Intelligent Interactive Technology
FLOCK - Flexible Organiser of Content and Knowledge
FLOCK is
intended to automatically profile and categorise electronic documents
(e.g., e-mail content) for each user, based on the user's history of
maintaining e-knowledge. In particular, FLOCK attempts to flexibly
associate e-mail content with appropriate folders (represented by software
agents), dependent on the user behaviour observed in the past and the
present.
The follow-up prototype (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 great diversity of devices (PC, PDAs,
mobile phone, I-TV, fax), and support a full range of media (text, voice,
voice messaging, video, etc.).
Our longer-term goal is the next generation interactive systems that customise and deliver 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.
FLOCK is supported by our multi-agent platform (DBP-MAP), and is motivated by studies of emergent, rather than hard-coded, behaviour. A well-known biological example of emergent behaviour is the flocking behaviour of birds. It can be totally simulated with three simple rules: (i) maintain a minimum distance from other birds or other objects; (ii) match the velocity of birds in the neighbourhood; (iii) move towards the perceived centre of mass of the nearby birds. Faced with an obstacle, the simulated flock splits around and reunites past it.
With the help of FLOCK we hope to maintain complex heterogeneous e-content by interpreting and following simple localised rules - taking into account knowledge about the situation at hand and adapting to the user profile and preferences.
To toplast updated
July 11, 2005 05:35 PM
Mikhail.Prokopenko@csiro.au