Sobre a aplicação de ontologias para orientar agentes a responder perguntas

The tasks of solving question or clarifying doubts are determined primarily by a good analysis of the question in order to identify the subject target of the response. This article presents a question-answer system that uses ontologies and information retrieval techniques in the question analysis and thus improves the extraction of the response. Question-answer systems seek to provide the same facilities that occur in dialogues among people, where questions are answered promptly. They go beyond the more familiar search engines based on keywords, in an attempt to recognize what the question expresses and submit a correct answer. This feature makes them very favorable to learners. When embedded in collaborative learning environments it is possible to set or examine the content of a domain by means of questions and answers. A prototype was developed and tested and results are presented.