Intelligent Interactive Technology

AIMS  -  Adaptive  and  Interactive  Mobile  Systems  (Chief's  Special  Project)

The intent of the CMIS  Chief's Special Projects  (CSP)  scheme is to encourage innovation in the Division's research and development. The target outcomes normally include initiation of new research themes, availability of a skills base in an emerging technology and demonstration of fresh opportunities for our industry allies.

The Chief's Special Project on "Adaptive and Interactive Mobile Systems" (AIMS) started on 12 November 2001, with the approved duration of 6 months (18 person-months). The project develops software prototypes and IP for "next generation" adaptive and interactive mobile systems that enable profiling and delivery of electronic content. 

Human beings are routinely dealing with the increasing complexity of modern technology. Advanced information and communication systems bring together various machines - ranging from standard stationary workstations, through to mobile personal appliances (notebook computers, phones, hand-held digital assistants) and increasingly embedded computational devices (parts of spacecraft cockpits, smart cards or digital television). These systems must interact with each other and human beings while dealing with an increasing distribution of content information, knowledge, communication channels, and other resources.

Our goal is customisation and delivery of information to users in real-time via the appropriate medium and on the appropriate device, depending on knowledge about the situation at hand and adapting to the user profile and preferences. 

Intelligent agents technology and technologies for customised information delivery and human-computer interaction, developed in CMIS during the last 3 years, provide a framework where users and mobile appliances can be modelled as embedded software agents, co-operating and collaborating to achieve desired outcomes, while delivering smart content analysis and flexible tailoring

The primary objectives of the AIMS project: 

• to develop algorithms, architectures and software for adaptive interactive mobile systems with an adjustable degree of autonomy; 
• to enable faster, smarter and more robust customised information profiling and delivery in time-critical local and remote services.

The initial prototype - Flexible Organiser of Content and Knowledge (FLOCK) - deals with the e-mail overload problem. It is intended to automatically profile and categorise electronic documents (e.g., e-mail content) for each user, dependent on the user behaviour observed in the past and the present. In particular, FLOCK employs intelligent agents cooperating in a Knowledge Factory. The end result is a flexible categorisation of e-mail content into appropriate folders and a seamless integration with a third-party software (eg., Microsoft Outlook). 

The follow-up prototype - full-scale AIMS - addresses the problems of maintaining and delivering e-knowledge remotely with the help of suitable interactive systems. These stationary and mobile systems may have adjustable degrees of autonomy, cover a wide variety of situations with a diversity of devices (hand-held PCs, PDAs, mobile phones), and support a range of media (text, voice, voice messaging, etc.).  

Have a look at some of the PDAs that are being evaluated at the moment.