A Workbench for Developing User Interface Agents

9360764 Zachary工作的计算机化，特别是传统上以手工方法进行的基于信息的工作，给新的计算机用户带来了许多问题。随着计算机系统变得越来越复杂，它们的人类用户在成功或有效地应用底层系统功能方面越来越困难。研究已经开始集中在使用人机界面来解决这些问题，通过创建用户界面的组件，称为“代理”或“界面代理”，这些组件以各种方式协同支持人类。然而，到目前为止，这些接口代理一直是个人研究或系统开发工作的定制产品。为了使接口代理的概念和好处发挥其更广泛的潜力，需要更强大的工具来开发和维护它们。本研究旨在评估建立这样一个界面代理生成器（GINA）的可行性。提出的工具是围绕一个名为COGNET的接口代理构建方法开发的，该方法由首席研究员在先前的研究中创建、成功应用并进行了行为验证。提出的研究开发并分析了详细的GINA体系结构，然后实现并测试了底层代理执行引擎的框架版本。

9360764 Zachary Computerization of work, particularly information-based work which has been traditionally performed by manual methods, has created many problems for new computer users. As computer systems grow more complex, their human users have increasingly difficulty in successfully or efficiently applying the underlying system functionality. Research has begun to focus on using the human- computer interface to solve such problems by creating components of the user interface, called `agents' or `interface agents', that cooperatively support the human in a variety of ways. To date, however, these interface agents have been the custom-built products of individual research or system-development efforts. For the concept and benefit of interface agents to reach its broader potential, more powerful tools are needed for their development and maintenance. This research proposes to assess the feasibility of creating such a Generator of INterface Agents (GINA). The proposed tool is developed around an interface agent-building methodology called COGNET, that was created, successfully applied and behaviorally validated by the Principal Investigator in prior research. The proposed research develops and analyzes a detailed GINA architecture, then implements and tests a skeletal version of the underlying agent-execution engine.