MWM: Retrieval and automatic presentation of manual data for mobile terminals

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new way of retrieving and presenting manual data from the Web, based on a state transition diagram and data conversion into synchronized multi-modal contents. The manual data of a target device is assumed to consist of three parts: (1) manual documents in XML, (2) state transition diagrams in XML, and (3) three-dimensional computer graphics (3D CG) of the target device, which are also in XML. The prototype under development is called a Mobile Web Manual (MWM). The major features of MWM are as follows: (a) acquisition of the present state of a target device by wireless communication, (b) retrieval of manual data by finding a path between the present state and a given goal state, (c) automatic generation of 3D animation from the retrieved manual data, and (d) presentation by 3D animation synchronized with synthesized speech.