Abstract

With the vast number of information resources available today, a critical problem is how to locate, retrieve and process information. It is impractical to build a single unified system that combines all of these information resources. A more modular approach is to build specialized information agents where each agent provides access to a subset of these resources and can serve as an information source to other agents. In this paper we present the architecture of the individual information agents and describe how this architecture supports a network of cooperating information agents. We describe how these information agents represent their knowledge, communicate with other agents, dynamically construct information retrieval plans, and learn about other agents to improve their accuracy and efficiency. We have already built a small network of agents that have these capabilities and provide access to information for …

Date

September 21, 1995

Authors

CRAIGA KNOBLOCK, JOSELUIS AMBITE