In this paper we show how an artificial intelligence system is able to recognize actions of a group of people during remote meetings. It is based on the combination of several basic detections. We explain why it is a very important task in order to help a coach manage teams. In particular, we explain how the recognition of discussions allows to measure the collaboration between participants or possibly their isolation. We detail the action of Eye Contact where two people look at each other during a discussion. We present the algorithm of the module of our system in charge of the recognition of an Eye Contact action and the difficulties raised by this module. We conclude with the heuristics rules that would allow to detect higher level of group actions from individual actions in brainstorming sessions.

This paper presents the concept of Digital Ji-in, a framework for managing permanent digital identifiers whose structure is based on a peer to peer network. The origin of the term Digital-Ji-in is explained in the paper. We describe several types of identifiers and explain why their management is already an important issue. We show that some identifiers have been reused, creating significant problems. We propose a framework for maintaining identifier information safely over a long period of time. We present its structure based on a secure network of peers. We also describe some use cases of this framework. However, as only identifiers are recorded mechanically, problems may arise if data should be associated with them. We discuss this issue at the end of the paper.

In this paper, we describe an AI-based system that recognizes the activity status of several people from video streams during brainstorming meetings. Deep learning is often used to recognize video characteristics but requires a huge amount of computer resources. This makes it difficult to keep track of the activities of multiple people whose circumstances change. On the other hand, many trained models of one person’s motion recognition have been developed and are available. We propose to use the existing technology but to be able to do that we need to identify a single person’s activities within a group context. This is achieved by segmenting the video and cropping the area with a person, identifying the activity using pre-existing trained models. The activity of the group is recognized by a production rule system based on individual activities. To achieve our goal, we introduce the concept of atomic action to describe activities and propose categories of atomic actions. High-level collaborative categories that indicate the status of a group during collaborative meetings are based on the CIAO model. This paper ends with the results of the first experiments we conducted using video recordings of actual students’ work sessions.

In this paper, we describe the design and the management of an agent-based system that supports distributed brainstorming activities. The support system is a highly coordinated IoT application composed of many locally installed interface devices, multimedia communication functions, and cloud functions that process application logic and store meeting data. The system is designed to support a variety of brainstorming sessions, so its functionalities must be modifiable and enable the system to be adapted to different environments and user requirements without any loss of performance. System accessibility should be also ensured from any location for any user. These constraints require a flexible and usable support system. We further discuss the aspects of flexibility and usability that are important in a support system for distributed brainstorming, from which we propose a conceptual schema for flexible and usable support systems. To realize this schema, we present a resource-oriented architecture that can modify the brainstorming support system’s structure and functions. Flexibility is achieved thanks to an agent-based system that manages resources and operates on them according to users’ requests. We also describe the system architecture, which is organized around a set of channels dedicated to different services proposed to the users. We present in detail a video channel that ensures user awareness during synchronized activities. We then conduct several experiments verifying the usability of important channels in the architecture and present the results of these experiments. Finally, we discuss experimental scenarios that show how the system owes its adaptability to management based on an agent organization that supports distributed brainstorming and other activities.

In order to get better results during brainstorming activities participants must respect some rules when they write notes about ideas and when they consider notes written by somebody else. We argue that the respect of these rules can be verified by a multi-agent system analyzing videos and notes produced by the participants in real time. This system can simplify the role of the meeting facilitator. Feedback is sent individually or is addressed globally to the entire team. This paper presents considerations about the necessity of rules, the structure of a multi-agent system for analyzing the respect of those rules and how experiments could show the level of acceptance by people of such a system. The goal of this prospective research is to add a non intrusive system during brainstorming sessions in order to enhance the quality of results.

A remote brainstorming support system is a highly coordinated IoT application composed of many locally installed interface devices, multimedia communication functions, and cloud functions that store meeting data. In this paper, we describe an agent-based remote brainstorming support system for exchanging multimedia information among distributed teams according to user requests. We aim to (1) develop multimedia channels to communicate brainstorming results obtained from and presented on various devices among distributed teams, (2) establish a novel mechanism to add newly developed channels to the system on demand during a meeting, and (3) scale up the performance of remote brainstorming support systems.

Software-defined networking (SDN) not only lessens the burden of network operators but also accelerates the provision of high-quality services to various users by speeding up changes to the network configuration. Recently, Wireless Networking (WN) has gained importance as a social infrastructure to connect a large number of devices and cloud applications. Software definition technology for wireless networks is referred to as software-defined wireless networking (SDWN). We hereby propose a cognitive software-defined wireless networking (CSDWN) to enhance SDWN by applying a cognitive cycle to SDWN in addition to the development of a prototype to validate this concept.

The ubiquitous technology attracts attention widely to support people life effectively. However, developing such application systems impose heavy burden to developers because they have to combine very wide fields of technologies such as sensor devices, mechatronics, pattern recognition, machine learning, activity understanding, decision making, etc. In this paper, first, we propose a method to connect device, data and programs to an intelligent agent platform. Next, we describe a ubiquitous system prototype that supports meeting sessions. We have developed this prototype as a test bed. It is is still a small example for testing a ubiquitous agent system, but it has potential ability to support meetings because it favors collaboration between people and ubiquitous agents.

The motivation of our research is the design and the implementation of tools supporting the activities of several distant teams that have to collaborate for defining the specifications of a project. The paper presents the design of synchronous brainstorming activities between two distant teams mediated by two channels: a TV channel and a resource channel. Via the TV channel, cameras film a team during a session and computer applications allow to record and transmit video sequences to the distant team. During sessions, each team interacts with a large multi-touch device and manipulate virtual post-it notes displayed on both surfaces. Via the resource channel, displays each device are synchronized. The paper also presents the architecture of the main system involving several tactile devices, individual devices like tablet pcs and collaborative ones like interactive tables or whiteboards. The experiment conducted between two team situated in Japan and in France and conclusions about this experiment are described in the last sections.

Nowadays, enterprises such as the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) span the development of their products across multiple countries with different languages. At the same time, the development of the products involves experts from multiple fields of expertise. For example, thermal and electrical engineers need to collaborate for the design of the same aircraft in the aeronautics industry. Yet they sometimes speak different languages (French and German). The vocabulary in the aeronautic is very precise and requires a level of understanding best achieved by the experts in their native language. Hence, they need a system supporting their collaborative design activities bridging the gaps between the different fields of expertise, as well as languages. In this paper, we demonstrate such a system, which is validated by an implementation and its application on a use case coming from the aeronautic industry.

Cooperative work involves several specialists who necessarily have different cultures, which leads to misunderstandings. International cooperation adds language problems and increases the cultural differences, making the sharing of knowledge even more complex. The paper reports some problems encountered in different collaborative situations. It proposes an experimental system, TWA, based on a multi-agent approach architectured around the concept of personal assistant agent. The goal is to study how to better understand the problem and to try to smooth out the cultural differences between participants in cooperative projects.

The department of Computer Science, at Chiba Institute of Technology has been using LANs since 1988. Its own LAN, CS-LAN, is steadily expanding, becoming very complex and reaching now a spaghetti state. Next April 2011, the department of Computer Science will move to another building on the same campus. We need to design a new LAN to be installed in the future building. It will be provided by new vendors, use new technologies complying with the constraints of the new building. However, our department has no full time network manager, one of our colleague professors working as a network manager on his spare time. Therefore, all the knowledge about the CS-LAN is scattered among users, mainly professors and is not recorded. Indeed, the changes in configuration of the CS-LAN were often reported by e-mail only. In this paper, we try to propose a design plan working with multi agent systems in order to compare the design parts of the new CS-LAN, and capture design and operational knowledge semi-automatically for future use.

Various kinds of groupware tools support remote workers to share information, documentation or planning between them. However, due to difficulties for them to share their awareness of a distant workplace, a new framework is required to take care of each remote worker's office in order to make it more effective, efficient thus productive. In this paper, we propose a concept of an Interaction Zone (IZ) between a remote worker and a Personal Assistant (PA) which is an agent program watching over each remote worker using sensors deployed in a ubiquitous office. The PA understands worker's behavior through signals from the IZ. It is prototyped using the OMAS platform to aim at enhancing a relation between a worker at office and his own PA by verbal interface and non-verbal interface which are realized in the proposed IZ.

In this paper, we first discuss the necessity of a support system for distributed multi-lingual development teams, to bridge the gaps between different languages, cultures and social systems of a client and a vendor when defining a requirement specification of an application system. Next, we propose the design of an agent-based support system for defining requirement specifications, consisting of collaborating design assistant agents, common design support functions and a language translation web service. To implement the approach we plan to use OMAS, a platform for developing multi-agent systems. OMAS has features for describing multi-lingual ontologies and multi-lingual representations of dialogs. It also provides a platform for testing multi-cultural cooperation over the Internet. Some experimental applications are being developed currently using different natural languages. In this paper, we propose an agent-based support system for requirement specification definition as one such application. The proposed system is a web-based and agent-based application and supports a multi-lingual software design team using a network of personal design assistant agents.

In this paper, we first present an analysis of a multi-language application from a cross-cultural point of view. Then we analyze the specific activities of a multilingual collaborative design and the automatic translation system that it requires. We also propose an architecture of a design support system producing the UML design of applications and allowing a multilingual collaboration. We present the first results of an experiment with such a system.

We have been working on research and development of advanced network and applications called "flexible computing". We are now in the next stage of this research, strongly pressing forward the concept of flexible computing, namely, "symbiotic computing", towards next generation computing model based on co-existence of real space and digital space. In this paper, we explain basic concepts, architecture and enabling technologies of symbiotic computing that we are aiming to develop.

To reduce the burden for users that utilize information from distributed information resources, the deployment of distributed active information resource (AIR) is proposed. An AIR is a information resource that is enhanced with the knowledge of the content and the functionality for actively and flexibly supporting use/reuse of the content. Multiple AIRs could cooperate actively and automatically to target the proper information resources, carry out complex information processing and then provide composite result. In this paper the concept and main use of AIR are discussed. Also, the construction and information processing of AIR, as well as an experimental implementation of agent-based AIR system, are introduced.

We present a design and implementation of a flexible videoconference system (VCS) using multiagent computing technology. The proposed system, we named FVCS, aims to reduce the burden of the users under the operational environment with insufficient computational resources, such as the Internet environment with small-scale computers at homes and offices, by embedding flexibility to the conventional videoconference system. In this paper, we design and implement FVCS with knowledge-based multiagent framework to realize adaptability of FVCS. We also evaluate the adaptability of the prototype systems of FVCS based on an operational situation observed in its experiments. From the result of the experiments, we conclude that the multiagent-based design and implementation is reasonable for construction of FVCS.

A concept of a flexible network is formalized as a foundation of next generation distributed systems. Considering the requisite properties of flexible networks, we propose an architecture of a flexible network called agent oriented flexible information network (AFIN) model. The model is based on the multi agent paradigm. Furthermore, we focus on a communication network which is a core component of the flexible information network. We propose an agent oriented flexible communication network (AFCN) model and demonstrate with an example the advantages of the proposed architecture of the flexible network.>

A knowledge-based design methodology for computer communication systems is proposed, along with a framework for a knowledge-based design support system. The design methodology is based on the user-requirements-oriented approach parameters. According to these requirements, formal specifications are defined as user's view virtual machine (UVM) and designer's view virtual machine (DVM). These virtual machines are constructed as knowledge models from the specifications. Due to the design methodology, a knowledge-based design support system for computer communication systems, called KDSS, is constructed. This design support system consists of many expert systems corresponding to the design phases given by methodology. A design example is given to illustrate the methodology.>

Spatially discrete analogue neural networks and spatially continuous analogue neural networks are considered in this paper in studying the fundamental properties of analogue neural networks. A model of neural networks is discussed.