Agent-based TV Broadcasting
- From Production to Distribution -

I. OVERVIEW by Yeun-Bae Kim

Agents are currently being tested in many different fields of application, such as management of electronic mail, business schedules, and information retrieval on Internet. In the broadcasting field very few agent-based systems have been proposed. Some of the agent-like applications already proposed are systems to assist users retrieving desired programs in video- or multimedia-on-demand services.
Yet, the broadcasting field can possibly offer potential markets for new business and testbeds for agent-based systems because it creates, comprises, and deals with a huge amount of multimedia information on a daily basis. Figure 1.1 outlines an agent-based broadcasting scheme that provides services from TV production to distribution.

Figure 1.1 - Agent-based broadcasting scheme

User agents -

User agents are implemented in the user terminals. They are assigned primarily to gather information from incoming TV programs and from other networks, and then store information that may interest users. There are three subtypes of user agents that cooperate with each other to meet user requests.

1. Presenter: Users currently refer to lists of TV programs in daily newspapers or TV guides for program selections. This agent executes all these activities on behalf of the users. The searcher shows the user the stored programs or their summarized versions for previews, according to the user's preference, in an organized way using special tools such as TVML (TV Program-Making Language).
2. Searcher: This agent is designed to survey detailed background information of ongoing programs at the user's request. For instance, if the user asks for further information about a program, it will provide names, and detailed information about actors and more.
3. Communicator: This agent is implemented in the user's terminal by a broadcasting station. Its role is to maintain direct and private communication between the user and the station. Therefore, so-called interactive TV programs can be achieved with the communicator acting as an intermediary. Moreover, the communicator offers the user commercials, lists of new programs to come, and more.

Broadcaster agents -

These agents are implemented in the information systems installed at broadcasting stations. They are divided into three subgroups. One includes agents supporting program production, and the others provide information to the user agents through the networks.

1. Production supporters: These agents retrieve the bulk of information from the video archives located at the stations or from other databases in networks. They provide the production staff required information to support program production. The information comprises video images and other data needed for the entire production procedure, from planning and shooting to editing.
2. Communicators: These agents exchange information with other agents, in particular with user agents, to provide feedback user reactions to new program productions.
3. Promoters: Program promotion agents offer various kinds of information regarding programs through the networks. Such information includes lists of relevant information sources, production of and episodes during production, and etc. The promoters also get vital information from production supporting agents, which keep the production histories of all programs in their archives, and produce a report in the form required by the user agents and offer it via networks.

Network agents -

These agents are implemented in the networks and act as go-betweens with the user and broadcaster agents. Moreover, they discover other information sources available on the computer networks and provide them to other agents. The network agents exploit not only TV program archives, but also the massive amount of information offered by various sources in Internet such as WWW (World Wide Web) and other databases to provide useful data for the users and broadcaster agents.

Using agents, it would be possible to create tailored channels that cater to only a small number of users. Or agents could create as many different programs as possible from a pool of program archives or other video materials, according to the users' preferences. It might even be possible for an agent to become a customized TV channel itself.

In this contribution paper, we propose the following three agent-based applications. All these applications presuppose that all incoming information is properly indexed.

II. AGENT-BASED BROADCASTING APPLICATIONS

2.1 THE PRESENTER by Yeun-Bae Kim and Masaki Hayashi

The Presenter is an interface agent that is a part of the user agent mentioned in previous section. The Presenter is implemented in the user terminals and interacts directly with the user via natural language dialog. Its primary functions are

1. to filter and gather information from incoming information, and
2. to present it in a tailored and user-friendly manner.

As shown in Figure 1.2, the core element of the Presenter is the Director Agent. The Director Agent, or simply DA, coordinates other sub-agents (e.g., Sound Agent, Studio Setup Agent, Narration Agent) to produce unique programs for that user. Basically, the DA acquires knowledge on the user's preferences through language interactions and by referring to the user's profile. Once, the DA knows the user's request, it starts to generate programs written in TVML that can be immediately compiled into real-time TV programs.

Figure 1.2 - Schematic View of The Presenter

Technologies required for Implementation:

• Human-Agent Communication Technologies
• Agent-Agent Communication Technologies
• Domain Ontologies for Broadcasting
• Profile Acquisition and RepresentationTechnologies
• Information Representation Technologies
• Multimedia Information Manipulation Technologies

2.2 AGENT-BASED MULTIMEDIA BROADCASTING by Katsunori Aoki

• - Multimedia Library with Cooperative Agents -

This section describes information managing agents for Multimedia Broadcasting Application as a proposal for agent-based applications for the Tokyo meeting.

What is it?

In this application, an information managing agent (IMA) stays in a multimedia device such as a DVCR or DVD, hard disk, DAVIC STU or PC. It manages the contents of that device and it's work plan, and works cooperatively to help an information presentation agent (IPA). This section (2.2) deals with IMAs and the interaction among them. Figure 2.1 illustrates these agents in this application.

An IPA stays at a STU, PC or personal mobile terminal, and deals with Human-Agent interaction and information presentation. And an IMA at that terminal manages multimedia contents to help the IPA. This IMA cooperates with other IMAs at other multimedia devices to search for content, to exchange it or to book a TV program.

Figure 2.1. Multimedia Devices and Cooperative Agents.

How do they work?

For example, Figure 2.2 shows interactions of these agents before an IPA displays some multimedia content. The IPA asks an IMA to prepare the content (F3). Then that IMA asks its colleagues if some IMA can supply that content. Then some IMA at a multimedia device responds to this inquiry (F2). Then the inquirer IMA chooses the most suitable IMA and asks it to send the content (F2).

And for another example, an IPA asks an IMA to book next Sunday's TV program. That IMA inquires other IMAs, that is NIU agents and Storage-media agents, if they will be able to serve their resources. Then it choose a suitable IMA and reserves Sunday's resources to the record TV program.

What are its strong points?

The merits are as follows:

• Flexible structure, wide extensibility.
• Multiple users can share their multimedia devices and contents.

Figure 2.2 - Agents' interactions and Multimedia connection.

Agent Technologies to Implement this Application

Agent-Agent (IMA-IMA) interaction is the most important part of this application. The following technologies should be standardized.

1. Universal Agent Name
   To determine an agent with which to interact, unique a name space is required.
2. Agent Language Negotiating Protocol
   Since there must be a lot of agent-based applications, many application-oriented agent languages will be developed. Therefore, some simple protocol should be standardized to negotiate agent language.
3. Agent Finding Protocol
   For automatic configuration, or robustness, agents must have a function to find agents.

Some agent communication protocols and languages may be established to do their work, such as seeking information or reserving multimedia resources.

For example, some protocols are illustrated in the following annex.

ANNEX

Universal Agent Name

• A naming rule like that for E-mail addresses may be used as an universal agent name, such as "agent-name@FQDN". FQDN is an abbreviation of Fully Qualified Domain Name.

Agent Language Negotiation and Agent Finding Protocol

• If a newcomer agent wants to find another agent, it should broadcast an Inquire Message with its name and a list of languages which it can accept. If another active agent receives this message, then it replies to the message with its name and acceptable language list as shown in Table 2.1. Figure 2.3 shows the timeline diagram of agent finding messages.

Figure 2.3 - Timeline Diagram of Agent Finding Messages

Media Query Protocol

• This is a sample protocol for seeking information. Figure 2.4 shows Timeline Diagram of Media Query Messages. An inquirer agent broadcasts an Inquire Message to all cooperative agents with a query ID and the URI of the information as shown in Table 2.2. An agent which can supply those information replies to the inquirer agent. Then the inquirer chooses an agent and sends a request for the information.

Figure 2.4 - Timeline Diagram of Media Query Messages

2.3 INDEXED TV PROGRAM FILTERING by Kenjiro Kai and Masahiro Shibata

ISDB : Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting

Conventional broadcasting features a basic usage format in which the user selects from a variety of programs and information is transmitted in one direction, from broadcast stations to the broadcast receiver. The expansion of digital broadcasting is expected to transform conventional television and radio into multi-functional, high-quality, and multi-channel systems and enable the provision of a wide variety of new information services such as electronic newspapers. We call this new type of value-added broadcasting services ISDB : Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting.

Filtering agent

In such a scenario, it is vital that the user be able to access what he or she desires from the huge amount of programs and information available. A filtering agent can be of useful assistance in satisfying this need (see the figure below). In particular, the agent must possess an ability for autonomous learning of the user's profile (i.e. the likes and interests of the user), and based on them, make plans for personalized information filtering.

Indexed data stream

One of the most important factors in building such system is how an agent can manipulate the broadcasting data streams according to their semantic contents. In ISDB, the TV programs will be broadcast with index data that describe the actual contents. This can be valuable for agents for navigating at will to gather or retrieve programs and other information. In this context, the content-based index may play an important role in agent technologies.It may help increase the agent's ability and reliability by simplifying its recognition mechanisms, which are the most complicated of its components. It is also desirable that indexes associated with programs and information be of a uniform format.

Capability of a filtering agent

• Dialog with a user
• Autonomous learning of user's profile
• Making plans for information filtering based on user's profile
• Recognition of semantic contents of broadcasting data streams with their indexes
• Interaction with other agents (e.g., presentaion agents, information management agents)