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PeopleFinder: A Multimodal Multimedia Communications Tool for
Interconnecting Office Staff
for Interc onnec ting Oc e Sta
Innes A. FergusonandJames D. Davlouros KnowledgeSystemsLaboratory(II T)
National ResearchCouncil Ottawa, ON, Canada
innes@ai.iit.nrc.ca; james@cais.dsm.sp-agency.ca
Abstract
The PeopleFinder is a knowledge-basedtool to assist users in determining the whereab outs of other sta locatedin anoce or network env i -ronment. Thetool makes use of sev eral modes of input and output, as well as employing a num -b er of interface andcommunications media with which to present information and interconnect geographicallydistributedsy stemusers. The ac -company ing v ideo contains ex ample uses of the tool whichhelpillustrate some of its functional -ity.
PeopleFinder
ThePeopleFinderemploysagent-orienteddesigntech -niques as awayof integratingavarietyof hetero ge-neous applications running ona number of di erent computingplatforms andoperatingsystems. Speci -cally,thePeopleFinder'sfunctionalityiscarriedoutby acollectionof coordinatedsoftwareagentswhichcan 1. assumeuser-delegatedtasks(e.g. interpretingsp
o-kencommands, invokingemail andvoicerecording tools, dialingoutonaphone);
2. performanumberofapplicationleveltasks(e.g. up -datingthegraphical userinterface, applyingheuri s-ticstodecidewhetherand/orhowsystemuserswant tobecontacted); and
3. carryoutanumberof lowerlevel operatingsystem level activities, the majorityof whichwill be be -yondthe level of expertise of most casual system users(e.g. translatingbetweendi erent speechen -codingformats, establishingwhichusersarelogged ontothevariousmulti-platformcomputernetworks throughoutthebuilding).
TheagentsusedinthePeopleFinderapplicationare based on the CALVI N open agent framework(F er-gusonandDavlouros 1995) whichinturnis anex -tensionof theTouringMachinearchitecture(Ferguson 1992).
1
Thisframeworkprovidesapplicationdevelop -ers witha powerful set of agent programming tools
1
The Communicating Agents Liv ing Vicariously In
including libraries of intra- andinter-agent protocols (e.g. KQML
2
), sensoryande ectoryapparatus, in -ternal behaviorAPI s, persistentstoragemanagement, and(currentlyunder consideration) CORBAcompli -ance.
Besides providinganaddedlevel of exibilityand robustness to the overall systembehavior (Ferguson 1995), the existence of multiple autonomous { and, therefore, concurrentlyoperating{agents alsofacili -tatestheapplicationofmultiplechannelsofinteraction betweenhumanandsystem(FaureandJulia1994). A numberof similarbene tsandissueshavebeeniden ti- edintheapplicationoftheOpenAgentArchitecture (Cohenet al. 1994) tothe managementof email; in particular, theroles of suchagentskills as delegation (\theabilitytoreceiveatasktobeperformedwith -out theuser's havingtostate all thedetails"), data-dir ectedexecution(\theabilitytomonitorlocal or re-mote events, suchas database updates, OS, or ne t-workactivities"), andcommunication(\theabilityto enlistotheragents... inordertoaccomplishatask"). I naddition, thePeopleFinder canbeseentoo er a numberofdesirablefeatureswhicharecharacteristicof technologyfortelepr esence; thatis, technologywhich provides, despitegeographical ortemporal distance, a sense of social proximity{akindof social pr osthesis forovercominggapsandweaknesseswithanorganiza -tional structure(Giachino1993; Buxton1994).
Brie y, someof thekeydesignfeaturesof theP eo-pleFinderinclude:
Agent-orienteddesign. Thesystemis basedon anumber of coordinatedautonomous agents, each specializedinoneor more systemtasks, anumber of whichhavebeenmentionedabove.
Multimodal interaction. Thesystemmakesuse of variousinput andoutput modalities for human
-work dev eloped at the National Research Council's Knowledge Sy stems Lab oratory. See WWW page http://ai.iit.nrc.ca/CALVIN/title.html for more details.
2
The Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML) is aprotocol intendedtosupp ort interoperability amongintelligent agents indistributedapplications (Finin
mouse, andspeechforinput, andaudioandscreen -basedfeedbackforoutput.
Multimedia presentation. The systemmakes use of a number of di erent media for human -computer interaction; inparticular text, graphics, animation, and prerecordedvideo (the latter act-ing as a \cheap", but nevertheless verye ective, substituteforin-ocevideocameras and/oractive badges
3 )
Communications-oriented capabilities. The systemenables transparent communication across di erentcomputerplatforms(Macintosh, Unix)and facilitates the interconnectionof systemusers via telephone, email, andvoicemessaging.
A number of features of the CALVIN architecture have provenuseful for developing multimodal appli -cationsthatintegrateanumber of distributedmedia resources. Inparticular, rapidresponsestousers'com -mandsarefacilitatedthroughintegrationof approp ri-ate reactive behaviors inthe system's I nterface and User agents(FergusonandDavlouros1995); inaddi -tion, blending of complementaryinput modalities is facilitatedthroughtheexecutionof multipleconcu r-rentagents(whichinturnareabletoexecutemultiple concurrent, task-speci cbehaviors).
Currentworkalreadyunderwayincludesportingthe graphical userinterfaceportionofthePeopleFinderto bothPCandUnixplatforms(intheinterestofextend -ingthetool's audienceandensuringamorethorough testingandempirical evaluationphaseof theproject); integrating a number of other software applications suchas teleconferencing, voice dictation, and video camera-basedface recognition; extending agents' ca-pabilitiesforautonomouslyresolvingrun-timecon icts resultingfromsharedaccesstothedi erentpresen ta-tionandcommunicationsresourcesusedbythesystem (seeWerkman'sKBN negotiation-basedcon ict reso -lutionworkfor relatedissues (Werkman1994)); and formalizingthevariousrulesusedbythePeopleFinder tocombinemultiplemediawithmultiplemodalitiesfor bothhuman-computerinteractionandcomputersup -portedhuman-humancommunication, muchalongthe linesoftheworkof Arensetal. (Arenset al. 1993)on allocatingmultiplemedia.
The tool is implementedusing a varietyof di e r-entscriptinglanguages(AppleScript,Quickeys,andC -shell)andrunsonaMacintoshQuadra840 AV. The tool alsomakes use of the Macintosh's ApplePhone tool andGeoportTelecomAdapter forperformingits variouscomputer-telephonyintegrationtasks.
References
Arens, Yigal; Hovy, Eduard; andVossers, Mira1993. OntheKnowledgeUnderlyingMultimedia Presenta
-3
Suchasthoseusedinvarious in-house applications at
mediaInterfaces . AAAI Press: MenloPark, CA. Buxton, William1994. TheThreeMirrorsof I n terac-tion: AHolisticApproachtoUserI nterfaces. I nL.W. MacDonaldandJ.Vince, editors,Inter actingwithVi r-tual Envir onments. New York: Wiley.
Cohen, PhilipR.; Cheyer,Adam; Wang, Michelle; and Baeg, SoonCheol 1994. AnOpenAgentArchitecture. I nWorkingNotesof theAAAI -94SpringSymposium onSoftwareAgents, PaloAlto, CA, pp. 1{8. Faure, ClaudieandJulia, Luc1994. AnAgent-Based ArchitectureforaMultimodal I nterface. I nWorking NotesoftheAAAI -94SpringSymposiumonI ntelligent Multi-MediaMulti-Modal Systems,PaloAlto, CA, pp. 82{86.
Ferguson,I nnesA. 1992. TouringMachines: AnArchi -tecturefor Dynamic, Rational, MobileAgents. Ph.D. diss., ComputerLaboratory, UniversityofCambridge, CambridgeUK.
Ferguson, I nnesA. 1995. I ntegratingModelsandB e-haviorsinAutonomousAgents: SomeLessonsLearned onActionControl. I nWorkingNotes of the AAAI -95 SpringSymposiumonLessons Learnedfrom I m -plementedSoftwareArchitecturesforPhysicalAgents, PaloAlto, CA, March27{29.
Ferguson, I nnes A. and Davlouros, James D. 1995. PeopleFinder: AMultimodal Multimedia Communi -cations Tool for I nterconnecting NetworkUsers. I n WorkingNotes of theI JCAI -95WorkshoponI ntell i-gentMultimediaI nformationRetrieval,Montreal, PQ, August.
Finin, Tim; McKay, Don; andFritzson,Rich1992. An OverviewofKQML:AKnowledgeQueryandManipu -lationLanguage. AvailablethroughtheStanfordUni -versityComputerScienceDepartment, PaloAlto, CA, March.
Giachino, Luca1993. ActivitySensingThroughP ort-holes I mages: ABridge betweenPassive Awareness andActiveAwareness, Technical Report, OTP-93-08, OntarioTelepresenceProject, Universityof Toronto, Toronto, ON, August.
Rheingold, Howard1994. PARCisback! Wir ed, 2(2), pp. 90-95.
Werkman, Keith J. 1994. ADAI Architecture for Coordinating Multimedia Applications. I nWorking NotesoftheAAAI -94SpringSymposiumonI ntelligent Multi-MediaMulti-Modal Systems,PaloAlto, CA, pp. 93-97.
Acknowledgments Productionof thisvideowasmadepossiblebyDaniel GamacheandPaul Amirault, bothoftheNationalR e-searchCouncil'sI nstituteforI nformationTechnology. Wewouldalsoliketothankourvariouscolleaguesfor agreeingtoappearinthevideo.
