Carnegie Mellon

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Business Meeting Organizer

A Multi-Agent Meeting Scheduler using Mobile ContextKathleen Yang

Kathleen.Yang@sv.cmu.edu

Neha Pattan Neha.Pattan@sv.cmu.edu

Alejandro Rivera Alejandro.Rivera@sv.cmu.edu

Martin Griss Martin.Griss@sv.cmu.edu

Carnegie Mellon

Agenda

•Problem•Vision•Related Work•Solution•Architecture•Implementation•Experimental results•Conclusion•Q&A

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The problem…

Organizing meetings with multiple people

•When to meet?•Where to meet?•Who must attend the meeting?

•When to reschedule?

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Vision

Business Meeting Organizer

•Schedules meetings•Co-ordinates common time slots and venues

•Tracks context of attendees

•Reschedules meetings4

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Related Work

• Lin J.H., J. Wu and S.L. Lai “Ameetzer”• Agent based meeting modeling to automate the task of scheduling meetings

• Chen, H. “An intelligent broker architecture for context aware systems”

• Broker architecture to maintain a shared model of the context

• Haynes T., S. Sen, N. Arora and R. Nadela.: “An automated meeting scheduling system that utilizes user preferences”

• Adopting user preferences in meeting scheduling systems

• Griss, M., Letsinger, R., Cowan D., Vanhilst, M. and R. Kessler: “CoolAgent: Intelligent Digital Assistants for Mobile”

• Adaptation of multi agent based meeting schedulers to changing environment

• Crawford, E. and M. Veloso: “Opportunities for learning in multi-agent meeting scheduling”

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Goals

• Mobile client that interacts with end user

• Each user owns a software agent that acts like the user’s Personal Secretary

• Agents communicate and negotiate meetings on behalf of their owners

• Agent is responsible for tracking owner and notifying other secretaries

• Agent has access to owner’s personal data, calendar and contacts

• Agent executes as per owner’s preferences

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Business Meeting Organizer

•Multi agent based solution •Architecture•Implementation

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Solution

Agent NegotiationUser

Agent A

User

Agent B

Proposal

Negotiation

Confirmation

A B

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Architecture (1/2)

Agent

Behaviors

HTTP Server Behavior 1

Calendar Contacts Preferences

Behavior 2 SMS Sender

Services

…

HTTP SMS

InternetInternet

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Architecture (2/2)

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Implementation (1/2)

•Multi-agent environment•Privacy maintained through strict rules•Based on user preferences•Integration of location

–Computes the time to travel between meetings

–Agrees to a meeting only if the time to travel is less than available time between meetings: both before and after proposed meeting

–Sends a reminder on time to user to start travelling to next meeting

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Implementation (2/2)

•Details about meeting reminder– Agent queries for user’s location every 5 minutes

– Client application on user’s cell phone sends an update to the agent, consisting of GPS co-ordinates

– Agent tracks most recent location of user– Agent computes time to travel to next meeting– Agent sends a reminder 10 minutes before the time when user should start travelling to next meeting

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Experimental Results

•Time Consumption•Calendar Privacy•Context Awareness

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Carnegie Mellon

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Time Consumption Comparison

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Tools Negotiation time (minutes)

Request pending time (minutes)

Meeting #1 BMO 1 0 Meeting #2 Google

calendar2 0

Meeting #3 Email 7 50 Meeting #4 Telephone 11 0 Meeting #5 Face-to-

face5 0

Four Participants

Carnegie Mellon

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Calendar Privacy Comparison

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Tools Calendar visible to others

Meeting #1 BMO No Meeting #2 Google

calendarYes

Meeting #3 Email No Meeting #4 Telephone No Meeting #5 Face-to-face No

Four Participants

Carnegie Mellon

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Context Awareness Comparison

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Tools Location Calendar

Meeting #1

BMO Continuous Continuous

Meeting #2

Google calendar

No Continuous

Meeting #3

Email One shot One shot

Meeting #4

Telephone One shot One shot

Meeting #5

Face-to-face

One shot One shot

Four Participants

Carnegie Mellon

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Conclusion

•Time spent using BMO is a fraction of that using manual techniques like email and phone calls

•Manual techniques do not scale well for meetings with several attendees, BMO does!

•BMO scores over other techniques in terms of–Efficiency–Privacy–Context Awareness

Carnegie Mellon

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Q & A