Bots for linkets and deep links

16 Aug Bots for linkets and deep links

LInket Corp was told by the US Patent and Trademark Office that a Notice of Allowance was made for the patent pending  Bots for linkets and deep links.  The patent will issue in October 2020.

The invention deals with a linket having several persons and software programs (bots) available to answer the users. Imagine that the linket is  [ Math Tutoring ].   There might be 2 tutors and a bot available at the present time. (See figure.)   When a student Bob clicks the linket on his phone, a query goes to the LInket Registry.  The tutors Jill, Lucy and the bot are waiting, each at a different location from the others.  Bob is routed to Jill and she tutors him. She runs an instance of a tutoring app in tutor mode, while Bob runs his instance in student mode.

Now that Jill’s app is busy tutoring Bob, it sends a signal back to the Registry, telling it to remove Jill or more precisely, her app, from the list of tutors waiting for work. When Jill stops tutoring Bob, this might take an amount of time unknown at the start. Though we can expect that there will be standard tutoring durations of 1 hour, 2 hours etc.

Figure 1

When Jill stops tutoring Bob, her app will signal the Registry, telling it to put her back on the list of available tutors.

This applies also if a bot is assigned to tutor a student. And this also lets Jill at the end of a tutoring session take a toilet break.

The patent lets tutors and bots have discretion (ie. control) over when they are available, and for how long each tutoring session is.

The patent lets a linket be scaled up to have a capacity of handling several tutors present at the same time, to service a plentitude of students arriving at the linket. If Jill’s app tells the Registry she is presently unavailable, it takes her off the list of available tutors. So when another student clicks the linket, the Registry now picks between assigning him Lucy or the bot.

Of course, if there are 3 students, then Jill, Lucy and the bot are all busy. A 4th student might be told no. Or possibly to come back at a future time when a tutor will be free.

The intent of the patent is to address practicality of linkets. It shows 1 aspect of how to scale up.

The patent will be awarded on the above steps. The language in the patent is more technical, but this is the gist.