Instant Messaging Interface and Transport for the MultiAgent Referral System.

Abstract

Agent-based systems have been around for quite some time now. They have been extensively used in communication systems involving human interactions. The MultiAgent Referral System (MARS) helps automate the process of expertise location using referral chains. Previously, this system was implemented using email as the transport mechanism for the various referrals and queries generated by the agents. The asynchronous nature of email would prove restrictive in real-life scenario.

This thesis develops an infrastructure using an Instant Messaging (IM) system that provides an user interface and transport mechanism for MARS. MARS has a distributed architecture and associates each user with an agent. This system is slightly different from a traditional IM system, which involves a client and a server, whereas in this case the messages from a user are routed through his agent to the server. Our specific approach exploits the open-source Jabber IM system, which enables us to integrate IM with MARS. In this manner, agent-to-agent communication is realized through IM and an IM-based user interface is provided to the users.