Abstract
This paper concerns mixed-initiative interaction between users and agents. After classifying agents according to their task and their interactivity with the user, the critical aspects of delegation-based interaction are outlined. Then MASMA, an agent system for distributed meeting scheduling, is described, and the solutions developed to control interaction are explained in detail. The issues addressed concern: the agent capability of adapting its behavior to the user it is supporting; the solution adopted to control the shift of initiative between personal agents, their users and other agents in the environment; the availability of features, e.g. the inspection mechanism, that endow the user with a further level of control to enhance his sense of trust in the agent.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen, J., Miller, B., Ringger, E. and Sikorski, T.: 1996, A robust system for natural spoken dialogue. In: Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Santa Cruz (CA), 62–70.
Amati, G., D’Aloisi, D., Giannini, V. and Ubaldini, F.: 1997, A framework for filtering news and managing distributed data. Journal of Universal Computer Science 3 (8), 1007–1021.
Bates, J.: 1994, The role of emotion in believable agents. Communications of the ACM 37 (7), 122–125.
Beard, D., Palaniappan, M., Humm, A., Banks, D., Nair, A. and Shan, Y.: 1990, A visual calendar for scheduling group meetings. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Los Angeles (CA), 279–290.
Brancaleoni, R., Cesta, A. and D’Aloisi, D.: 1997, MASMA: A multi-agent system for scheduling meetings. In: Proceeding of the 2nd International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology, London (UK). 31–50.
Cesta, A., Collia, M. and D’Aloisi, D.: 1998, Tailorable interactive agents for scheduling meetings. In: F. Giunchiglia (ed.): Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems and Applications. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1980, Berlin: Springer, 153–166.
Cesta, A. and D’Aloisi, D.: 1996, Active interfaces as personal assistants: a case study. SIGCHI Bulletin 28 (3), 108–113.
Cesta, A., D’Aloisi, D. and Giannini, V.: 1995, Active interfaces for useful software tools. In: Y.Anzai, K.Ogawa, and H.Mori (eds.): Symbiosis of Human and Artifacts. New York: Elsevier Science, 225–230.
Cohen, R., Allaby, C., Cumbaa, C., Fitzgerald, M., Ho, K., Hui, B., Latulipe, C., Lu, F., Moussa, N., Pooley, D., Qian, A. and Siddiqi, S.: 1998, What is initiative? User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 8:3–4, 171–214.
D’Aloisi, D. and Cesta, A.: 1997, Controlling Initiative in an Agent-Based System. Technical Report 5T06797, FUB.
Ephrati, E., Zlotkin, G. and Rosenschein, J.: 1994, Meet your destiny: A non-manipulable meeting scheduler. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Chapel Hill (NC), 359–371.
Etzioni, O. and Weld, D.: 1994, A softbot-based interface to the interne. Communications of the ACM 37 (7), 72–76.
Ferguson, G., Allen, J. and Miller, B.: 1996, TRAINS-95: Towards a mixed-initiative planning assistant. In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems (AIPS-96), Edimburgh (Scotland), 70–77.
Finin, T., Weber, J. and et al.: 1994, Specification of the KQML Agent-communication language (Draft).http://www.cs.umbc.edu/kgml/papers/kgmispec.ps.
Friedman, B. and Nissenbaum, H.: 1997, Software agents and user autonomy. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey (CA), 466–469.
Grosz, B. and Sidner, C.: 1986, Attention, intentions, and the structure of discourse. Computational Linguistics 12 (3), 175–204.
Grudin, J.: 1988, Why CSCW applications fail: Problems in the design and evaluation of organizational interfaces. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Portland (OR). 65–84.
Hagen, E.: 1998, An Approach to Mixed-Initiative Spoken Information Retrieval Dialogue. In this issue.
Hayes, T., Sen, S., Arora, N. and Nadella, R.: 1997, An automated meeting scheduling system that utilizes user preferences. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey (CA), 308–314.
Hayes-Roth, B.: 1997, Introduction. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey (CA), xi—Xii.
Hsu, W.-L., Prietula, M. J., Thompson, G. L. and Ow, P. S.: 1993, A mixed initiative scheduling workbench: Integrating AI, OR and HCI. Decision Support Systems 9, 245–257.
Kincaid, C., Dupont, P. and Kaye, A.: 1985, Electronic calendars in the office: An assessment of user needs and current technology. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems 3 (1), 89–102.
Kozierok, R. and Maes, P.: 1993, A learning interface agent for scheduling meetings. In: Proceedings of the 1993 International Workshop on Intelligent User Interfaces, Orlando (FL), 81–88.
Lester, J., Stone, B. and Stelling, G.: 1998, Lifelike pedagogical agents for mixed-initiative problem solving in constructivist learning environments. In this issue.
Lester, J. C. and Stone, B. A.: 1997, Increasing believability in animated pedagogical agents. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey (CA), 16–21.
Lochbaum, K., Grosz, B. and Sidner, C: 1990, Models of plans to support communication: An initial report. In: Proceedings of the Eighth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Boston (MA), 485–490.
Maes, R: 1994, Agents that reduce work and information overload. Communication of the ACM 37 (7), 30–40.
Milewski, A. E. and Lewis, S. H.: 1997, Delegating to software agents. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 46 (4), 485–500.
Mitchell, T., Caruana, R., Freitag, D., McDermott, J. and Zabowski, D.: 1994, Experience with a learning personal assistant. Communication of the ACM 37 (7), 80–91.
Muir, B. M.: 1987, Trust between humans and machines, and the design of decision aids. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 27 (4), 527–539.
Myers, B. A., Giuse, D., Dannenberg, R. B., Zanden, B. V., Kosbie, D., Mickish, A. and Marchai, R: 1990, GARNET: comprehensive support for graphical, highly-interactive user interfaces. IEEE Computer 23 (11), 71–85.
Nwana, H. S.: 1996, Software agents: an overview. The Knowledge Engineering Review 11 (3), 205–244.
Pell, B., Bernard, D. E., Chien, S. A., Gat, E., Muscettola, N., Nayak, R. R, Wagner, M. D. and Williams, B. C.: 1997, An autonomous spacecraft agent prototype. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey (CA), 253–261.
Rich, C. and Sidner, C. L.: 1997, COLLAGEN: When agents collaborate with people. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey (CA), 284–291.
Rich, C. and Sidner, C. L.: 1998, COLLAGEN: A collaboration manager for software interface agents. User Modeling and User-Adopted Interaction 8:3–4, 315–349.
Sen, S. and Durfee, E.: 1996, A contracting model for flexible distributed scheduling. Annals of Operations Research 65, 195–222.
Shneiderman, B.: 1997, Direct manipulation versus agents: Paths to predictable, controllable, and comprehensible interfaces. In: J. M. Bradshaw (ed.): Software Agents. AAAI Press/The MIT Press, 97–106.
Simmons, R., Goodwin, R., Haigh, K.Z., Koenig, S. and O’Sullivan, J.: 1997, A layered architecture for office delivery robots. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Marina del Rey (CA), 245–252.
Smith, S. F. and Lassila, O.: 1994, Toward the development of mixed-initiative scheduling systems. In: M. H. Burstein (ed.): Proceedings ARPA-Rome Laboratory Planning Initiative Workshop, Tucson (AZ), 145–154.
Steiner, D. D., Mahling, D. E. and Haugeneder, H.: 1990, Human-computer cooperative work. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Bandera (TX), 22: 1–28.
Stickel, J. and Johnson, W.: 1997, Mixed-initiative interaction between pedagogical agent and stu- dents in virtual environments. In: S. Haller and S. McRoy (eds.): Papers from 1997 AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Models for Mixed Initiative Interaction, Stanford (CA), 128–134.
Tate, A.: 1997, Mixed-initiative interaction in O-PLAN. In: S. Haller and S. McRoy (eds.): Papers from 1997 AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Models for Mixed Initiative Interaction, Stanford (CA). 163–168.
Walker, M. and Whittaker, S.: 1990, Mixed initiative in dialogue: An investigation into discourse segmentation. In: Proceeding of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Pittsburgh (PA), 70–78.
Whittaker, S. and Sidner, C.: 1996, Email overload: Exploring personal information management of email. In: Proceedings of CHI ‘86 Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM), Vancouver (Canada), 276–283.
Whittaker, S. and Stenton, P.: 1988, Cues and control in expert-client dialogues. In: Proceeding of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Buffalo (NY), 123–130.
Wooldridge, M. J. and Jennings, N. R.: 1995, Intelligent agents: Theory and practice. The Knowledge Engineering Review 10 (2), 115–152.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cesta, A., D’aloisi, D. (1999). Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler. In: Haller, S., Kobsa, A., McRoy, S. (eds) Computational Models of Mixed-Initiative Interaction. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1118-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1118-0_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5171-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-1118-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive