An Agent Framework for Inter-personal Information Sharing
with an RDF-based Repository

Koji Kamei, Sen Yoshida*1, Kazuhiro Kuwabara*2, Jun-ichi Akahani, Tetsuji Satoh

NTT Communication Science Laboratories, NTT Corporation

2-4 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto 619-0237 Japan

kamei@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a framework for personal agents that supports inter-personal information exchange and sharing. The framework offers a repository-centered architecture in which a user can store information resources and annotations. On this framework, applications work collaboratively with the help of the event notification mechanism.

The personal agent especially targets the collecting and utilizing of information that describes how the user handled information resources. The descriptions of interactions are obtained by applications on the agent framework and stored into the RDF repository as annotations to the original information resources. A personal agent consists of applications that utilize these "annotations about interaction" for infortion sharing.

We first discuss "annotation about interaction" in personal environments, then describe the current implementation of our framework that offers an RDF-based repository. The experimental implementations of both communication-oriented and information-sharing-oriented applications on this framework is introduced as a starting point for our approach.


*1
Presently with Research and Development Center, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corporation.
*2
Presently with ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories.