Mobile-Agent Mediated Place Oriented Communication

Abstract

When we communicate with others in a most primitive way like face-to-face conversation, we normally gather at a common physical place. This physical constraint has been recognized as an obstacle against free communication. To relax this constraint, modern communication systems like post, telephone, and the Internet have been invented. Now we are building a free society with no border on the Internet by using the electronic communication tools to enjoy free communication with people all over the world. On the other hand, in this network society, we face many serious problems like spam mail and malicious access to information resources. We believe that one reason causing these problems is that current communication technologies neglect roles of physical place in primitive communication. Implicitly, a place defines who is allowed to enter it and who is not.

In this paper, we propose the Agent Mediated Communicator (AMC) which creates virtual places for electronic communication on the Inter- net. Communication on the AMC is mediated by mobile agents and is achieved as interactions among agents and services in a place. When we start a communication with a person, we send a mobile agent to his/her place. Before the agent enters the place, it is authenticated and can enter only when it is allowed. Multiple agents can enter in a single place and they are visible to others. We can install various communication tools called services in a place like E-mail, Talk, Chat, BBS, WWW and so on. To show an example of look and feel of AMC, we developed a prototype of AMC based on a mobile agent platform IBM Aglets.

Place oriented communication by AMC has the following implications.

• It gives a simple and clear security model for communication.

• It gives a platform of communityware where people with a common interest can communicate with each other to create a community.

• It gives an information network platform which is easily adaptable to current physical social systems because our physical society can be viewed as a society consisting of mobile agents.