Agents

•Agent: An agent does things.

An agent acts on behalf of someone or somthig.

-Attribute: Delegation

Communication skills

Autonomy

Monitoring

Actuation

Intelligent

O.S. Agents

•O.S. Agents: perform tasks that ordinarily require the user interaction with the O.S..

-An intelligent Utility System Agent System Agent for Win95

Provides a time-based scheduler but no event-based triggers.

Function: Disk space monitor – Low, Defragement

Personalized newspaper

Interface Agent -Interface Agent

Open Sesame! for MacOS

Can schedule both time-based and event-based tasks.

time-based: A time-based task is something that the user does at a particular time.

For instance, opening mail every day at 9:00.

event-based: An event-based task is something that the use does in relation to another task.

For instance, opening the clock before logging into an web site.

Operation method of Open Sesame!

Operation method:Step1: The learning module looks for repetitive patterns that haven’t been customated.

(patterns – the high level events like opening a folder, quitting an application, etc.)

Step2: If it finds one, creates an observation dialog. The user has four choices.

1. Accept, Open Sesame! Create an instruction that automates the task.

2. Decline

Operation method of Open Sesame!Step2: If it finds one, creates an observation dialog. The user has four choices.

1. Accept, Open Sesame! Create an instruction that automates the task.

2. Decline

3. Edit the task to fine-tune observation.

4. Postpone decision until later.

Step3: The inference engine compares user patterns with patterns for instructions that have already been automated.

Operation method of Open Sesame!Step4: If it finds one, perform the automated

instruction.

Other ways that Open Sesame! Customize itself.

1. Turning an instruction off if the user repeatedly cancels an instruction during confirmation.

2. Turning an instruction off if the user repeatedly undoes the action that instruction perform.

3. Learning the user’s desire to change notification preferences.

Application Agents•Application Agents

-Application agents that provide the agent-enabled features of an application.

-Interface agents that reside outside of the application they serve. It communicates through the application API to monitor user behavior.

Application agents – Wizards•Application agents – Wizards

Used in Microsoft applications to provide help.

-Wizards are useful for complex tasks that users may have difficulty in learning.

- Word wizard help users create preformatted documents.

Email Agent – Beyond Mail•Email Agent – Beyond Mail

It is a rule-based agent for managing email.

- It can filter incoming messages on arrival, forward them automatically.- The user define the message rules.- Operation, when a specific event happens, if it meets certain conditions, then take this action.

For instances, when a new mail arrives, if it is about the beauty, then forward the message to fclin@.

Search Agent – Web Compass•Search Agent – Web Compass

Web compass is an example of a client search agent for the web.

- The Internet search engines provide a first cut, and client search engines improve the quality of the information..

Application Suite Agents•Application Suite Agents

Perform tasks within an application suite.- An application suite agent – Microsoft Bob

1. Bob is an integrated suite of eight programs such as letter writer, calendar, to-do list, and others.

For instances, the birthday entry into an address book is read in automatically into your calendar program.

2. Bob has animated personal guides for assisting the user’s interaction with the various components of the suite.

An application suite agent – Microsoft Bob

3. Bob brings a cartoonlike visual shell to the underlying wizard-style interaction.

For instance, when the user clicks on the cut button without selecting a field, the personal guide informs the user how to make use of this operation.

Web Search Agents•Web Search Agents: employ robots that traverse the web hyperspace on behalf of users to provide search services.

-Web Robots: have different strategies for traversing the web graph.

Search engine architecture

• QueryServer

IndexDatabase

Web robot

Web

WebBrowser

User

Search Engine

Information Filtering Agents•Information Filtering Agents: filter the information on the Internet according to users’ personal interests.

-ZDNET personal view: personal newspaper

-NewsPage Direct: personal newspaper

NewsHound -NewsHound: personalized newspaper

1.searches the stories in several newspapers to find articles that match a user’s profile.

2. Selected articles matching the user’s profile are sent to the users by email.

3. A user can either use a web or an email form to specify a profile for NewsHound.

Off-line Delivery Agents•Off-line Delivery Agents: the information agent has its own information delivery software on the desktop for automatic information delivery and management of delivered information.

-Freeloader (www.freeloader.com)

a free service that lets users subscribes to specific web pages for automatic delivery.

V-Cast -V-Cast (delivery.reach.com)

an advertising-supported personalized delivery system for video clips to be played back at five frames per second.

Point Cast Network -Point Cast Network(WWW.pointcast.com)

an advertising-supported personalized newspaper displayed as screen saver.

1.The desktop client works in the background and downloads the specified information automatically according to a user-specified schedule.

Notification Agents•Notification Agents: notifies users of events of significance to them when an event is a change in the state of information.

1.Content change in a particular web page.

2.User-specified reminders for personal events such as birthday.

- URL-minder(www.netmind.com/url-minder)

retrieves web resources periodically to dectect changes from the last retrieval.

Other Service Agents•Other Service Agents

- Announcement agents: Remind users of important occasions(eg. Birthday)

- Book agents: Track newly released books that match a reading interests.

- Food and Wine agents: Remember each user’s previous purchases and testing notes.

Intranet agent-Business information monitoring agents: Monitor the exchange of information on the Internet relating products, industry and companies, and make a formal report of the findings.

-An Intranet agent help manage business process on behalf of the employees.

Mobil Agents•Mobil Agents: can transport themselves from a client computer to various servrs for remote execution.

1.mobile agents transport both the data and program. RPC transport data.

Mobile agent environment

•

Clientagent

Clientagent

Clientagent

serveragent

serveragent

Desktop

Server 1 Server 2

Cyber Agent - Cyber Agent – A Java-based mobile agent system by FTP software is an integrated mobile-agent frame-work based on Java technology.

Launcher: send an sent to its destination.

Listener: receives and unpackages incoming agents before passing them onto the agent monitor.

Monitor: monitors agent activities, and provides agent an execution environment.

CyberAgent platform architecture

•

Agent Listener

AgentMonitor

AgentLauncher

Incoming Agents

OutgoingAgents