US 7,036,128 B1 · Using a community of distributed electronic agents to support a highly mobile, ambient computing environment

Abstract

A highly mobile, ambient computing environment is disclosed for serving a knowledge worker away from the their desk. The present invention allows a knowledge worker to get increased leverage from personal, networked, and interactive computing devices while in their car, airplane seat, or in a conference room with others. An Open Agent Architecture is used to incorporate elements such as GPS agents, speech recognition, and opportunistic connectivity among meeting participants. Communication and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators, which are responsible for matching requests, from users and agents, with descriptions of the capabilities of other agents. It is not generally required that a user or agent know the identities, locations, or number of other agents involved in satisfying a request, and relatively minimal effort is involved in incorporating new agents and “wrapping” legacy applications. Extreme flexibility is achieved through an architecture organized around the declaration of capabilities by service-providing agents, the construction of arbitrarily complex goals by users and service-requesting agents, and the role of facilitators in delegating and coordinating the satisfaction of these goals, subject to advice and constraints that may accompany them.

Claims45

Dependent claims

A collaborative computer-implemented community of distributed electronic agents, organized to provide a mobile computing environment, the computer-implemented community of distributed electronic agents comprising:

an agent registry wherein one or more capabilities of each of the electronic agents are registered in the form of an interagent communication language (ICL), wherein the interagent language includes a layer of conversational protocol defined by event types and parameter lists associated with one or more events, and wherein the parameter lists further refine the one or more events;
a facilitator agent arranged to coordinate cooperative task completion among the electronic agents by delegating one or more received ICL goals to a selected one or more of the electronic agents based upon the registered capabilities of the selected agents;
one or more service-providing electronic agents, being in bi-directional communication with the facilitator agent, including at least one location agent operable to ascertain a current physical location of a user;
and
one or more computer interface agents being in bi-directional communication with the facilitator agent, the mobile computer interface agents being operable to process at least one mobile user input type and to responsively generate and present to the facilitator agent one or more ICL goals corresponding to the user's desired request.

2 more elements

A method for providing a mobile, ambient computing environment utilizing a community of distributed electronic agents, the community of agents including one or more user interface agents and at least one location agent providing information as to a current physical location of a user, the method comprising the acts of:

(a) registering one or more capabilities for each of the electronic agents in an interagent communication language (ICL), wherein the interagent language includes a layer of conversational protocol defined by event types and parameter lists associated with one or more events, and wherein the parameter lists further refine the one or more events;
(b) receiving one or more user input requests presented in one or more mobile input types;
(c) using the one or more user interface agents to interpret said input request and generate a corresponding goal formulated in ICL;
(d) using a facilitator agent to delegate the ICL goal, in the form of one or more ICL sub-goals, to a selected one or more of the electronic agents based upon the registered capabilities of the agents;
(e) using the selected electronic agents to perform the delegated ICL sub-goals;
(f) in course of said performance by the selected electronic agents, generating one or more new ICL goals for processing by the facilitator agent in accordance with step (d);
and
(g) iteratively performing the process of steps (d)–(f) until the original ICL goal is satisfied, wherein one or more of the ICL sub-goals or the new ICL goals requires user location information provided by the location agent.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Using a community of distributed electronic agents to support a highly mobile, ambient computing environment

Life of this patent

Using a community of distributed electronic agents to support a highly mobile, ambient computing environment

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims45