Task Achieving Agents on the World Wide Web An Introduction Sharif Univ. of Tech. Computer Eng. Dep. Semantic Web Course Mohsen Lesani 13 Ord 1374

2 Motivation World Wide Web, a place for –Finding Things Data models and standards developed to date mostly relate to retrieve information –Doing Things We need shared models and ontologies involved in doing and planning

3 Standards for Representing Activities A common ontology and representation for activities, plans and processes Two stands –Military Planning Core Plan Representation (CPR) Shared Plan and Activities Representation (SPAR) –Standards Community Process Interchange Format (PIF) Process Specification Language (PSL)

4 and is an activity ontology similar to SPAR. is the more general ontology for design and configuration.

5 and Planning is –The making of decisions (Issues) that –Select activities to perform (Nodes) that –Create, modify or use the plan products (Variables) –Regarding the time (Ordering) –Considering the authority, resources and other (Auxiliary) constraints

6 and constraint model of activity –I: Issues (Implied) Constraints –N: Node Constraints –OVA: Detailed Constraints O: Ordering Constraints V: Variable Constraints A: Auxiliary Constraints –Authority Constraints –Resource Constraints –C: Critical constraints nearly do as OV

7 and The underlying thesis is –Representing the planning process as a partially ordered network of activities –Representing the activity as a set of constraints on the behaviors possible in the domain –Activity communication can take place through the interchange of such constraint information

8 and Uses are –Knowledge representation and acquisition and are used to represent –The plan artifacts especially when these are still in the process of being designed and synthesized and –The capabilities, collaborations and processes used to synthesize these artifacts and can be well represented in XML –Formal Analysis and System manipulation To act as an otology underlying formal reasoning and automatic manipulation of plans and synthesized artifacts –User communication

9 Open Planning process Panels (OP3) Real-world planning A multiuser multiagent collaboration To synthesis a solution to a requirement Alternative courses of action are developed, evaluated and compared By people with different roles collaboratively By software pieces for planning, scheduling, simulation and evaluation Acting in parallel, sharing resources and communicating results

10 Open Planning process Panels (OP3) OP3 proposes using panels to –Coordinate the workflow between multiple agents and –Visualize the development and evaluation of multiple courses of actions (COA) The panels are tailored to support user roles requirements and authorities.

11 Open Planning process Panels (OP3) The purpose of OP3 is to –Coordinate the workflow between agents (humans and systems such as AI-Planners, Schedulers and plan evaluators) working in parallel on distinct parts of the plan synthesis –Display the planning process as a partially ordered network of actions (PERT chart) with some actions having expansions to another partially ordered networks which is encoded using an activity modeling language, such as –Allow the development and evaluation of multiple courses of actions (COAs) –Display the status of the steps in the courses of actions –Allow the users to compare the products of the courses of actions –Allow the users to control the next steps on the workflow fringe

12 Open Planning process Panels (OP3) Methodology for building OP3s –Consider and assign roles and authorities to agents (humans and systems) involved –Construct an activity model of the planning process showing the partially ordering and decompositions of the actions –Indicate which agents can carry out which actions –Construct specific OP3 interfaces for each of the human agents

13 Application 1: O-Plan on the web Two human agents –Task Assigner (TA): Sets the requirements for a particular course of action (i.e. top level tasks) Selects the appropriate evaluation criteria for the resulting plans –Planner: Uses O-Plan to generate a number of courses of action for a given set of top level requirements Returning only the best courses of action to the TA The two panels were constructed using a CGI HTTP server in Common Lisp One System –O-Plan: is an automated planning agent to: To generate plans for the planner user

14 Application 2: Air Campaign Planning Process Panel (ACP3) Brings together 11 separately developed software systems that –Work together to create and evaluate multiple courses of action in the air campaign domain –Communicate with each other by exchanging KQML messages Written entirely in Java From U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Planning Initiative (ARPI)

15 Application 3: Wireless O-Plan (WOPlan) Motivation: –Available web-based demonstrations of O- Plan propose problem domains involving various military disaster relief and evacuation operations –The aim of O-Plan was to create a mobile interface for the O-Plan system A mobile telephone or personal digital assistant (PDA) can retrieve a plan containing a checklist to follow from O- Plan in situations in which the user has insufficient experience.

16 Application 3: Wireless O-Plan (WOPlan) Architecture of WOPlan: –Developed as a web application WAP Client –May be any device that has a browser that conforms to the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) –Nokia WAP Toolkit Wireless markup language (WML) browser emulator was used in the development and testing instead of a physical WAP device WOPlan Servlet – A Java Servlet hosted within the Jakarta Tomcat Web Server –Accepts requests from multiple clients simultaneously –Sends messages to and receives messages from O-Plan Server through Standard O-Plan Task Assignment Interface –Dynamically creates WML pages and sends them to the WAP client O-Plan Server –Sits in the bottom tier of architecture and responds to requests from the WOPlan Server

17 Application 3: Wireless O-Plan (WOPlan) Human-Computer interaction issues –Users expect their interaction with mobile devices to be relief whereas users sitting at a workstation are prepared for a more prolonged session –Browsing and data entry are slow and cumbersome and should be kept to a minimum A mobile device needs only to be slightly poorly designed to be rendered useless. The design of mobile interface for O- Plan is made more difficult by the limited screen size.

18 Application 3: Wireless O-Plan (WOPlan) Investigation of mobile devices specific properties –Voice Technology The use of VoiceXML to make internet content and information accessible via voice and phone –Positioning The provision of location services (LCS) as a standard for mobile devices is still currently at the design stage

19 The end of the story