleshooting events in the same alphabet as is utilized by the parser for identifying real events A first step in the creation of reference strings includes a modelling activity recovery events are represented as non ambiguous sequences of individual actions This in turn involves two subtasks the identification of an alphabet of actions by which the actions can be described and the encoding of events as sequences over this alphabet These subtasks may be intertwined Two sources from which the information for performing these subtasks can be gathered are sequences of
38. or attempt lt 44 20 60 INTERNAL TROUBLESHOOTING KNOWLEDGE BASE 54 IDEAL ACTIONS IN RECOVERY OPERATION 38 150 SENSOR SEN 52 14 COLOR FINISHER 12 CARTRIDGE FAULT DETECTION MODULE 24 gt 22 Patent Application Publication Sep 20 2007 Sheet 1 of 4 US 2007 0220365 A1 62 26 TN EXTERNAL m TROUBLESHOOTING P a KNOWLEDGE BASE a 10 P G PRINTER 18 16 60 INTERNAL TROUBLESHOOTING SYSTEM TROUBLESHOOTING KNOWLEDGE BASE IDEAL ACTIONS 54 IN RECOVERY OPERATION 50 SENSOR SENSOR 52 14 FINISHER 12 N CARTRIDGE 22 Patent Application Publication Sep 20 2007 Sheet 2 of 4 US 2007 0220365 A1 FIG 2A S100 S102 PRINTER MALFUNCTION OCCURS 1 NEW USER DETECTS PRINTER DETECTS e MALFUNCTION MALFUNCTION USER REPORTS MALFUNCTION 104 FAULT DETECTION MODULE RECORDS TIME S112 PRINTER PROVIDES USER WITH SEQUENCE OF IDEAL USER ACTIONS IF USER DOES USER NOT CORRECT USER PERFORMS ACTIONS CORRECTS 114 FAULT FAULT PRINTER GENERATES DATA COMPRISING USER USER ACTIONS C END D S116 118 S134 NOTIFIES TECHNICIAN RECORDING MODULE STORES DATA OF FAULT i 12 EXAMINE RECORDED EVENTS PARSER SEGMENTS DATA INTO ACTIONS Co s eee TO AIG 2B Patent Application Publication Sep 20 2007 Sheet 3 of 4 US 2007 0220365 A1 FROM FIG 2A COMPARATO
39. orrection of a predefined problem with the device 7 The method of claim 1 wherein the implementation of the procedure includes interacting with the user 8 The method of claim 7 wherein the interaction with a user includes providing a modified sequence of user actions for correcting the predetermined problem 9 The method of claim 8 wherein the modified sequence of user actions differ from those provided during recording of the prior attempt US 2007 0220365 Al 10 The method of claim 7 wherein the interaction with a user includes advising the user of the prior attempt 11 The method of claim 1 wherein implementation of a procedure includes providing a user with instructions which enable the user to avoid repeating a previously performed sequence of user actions 12 The method of claim 1 wherein the extraction of a string of user actions on the device comprises coding the recorded user actions with symbols from a finite alphabet the sequence of ideal actions being expressed as symbols from the finite alphabet 13 The method of claim 1 further comprising identifying a time window from which the string of user actions is extracted 14 The method of claim 13 wherein the extracting of the string of user actions on the device includes identifying a plurality of strings of user actions which are sufficiently spaced in time to be considered as separate user interactions 15 The method of claim 1 wherein the string of us
40. r jam In this case the Alphabet may include the following symbols 0135 SFO Slide Finisher Out 0136 OFTC Open Finisher Top Cover 0137 RJP Remove Jammed Paper 0138 CFTC Close Finisher Top Cover 0139 SFB Slide Finisher Back 0140 OT1 Open Tray 1 0141 CT1 Close Tray 1 0142 GA Generic Action X SFO SEB OFTC CFTC RJP OTI CT1 GA 0143 For removing the jam in the finisher area the reference sequence of actions ideal sequence is 0144 r SFO OFTC RJP CFTC SFB 0145 The similarity measures for each case of a detected event are measured Sep 20 2007 10 0146 For the case of an exact match o1 SFO OFTC RJP CFTC SFB n 3 Values of s and t are given in TABLE 3 below TABLE 3 U s Palt SFO OFTC RJP X3 X SFO OFTC CFTC M M SFO OFTC SFB a5 x SFO RJP CFTC M M SFO RJP SFB a5 x SFO CFTC SFB x x OFTC RJP CFTC x X OFTC RJP SFB M A OFTC CFTC SFB M X RJP CFTC SFB P X K amp SFO OFTC RJP CFTC SFB SFO OFTC RJP CFTC SFB AM M PAP MAT PDP OVP ABI MA TAA 1323 For an incomplete sequence such as 022GA GA SFO OFTC CFTC GA n 3 0147 Values of s and t are given in TABLE 4 below TABLE 4 U S Palt SFO OFTC RJP ds 0 SFO OFTC CFTC s SFO OFTC SFB Ks 0 SFO RJP CFTC a 0 SFO RIP SFB ds 0 SFO CFTC SFB s 0 OFTC RIP CFTC de 0 OFTC RJP SFB a 0 OFTC CFTC SFB M 0 RJP CFTC SFB s 0 K3 SFO OFTC RJP CFTC
41. redundant if they mix actions that are not really required The case of a modified event is not appli cable in this case as there are no successful permutations of these actions An example of modified event is shown in Example 3 The exact sequence can be represented by 0115 o OFD ROT INT CFD 0116 An incomplete sequence can be represented by 0117 o GA GA OFD ROT CFD GA GA 0118 Inthe above example the user has omitted the step INT A redundant sequence can be represented by 0119 o GA OFD ROT CFD OFD INT CFD GA 0120 In the above example the user has repeated the OFD step and added a CFD step out of order A noisy sequence may be represented by 0121 o GA OFD GA GA ROT INT CFD GA 0122 In the above example the user has added different steps from those prescribed Other sequence s may have no relation to the ideal sequence such as 0123 o GA GA GA GA GA GA GA GA 0124 The first step of the method is to measure which event is most recurrent in a given logged string Assume that two users had already tried to replace the toner The logged string could be as follows 0125 GAGAOFD ROT INT CFD GA GA GA GA OFD ROT CFD GA GA 0126 A measure against the set of ideal sequences would identify the string OFD ROT INT CFD as the most likely candidate At this stage assume that segmentation based on time intervals between different actions Step S127 returns the strings 0127 o1 GA OFD ROT INT CFD
42. ring of actions determined in this way is the string of actions that is then used to detect any recurrent events within it 0081 In one embodiment using the string kernel s simi larity measurement technique the logged sequence of actions is first matched against an ideal action sequence which is a sequence of actions associated to a given fault If this measure does not reach a preselected threshold of similarity the string is then compared with a larger set of Sep 20 2007 ideal sequences of actions such as all the sequences of ideal actions available in the model A detailed example is pro vided below 0082 In a second scenario illustrated by the timeline in FIG 4 the printer malfunctions at time t as before but no fault is detected by the printer This is the case for example with degraded print or copy quality At times t ts t4 users U1 U2 and U3 attempt unsuccessfully to correct the problem At time t5 the computation of the string kernel indicates that at least one prior user has attempted a pre defined ideal sequence At time t the printer provides a warning message that a sequence has been attempted by one or more prior users and may also provide a new set of instructions for correcting the problem which the string kernel suggests has been attempted by the prior user s At time t a new user U4 or one of the prior users sees the warning message instructions and uses a different sequence of actions
43. rint job sheets or electronic document page images from a particular user or otherwise related An image generally may include information in electronic form which is to be rendered on the print media by the image forming device and may include text graphics pictures and the like The operation of applying images to print media for example graphics text photographs etc is generally referred to herein as printing or marking 0022 As used herein an action generally refers to an individual occurrence in which a user interacts with a device by performing a mechanical operation e g opening a door of the printer or manipulating e g pulling out a component of the printer In general actions are the smallest operations which can be recognized by the printer Actions which may be recorded by the printer include those which are associated with a recovery event and those which are associated with normal operation of the printer 0023 A recovery action refers to any action of a user associated with a printer with the object of correcting a US 2007 0220365 Al problem or a perceived problem with the printer Exemplary user recovery actions in troubleshooting include opening access panels to paper trays removing and or replacing components such as toner cartridges adjusting components removing trapped paper and the like The recovery actions may take place in response to a printer request or may be user initiated
44. se because of machine faults such as paper jams or poor print quality on the output documents e g white lines on the paper When a user has a problem with a printer typically the user will first attempt to ascertain and fix the problem using whatever built in diagnosis tools are provided with the printer For some printers the built in diagnostic tools may be in the form of a user manual or diagrams on the user interface showing possible locations of printer jams and out of supply notices For printers linked to a personal computer the install disk of the printer may include diag nostics in the form of a utility program to be run on the user s personal computer Utility programs may offer sug gestions for relatively minor problems such as cleaning inkjets to improve print quality or how to ascertain a printer jam Some of the problems can be readily solved by the users with the help of instructions provided by the printer or made available to the user by an on line support system such as a knowledge base Sometimes the user is not able to solve the problem and the assistance of local or remotely located technicians is sought 0003 Solving the problems encountered can be time consuming and frustrating for the users and costly for the owner of the printer in terms of technical services and loss of productivity Diagnostic systems for identifying the cause of the malfunction and help systems associated with the printer can be of help to
45. sequences and a warning message be issued only in case a subsequence matching a recovery event is not contained in a subsequence matching a normal opera tion sequence with a higher score as computed for example by the string kernel 0085 Moreover if a sufficiently large number of action sequences annotated with fault and non fault events is available normal operation sequences can be acquired through learning as this reduces to a standard binary classification problem over sequences 0086 A second method for differentiating recovery actions from normal operation actions consists in assigning different weights to different action symbols namely giving more importance to those actions that discriminate better between a fault recovery event and a normal operation event A generalization of the sequence kernel used according to the method in this case can be represented as follows US 2007 0220365 Al K s D Eqn 3 n PME MIE fS h sasda s ucY Seu jupIew l ip lt p lt in pei H1 lt lt in ati 0087 Weighting schemes of this type are described for example in Cancedda et al In the original string kernel formulation Eqn 1 there is a single decay factor This factor is used to penalize in a uniform way both matching symbols and symbols appearing in gaps Since all matching subsequences have the same number of matching symbols namely 2n i e n in each sequence the overall effect is to penalize by
46. stations 26 via the communication interface 18 0037 The mechanical components 12 14 herein illus trated as a finisher 12 and a toner cartridge 14 by way of example are the mechanisms that are used to handle paper to print documents to assemble documents and or to pro vide other additional functional characteristics to the printer 10 The mechanical components 12 14 may include the paper feeding mechanism the inkjets of an inkjet printer the laser scanning assembly and revolving drum and other associated mechanisms of a laser printer finisher compo nents such as a document collator a document binder or a stapler or any other mechanical component that may be included in a printer 10 to increase its functionality as well as access panels such as doors which provide access to components by a user who is troubleshooting a printer malfunction 0038 The processor 16 of printer 10 may be embodied in a microprocessor board comprising circuitry The processor 16 may be a part of the existing circuitry associated with a conventional printer and thus may be configured to perform some or all of the specific functions of printer 10 including control of printer specific hardware and software Alterna tively the processor 16 may be a separate element and in one embodiment may be located remote from the mechanical components 12 14 of the printer such as in a network server or a workstation 26 e g accessible via a web browser
47. the following steps It will be appreciated that the steps need not be performed in the order given and that fewer or additional steps may be employed in the method The method begins at step S100 0045 At step S102 a printer malfunction occurs The malfunction may be recognized by a user of the printer at step S104 who at step S106 may report the malfunction to the printer via the user interface 22 and may provide the printer with symptoms Or the user may try to correct the problem without notifying the printer that a problem has been detected Alternatively or additionally at step S108 the printer recognizes that a fault has occurred for example by receiving notification from one of the printer components 12 14 via the fault detection module 30 At step S110 the printer e g the fault detection module 30 stores a record of the time at which the malfunction is recognized if this is available At step S112 the printer may access the knowl edge base and retrieve a set of ideal recovery actions corresponding to a fault which may be responsible for the malfunction and presents these to the user e g provides the user with instructions via the user interface display 40 Where the printer identifies two or more different faults which may be responsible for the malfunction the printer may present the user with instructions for curing the most likely fault or the fault which is rectifiable with the easiest recovery actions At step S
48. the window in s spanned by s i Similarly let r r r r be a second sequence over the alphabet such as an ideal sequence of user actions 0067 The sequence kernel K s r of the two strings s and rover X can be defined as K s D 2 25 by AK Eqn 1 wey ikucsli juil 0068 where n the maximum subsequence length is a fixed positive integer and X is a gap penalty factor is a real number between 0 and 1 indicating the decay factor for each gap in subsequence occurrences As noted above n may be for example 3 4 5 or 6 in the printer example The decay factor may be selected by trial and error to provide appro priate weighting for the presence of gaps Where there are naturally a large number of gaps in a string of user actions because for example only a portion of the user actions are sensed by the printer the gap penalty factor may be lower closer to 0 0069 Computing such a kernel amounts to performing an inner product in a feature space with one dimension for each subsequence ue2 with feature mapping given by s gt al Eqn 2 i u s i 0070 Further details on how the string kernel technique may be applied to sequences of user actions in a trouble shooting operation are provided below 0071 Another approach for measuring similarity between a sequence of real actions and a sequence of ideal actions is to use a basic edit distance This is the minimum number of symbol replaceme
49. tract information about past trouble shooting experiences of users with the printer 10 In one embodiment at step S124 the method includes identifying from the records 44 candidate limited strings sequences of user actions and at step S126 comparing them with sequences of actions that each correspond to an ideal recov ery event The ideal sequences may be stored in trouble shooting tools like a troubleshooting knowledge base 60 e g the Xerox On Line Support Assistant OSA an expert Sep 20 2007 system 62 on the printer e g jam removal instructions displayed on the printer screen or manuals An example of a recovery event in the troubleshooting knowledge base is the set of actions listed above for removing a paper jam These tools describe ideal sequences of actions that is predefined sequences of actions that are logically chained to obtain a certain result In general they have a precise order actions are clearly distinct from one another and the start and the end of the problem can be easily recognized 0058 There are a number of approximations and sources of noise in the user interaction data recorded by the record ing module 32 since not all human actions and faults are detectable For example a user who shakes a toner cartridge or the presence of white lines on the paper may not be detected by the components 30 32 of the troubleshooting component 16 Moreover actual troubleshooting events are not necessar
50. y Lodhi et al Text Classification Using the String Kernel in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 13 MIT Press 2001 and in Cancedda et al Word Sequence Kernels Journal of Machine Learning Research 3 pp 1059 1082 February 2003 hereinafter Cancedda 0065 The string kernel computes similarity as the num ber of occurrences of subsequences in this case sequences of actions shared by two sequences The subsequences may be contiguous or non contiguous A maximum length num ber of actions n of the subsequences to be compared is set before computing the string kernel In general n is at least two and for printers may typically be from about three to about 6 The value of n may be higher in cases where typical ideal sequences include a large number of individual actions Non contiguous occurrences are penalized according to the US 2007 0220365 Al size of the gaps they contain The string kernel takes the two sequences and returns a number 0066 For example let X be a finite alphabet of actions and let 25 5 s bea first sequence of actions over such alphabet such as a string of user actions with the device Let i i i i with i lt i lt i Si be a subset of the indices in s ie the positions of a particular subse quence of actions Let s i represent the possibly non contiguous subsequence s 5 Sin Also let l 1 be the expression i i 1 i e the width of
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