An Open Agent Architecture

Software Agents

Volume

Software Agents

Contents

Tile goal of this ongoing project is to develop an open agent architecture and accompanying user interface for networked desktop and handheld machines. The system we are building should support distributed execution of a user’s requests, interoperability of multiple application subsystems, addition of new agents, and incorporation of existing applications. It should also be transparent; users should not need to know where their requests are being executed, nor how. Finally, in order to facilitate the user’s delegating tasks to agents, the architecture will be served by a multimodal interface, including pen, voice, and direct manipulation. Design considerations taken to support this functionality will be discussed below.