Abstract
It is argued in this paper that interface agent concepts and technology previously applied primarily to generic tasks, such as electronic mail management, are applicable to complex domain-based systems. Interface agents in these specialized domains require substantial amounts of domain-specific and task-specific knowledge in order to be useful to the system end-users. This makes their development potentially lengthy and costly. A way of removing this obstacle is to create a workbench for developing interface agents in complex domains. The paper describes research to create such a workbench, based on the COGNET framework for user-modeling (Zachary et al., 1992). COGNET is a well-established and validated technique for user cognitive modeling. A COGNET-based Generator of Intelligent Agents (GINA) workbench is described, in which an agent-developer creates a cognitive model of a user’s task/work strategy, and automatically translates the model into an executable user model within a interface agent ‘shell’. Specific functionality is then added to allow the agent to use the embedded user model to reason about and help the system user perform tasks, solve problems, and manage attention. Examples of GINA-based agent applications in complex system environments are given.
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Zachary, W., le Mentec, JC., Ryder, J. (1996). Interface Agents in Complex Systems. In: Human Interaction with Complex Systems. The Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science, vol 372. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1447-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1447-9_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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