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.
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.
6879205
Mobile access to personal digital photograph archives
Handheld computing devices are becoming highly connected devices with high capacity storage. This has resulted in their being able to support storage of, and access to, personal photo archives. However the only means for mobile device users to browse such archives is typically a simple one-by-one scroll through image thumbnails in the order that they were taken, or by manually organising them based on folders. In this paper we describe a system for context-based browsing of personal digital photo archives. Photos are labeled with the GPS location and time they are taken and this is used to derive other context-based metadata such as weather conditions and daylight conditions. We present our prototype system for mobile digital photo retrieval, and an experimental evaluation illustrating the utility of location information for effective personal photo retrieval.
21234984
A distributed utility max-min flow control algorithm
A fair allocation of utility (application-layer performance) is essential in providing QoS (Quality of Service) guarantee. However, there have been few researches in the literature of utility-fair network resource allocation scheme. In this paper, we propose a distributed utility max-min flow control algorithm which accommodates application diversity in that it does not require the concavity of utility functions, and is scalable in that it does not require any per-flow operation in the network. The algorithm is proved to be convergent under the assumption that there exists a single bottleneck link and the communication delay between any two links in the network is bounded. Although the convergence of the algorithm is analyzed only for the case of a single bottleneck link, we show through simulations that the proposed algorithm works as designed for the case of multiple bottleneck links as well.
2326376
Dublin City University Video Track Experiments for TREC 2002
Dublin City University participated in the Feature Extraction task and the Search task of the TREC-2002 Video Track. In the Feature Extraction task, we submitted 3 features: Face, Speech, and Music. In the Search task, we developed an interactive video retrieval system, which incorporated the 40 hours of the video search test collection and supported user searching using our own feature extraction data along with the donated feature data and ASR transcript from other Video Track groups. This video retrieval system allows a user to specify a query based on the 10 features and ASR transcript, and the query result is a ranked list of videos that can be further browsed at the shot level. To evaluate the usefulness of the feature-based query, we have developed a second system interface that provides only ASR transcript-based querying, and we conducted an experiment with 12 test users to compare these 2 systems. Results were submitted to NIST and we are currently conducting further analysis of user performance with these 2 systems.
14600812
Implementation and Analysis of Several Keyframe-Based Browsing Interfaces to Digital Video
In this paper we present a variety of browsing interfaces for digital video information. The six interfaces are implemented on top of Fischlar, an operational recording, indexing, browsing and playback system for broadcast TV programmes. In developing the six browsing interfaces, we have been informed by the various dimensions which can be used to distinguish one interface from another. For this we include layeredness (the number of "layers" of abstraction which can be used in browsing a programme), the provision or omission of temporal information (varying from full timestamp information to nothing at all on time) and visualisation of spatial vs. temporal aspects of the video. After introducing and defining these dimensions we then locate some common browsing interfaces from the literature in this 3-dimensional "space" and then we locate our own six interfaces in this same space. We then present an outline of the interfaces and include some user feedback.
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.