Agent Technologies for the Interactive Multimedia Applications


I have proposed Metamedia Architecture in the second FIPA meeting. Based on the architecture, this document describes Interactive Multimedia Applications as a proposal of agent-based applications for the Tokyo meeting.

What is the Interactive Multimedia Application?

Interactive Multimedia Application is distinguished from "regular" or "traditional" multimedia applications by its symmetric use of communication. With traditional multimedia applications, either CD-ROM or WWW-based, the communication between human end user and the application program is usually asymmetric: lots of multimedia data (sounds, graphics, movies etc.) to receive, just a little (typically mouse clicks and text input from the keyboard) to send.

On the other hand, Interactive Multimedia Application consists of agents talking to each other, which represent multimedia information.

Examples of such applications include:

  • Virtual City
  • Learning Assistance
  • Media Publishing & Subscribing
  • Agent Conference
  • Data Visualization
  • Agent Technologies to Implement the Interactive Multimedia Applications

    In the FIPA Agent Basic Capability (ABC) List, Agent <->Agent interaction is most crucial to implement the Interactive Multimedia Application. We need the following technologies to standardize this level:

  • Agent Modeling/Ontology/Taxonomy (cf. OMG CORBA Object Model)
  • Agent Description Language(s)
  • Agent Interaction Language or Agent Interface Definition Language (such as CORBA IDL) and its mapping to the Agent Description Language(s)
  • Agent Communication Protocol
  • Agent Platform (Agent Adapter, Repository and Invocation: similar to the CORBA concepts)
  • suguri@comtec.co.jp