Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon 1 Business Meeting Organizer A Multi-Agent Meeting Scheduler using Mobile Context Kathleen Yang Neha Pattan Alejandro Rivera Martin Griss

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Agenda Problem Vision Related Work Solution Architecture Implementation Experimental results Conclusion Q&A 2

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon The problem… Organizing meetings with multiple people When to meet? Where to meet? Who must attend the meeting? When to reschedule? 3

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Vision Business Meeting Organizer Schedules meetings Co-ordinates common time slots and venues Tracks context of attendees Reschedules meetings 4

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Related Work Lin J.H., J. Wu and S.L. Lai “Ameetzer” Agent based meeting modeling to automate the task of scheduling meetings Chen, H. “An intelligent broker architecture for context aware systems” Broker architecture to maintain a shared model of the context Haynes T., S. Sen, N. Arora and R. Nadela.: “An automated meeting scheduling system that utilizes user preferences” Adopting user preferences in meeting scheduling systems Griss, M., Letsinger, R., Cowan D., Vanhilst, M. and R. Kessler: “CoolAgent: Intelligent Digital Assistants for Mobile” Adaptation of multi agent based meeting schedulers to changing environment Crawford, E. and M. Veloso: “Opportunities for learning in multi-agent meeting scheduling” 5

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Goals Mobile client that interacts with end user Each user owns a software agent that acts like the user’s Personal Secretary Agents communicate and negotiate meetings on behalf of their owners Agent is responsible for tracking owner and notifying other secretaries Agent has access to owner’s personal data, calendar and contacts Agent executes as per owner’s preferences 6

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Business Meeting Organizer Multi agent based solution Architecture Implementation 7

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Solution Secretary Negotiation User Virtual Secretary Calendar Secretary Negotiation User Virtual Secretary Calendar Secretary Negotiation User Virtual Secretary Calendar Secretary Negotiation User Virtual Secretary Calendar Agent Negotiation User Agent A User Agent B Proposal Negotiation Confirmation A B 8

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Architecture (1/2) Agent Behaviors HTTP ServerBehavior 1 CalendarContactsPreferences Behavior 2SMS Sender Services … HTTP SMS Internet 9

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Architecture (2/2) 10 Mobile Client Philosophy: “Request it and forget it” Advantages: Always with you wherever you go Offline capabilities Easy to use Functionality: Location-aware: GPS & GSM Cell ID Offline capabilities Environment: Cell phone XMPP HTTP SMS Communication protocols Ageng Philosophy: “Arrange it and notify user” Environment: Personal Computer (laptop) Company’s central server Advantages: Computing power Access to personal data Privacy: “Don’t share personal information” Functionality: Communicates with other secretaries Negotiate meetings Tracks scheduled meetings

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Implementation (1/2) Multi-agent environment Privacy maintained through strict rules Based on user preferences Integration of location –Computes the time to travel between meetings –Agrees to a meeting only if the time to travel is less than available time between meetings: both before and after proposed meeting –Sends a reminder on time to user to start travelling to next meeting 11

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Implementation (2/2) Details about meeting reminder –Agent queries for user’s location every 5 minutes –Client application on user’s cell phone sends an update to the agent, consisting of GPS co-ordinates –Agent tracks most recent location of user –Agent computes time to travel to next meeting –Agent sends a reminder 10 minutes before the time when user should start travelling to next meeting 12

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon Experimental Results Time Consumption Calendar Privacy Context Awareness 13

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon 14 Time Consumption Comparison 14 ToolsNegotiation time (minutes) Request pending time (minutes) Meeting #1BMO10 Meeting #2Google calendar 20 Meeting #3 750  Meeting #4Telephone110  Meeting #5Face-to-face50  Four Participants

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon 15 Calendar Privacy Comparison 15 ToolsCalendar visible to others Meeting #1BMONo Meeting #2Google calendarYes  Meeting #3 No Meeting #4TelephoneNo Meeting #5Face-to-faceNo Four Participants

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon 16 Context Awareness Comparison 16 ToolsLocationCalendar Meeting #1BMOContinuous Meeting #2Google calendar NoContinuous  Meeting #3 One shot  Meeting #4TelephoneOne shot  Meeting #5Face-to-faceOne shot  Four Participants

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon 17 Conclusion Time spent using BMO is a fraction of that using manual techniques like and phone calls Manual techniques do not scale well for meetings with several attendees, BMO does! BMO scores over other techniques in terms of –Efficiency –Privacy –Context Awareness

Carnegie MellonCarnegie Mellon 18 Q & A