A Common Multi-Agent Testbed for Diverse Seamless Personal Information Networking Applications

摘要

The paper describes the design and implementation of a unique cooperative agents testbed intended for diverse applicatiosn in seamless personal informaiton networking. Teh real-world SPIN~TM1 testbed is aimed at two applicatiosn, anmely seamless messaging and intelligent network management. Both are agent-driven and share agent behaviours. The messaging agents rely on the network management device diagnostic agents for input. The first generation of Seamless Messaging~TM is described in detail. It is user-centric and assumes heterogeneous communication environments intended to support today's nomadic users. A prototype is introduced for the management of messages across distributed information networks. Its aim is to intercept, filter, interpret, and deliver multi-modal messages be they voice, fax, video and/or e-mail messages. A user's Personal Communication Agent~TM (PCA) is charged with delivering messages to the recipient regardless of their target messaging device be it a telephone, a pager, a desktop, a wireless laptop or a wireless phone. PCAs classify and act on incoming messages based on their content. A Secretary Agent~TM routes and tailors urgent messages appropriately to the Device Manager Agnet~TM which delivers the message to a device that the user may be roaming or active on. What makes Seamless Messaging unique is its approach to treating a message in a unversal manner, its ability to mediate between differnet mesaging environmetns and devices, and its capability of tracking and finding users.