Design and implementation of a personal assistant for mobile device users using agent technology

Abstract

Programs which semi-autonomously act on behalf of software applications or users and execute tasks are called agents. Agent technology is used to design the personal assistant, which falls under the category of software agents. The personal assistant is broken down into different agent components and forms a partially ad-hoc multi-agent system. Though the personal assistant is intended for mobile device users and executes in mobile devices, some of its components are executed in a workstation i.e., desktop PC. The personal assistant's components that are executed in a workstation act as a gateway of communication for the personal assistant. This approach resolves problems such as unstable execution environments, overloading, and insufficient resources in mobile devices. The personal assistant is executed on the PersonalJava runtime environment and the MicroFIPA-OS agent platform. The personal assistant's components in the workstation are executed on the Java Runtime Environment and the FIPA-OS agent platform. The personal assistant could assist a mobile device user while executing tasks such as file and media transfer, e-mail formatting, address book maintenance, and report retrieval. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)