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The current distribution of CASCADE includes
three rudimentary agents that have been developed for demonstration purposes.
In terms of the overall architecture described earlier, they are simple service
agents that are explicitly invoked by the user and terminate on task
completion. The logic and persistent memory associated with each agent is
minimal.
- Awareness Agent This agent presents the user with a set of
pictures of group members who are currently using CASCADE. As the group members
start and stop sessions, the gallery of pictures is updated to reflect the
identity of members who are available. Clicking on a picture starts an
interactive talk session with the selected user. If a user has no picture
registered, then a label made up of the username is substituted.
- Communication Agent This agent keeps track of the locations
from which users of CASCADE connect. When invoked, the agent is prepared to
begin searching for people supplied by the user. It keeps track of who you are
interested in contacting and keeps track of the places these people connect
from. When the user indicates an interest in speaking with someone, the system
begins looking for these people on the internet. If they are found, it sets up
an interactive talk session between the parties and takes them off the ``want
to contact lis''.
- Chalkboard Agent This agent sets up a synchronous whiteboard
session at a users request if any of the other members of the users group are
online. In this case, online is narrowly defined in terms of ``working on
CASCADE''. When activated the agent checks the document the user is working
on, and from this information determines the group responsible for the
document. Knowing this the agent check to see if these people are connected,
and if so, goes back to the document, looks to see what portion of the document
is visible on the users screen, copies this portion of the document, and puts
it on a whiteboard. It then exports the whiteboard to the displays of all the
group members who are active assigning each one a different color for the
interaction.
Next: Selected Planned Agents
Up: CASCADE Agents
Previous: CASCADE Agents
Michael Spring
Mon Dec 16 14:39:59 EST 1996