10735662
MAS platforms as an enabler of enterprise mobilisation: the state of the art
One of the main application areas for multi-agent systems technology is enterprise mobilization, wherein the main business process actors are nomadic workers. An agent's autonomy, sociality and intelligence are highly prized features when it comes to supporting those mobile workers who are geographically isolated from the main knowledge source (i.e. the corporate Intranet) and are frequently moving from one location to another. Based on experience gained from two field trials of applications (built using for multi-agent systems technology and running on lightweight handheld devices) that support mobile business processes for telecommunications service provisioning and maintenance, this paper proposes desirable metrics for any multi-agent systems platform intended for enterprise mobilisation use. These metrics are then used to compare a number of existing multi-agent systems platforms, and based on the results, this paper identifies some areas for improvement.
30313812
A flexible agent system for change adaptation in supply chains
The importance of supply chain management is increasing with globalization and the advancement of electronic business. Supply chains are dynamic due to frequent changes in suppliers, customers, and products. However, information systems for supply chains are not flexible enough to adapt to the changes, requiring high cost and time for re-implementation and re-customization. This paper suggests a flexible agent system for supply chains that can adapt to the changes in transactions introduced by new products or new trading partners. The flexible agent system consists of an interpretable conversation policy model, a procedure for exchanging new conversation policies, and a mechanism for actual transactions with newly acquired conversation policies. By using the flexible agent system, formation of supply chains becomes more robust to the dynamic changes. To show how the approach can be realized, a PC supply chain application is illustrated with a prototype agent platform.
26133819
Multi-agent Technology as an enabler of Computer Supported Cooperative Work for the Mobile Workforce
This paper proposes an agent-based computer supported cooperative work system known as TeamWorker that enables cooperation between mobile workers for the execution of their jobs by providing services via conversational components (C-COMs). C-COMs, encapsulate agent interaction protocols, which can be dynamically plugged into participating agents. Furthermore, the intelligence and autonomy of agent technology is applied to overcome the barriers faced in mobile computing environments, such as difficulty in monitoring work progress, device diversity, need for multi-modal human agent interface, etc. Finally, we discuss how TeamWorker has been applied to a real mobile business process in a telecommunications company in the UK.
12136049
Content-Based Synchronization Using the Local Invariant Feature for Robust Watermarking
This paper addresses the problem of content-based synchronization for robust watermarking. Synchronization is a process of extracting the location to embed and detect the signature, copyright information, so that it is crucial for the robustness of the watermarking system. In this paper, we will review representative content-based approaches and propose a new synchronization method based on the scale invariant feature transform. In content-based synchronization approaches, it is important to extract robust features even with image distortions and we suspect that the consideration of local image characteristics will be helpful. The scale invariant feature transform regards these characteristics and is invariant to noise, spatial filtering, geometric distortions, and illumination changes of the image. Through experiments, we will compare the proposed method with representative content-based approaches and show the appropriateness for robust watermarking.
7431488
An HMM-Based Threshold Model Approach for Gesture Recognition
A new method is developed using the hidden Markov model (HMM) based technique. To handle nongesture patterns, we introduce the concept of a threshold model that calculates the likelihood threshold of an input pattern and provides a confirmation mechanism for the provisionally matched gesture patterns. The threshold model is a weak model for all trained gestures in the sense that its likelihood is smaller than that of the dedicated gesture model for a given gesture. Consequently, the likelihood can be used as an adaptive threshold for selecting proper gesture model. It has, however, a large number of states and needs to be reduced because the threshold model is constructed by collecting the states of all gesture models in the system. To overcome this problem, the states with similar probability distributions are merged, utilizing the relative entropy measure. Experimental results show that the proposed method can successfully extract trained gestures from continuous hand motion with 93.14% reliability.
5211893
The Growth of Broadband and Electronic Commerce in South Korea: Contributing Factors
From 1998 through 2001, South Korea witnessed a remarkable diffusion in broadband Internet connections. Using published and other data, this paper explores the actions and factors contributing to this diffusion from three viewpoints: government, private sector, and social. We suggest that the matching of demand and supply is the most important factor in the fast diffusion of broadband in Korea. In particular, fierce infrastructure competition led to quality services at a low fixed price. Online gaming exhibits some of the characteristics of a "killer application"; there are also some social and cultural drivers of demand. We then consider the impact that this rapid diffusion has had on electronic commerce. We produce conclusions of value to policymakers.
5288834
Collaborative video searching on a tabletop
Almost all system and application design for multimedia systems is based around a single user working in isolation to perform some task yet much of the work for which we use computers to help us, is based on working collaboratively with colleagues. Groupware systems do support user collaboration but typically this is supported through software and users still physically work independently. Tabletop systems, such as the DiamondTouch from MERL, are interface devices which support direct user collaboration on a tabletop. When a tabletop is used as the interface for a multimedia system, such as a video search system, then this kind of direct collaboration raises many questions for system design. In this paper we present a tabletop system for supporting a pair of users in a video search task and we evaluate the system not only in terms of search performance but also in terms of user–user interaction and how different user personalities within each pair of searchers impacts search performance and user interaction. Incorporating the user into the system evaluation as we have done here reveals several interesting results and has important ramifications for the design of a multimedia search system.
7244802
Design, implementation and testing of an interactive video retrieval system
In this paper we present and discuss the system we developed for the search task of the TRECVID 2002, and its evaluation in an interactive search task. To do this we will look at the strategy we used in designing the system, and we discuss and evaluate the experiments used to determine the value and effectiveness of one system incorporating both feature evidence and transcript retrieval compared to a transcript-only retrieval system. Both systems tested are built on the foundation of the Físchlár System developed and running for a number of years at the CDVP. The system is fully MPEG-7 compliant and uses XML for exchange of information within the overall architecture.