WO2002025513A2

WO2002025513A2 - Intelligent electronic personal assistant

Info

Publication number: WO2002025513A2
Application number: PCT/FR2001/002958
Authority: WO
Inventors: David Trechnievski
Original assignee: David Trechnievski
Priority date: 2000-09-25
Filing date: 2001-09-25
Publication date: 2002-03-28
Also published as: FR2814568A1; FR2814568B1; WO2002025513A3; EP1320822A2

Abstract

The invention concerns an intelligent electronic personal assistant designed to assist in managing personal data concerning a user and to assist in making appointments. The system takes into account the user's global work environment using intelligent agents and intelligent modules. The system is completely integrated and has said agents which while preserving confidentiality of the data are used to manage the detection and the type of connection used, agendas, contacts, electronic mail, telephone calls, faxes, tasks to be executed, memos, Internet information, Intranet information, the user's performance level (based on his stress state), equipment resources such as availability of halls, equipment and non-material resources, daily activities of users, online purchases, the work environment peripherals, the communication environment, user profiles in terms of preferences, technical profiles, database of knowledge and management of at least a user interface. The agents access any type of data and exchange data among them via messages based on a data exchange universal language, such as XML. The system operates on different platforms as computers connected among them through a local network or an Internet-type network and also on any type of portable personal apparatus. It is different from any system currently under study since it enables to globally manage a user while preserving data concerning the latter recorded in heterogeneous worlds.

Description

Intelligent electronic personal assistant

The present invention describes an intelligent electronic personal assistant making it possible to assist a user in the management of his daily tasks from a plurality of places, for example, his personal accommodation, his office and his portable device. This assistant is particularly interested in the problems posed by making appointments and managing the tasks of a user accessing heterogeneous information systems. This assistant allows, among other things, to process professional and personal user data by using intelligent modules / agents to manage this data, with the aim of confidentiality and ease of management. So far, these different data exist in heterogeneous worlds that do not communicate with each other.

Consider the management of appointments. Nowadays, making appointments with other participants is a daily problem. Participants must negotiate proposals and then counter-proposals to reach an agreement on the organization of a possible meeting. Each actor must take into account his own preferences and constraints without another being aware of his own. Everyone wants to work with a timetable arranged according to the tasks to be performed. Given the amount of data to be manipulated from now on to manage appointments, it is necessary to work with a system allowing the time spent on each task to be limited. This data generally comes from several professional and personal work environments. Managing your data has become extremely complex when you have to keep in mind that appointments made in one environment must not interfere with those made in another environment. To avoid conflicts, it should be possible to freely dispose of the personal and professional data of the participants. However, everyone wishes to keep their personal and professional data confidential. It is by wanting to find a solution to meet the appointment scheduling problems that the intelligent electronic personal assistant was born. Various motivations encourage the development of the system presented throughout this invention. For example, in the professional environment, the system makes it possible to accelerate the validation of product development stages to reduce the delivery times of this product. The system naturally allows better management of an agenda and therefore increases the productivity of a user. Better organization of data between different employees allows them to meet more quickly. These reasons can also be personal. As the system integrates personal data, a meeting established in advance with a car dealer for the overhaul of a vehicle will be taken into account by the user to avoid conflicts in the organization of his timetable with other meetings. The system not only avoids conflicts but also optimizes the resolution of tasks in relation to each user. There are currently systems for automating appointment scheduling, but we can see that the systems offered are not unanimous with users. Users refuse to allow a computer program to make decisions for them. Users refuse to make their personal data accessible to other people, whether they are their secretary or another user. Today, no system allows to link in real time when it is necessary, several actors to quickly negotiate an appointment, while taking into account the personal provisions of each user. No system can manage all the priorities in a global work environment. The system presented in this invention is particularly interested in the automation of work not requiring human logic in order to give the user time to focus on tasks requiring real human reflection.

The university area interested in artificial intelligence is the most active concerning the automation of appointment scheduling without human intervention. Today, intelligent agents are used in order to make decisions in place of the actors or their representative. The system in question here is not intended for making appointments without the user's prior consent, although this system may do so. It automates the process of making appointments with other players with their final agreement.

One of the goals of this assistant is to establish better management of the timetable and in particular of appointments. It also improves the quality of work and especially meetings. People today are often overworked and do not have enough time to do their jobs. Meetings are organized but often unfortunately remain insufficiently prepared to allow effective work. People therefore have to meet again to discuss the same subjects. These subjects are most of the time badly prepared for lack of information and time. This assistant also aims to increase the quality of the meetings by helping to organize the work. This assistant makes it possible to establish real economies of scale in a company.

Another purpose of this wizard is to create a hinge to allow users to manage their private and professional lives from a single system. The user therefore no longer needs to worry about managing private and professional data in parallel, fearing conflicts or trying to optimize the management of several work environments.

Today, not all people have secretaries or share a secretary with ten other people. The proposed system makes it possible to better distribute the number of secretaries, and in the absence of secretaries, to help them manage their personal and professional data. In a way, the agents exchange data which makes it possible to find a compromise in making appointments and thus offer all the users wishing to obtain a meeting, a solution suitable for all and optimized according to the defined constraints. by themselves in a user profile. In order to automate the appointment booking process, you must have access to all types of data. It is necessary to work with a tool allowing to join heterogeneous data inside a homogeneous system. Due to a lack of adequate tools, it is therefore not possible today to dynamically manage different information systems such as Microsoft Outlook / Exchange (registered trademark) and Lotus Notes (registered trademark) from a single system integrating them. . There are no agents on the market as a personal assistant managing the user environment (although some universities are interested). A solution is provided by the present invention. In the event that a user has his data on an Intranet, for example in a Microsoft or Lotus information system, and other data on a PDA (personal digital assistant) or any other portable device, synchronization on a centralized information is currently the only way to make data interact. In the current state, the user is therefore obliged to give full access to his personal data so that his secretary can assist him, for example, this in the case where he would obviously have a secretary. The solution provided here makes it possible to separate professional and personal data while leaving access to the information really necessary. For example concerning the agenda, the availability of certain time slots is given by the agents. The content of the diaries is also never disclosed. The agent acting on behalf of the main user is programmed to respond to the secretary's agent or to another agent who has made a request: "No, this ABC appointment is not possible, but the times available for an appointment would be more like XYZ ".

Based on this system and with regard to the appointment booking request, the system innovates with the use of an interface where it is possible to manage parameters of the type relative importance of the invitation, relative importance of the guest, start of meeting, duration, time slot using fuzzy logic, constraints and preferences on dates and times, subject, comment, authorization to be disturbed during the meeting, delegate in case of non-assistance and finally of the type of strategy to apply to get an appointment.

In summary, there is no system integrating a set of intelligent agents exchanging with other agents information in a standard format of data exchange, for example of XML type, preserving the confidentiality of the exchanged data if necessary , moreover coordinating and managing: the detection and the type of connection the diaries and making appointments the contacts the electronic mails the telephone calls • the faxes the tasks to carry out the memos the research of information on the Internet the research information on the Intranet "the level of performance of the user material resources of the type of rooms to be allocated for a meeting material resources of the type of office equipment required (projector or other) non-material resources such as the control of refreshments at a specialized establishment • daily activities such as studying traffic before setting off or driving ticket order according to their professional or personal user profile or even the use of thesaurus to communicate in other languages

• user purchases in the case of online purchases on the Internet

• the material working environment • the communication environment (Internet, Intranet, GSM, UMTS, Bluetooth (registered trademark), various media such as computers permanently connected to an Intranet, the Internet, laptops, telephones, personal assistants, pagers occasionally connected to the networks mentioned above)

• user profiles for behavior and preferences “technical profiles for the use of resources

• user knowledge management

• the appearance of the graphical user window

In the end, with all these options, it is envisaged to view the activity of the user or the activity of these collaborators if we are authorized to do so according to the parameters that we wish to study.

The recent advances which have made it possible to develop this invention will now be described in the following section relating to the state of the art. Prior art

As the subject requires an extreme level of complexity, many researchers in artificial intelligence have looked into the question of making appointments assisted by intelligent agents. It should be remembered that an intelligent agent is in fact a computer program transporting data and is capable of "reasoning" insofar as it was created for this purpose.

Sven Schmeier and Achim Schupeta (PASHA JJ, Personal Assistant for Scheduling appointments, DF I diploma thesis, September 5, 1996, available on the Internet http://www.schmeier.de/work.htm) with the MAS system (multi agents System ) provide an implementation operating around the Oz system (language allowing agents to communicate with each other. They created PASHA II (Personal Assistant for Scheduling Appointments). This system allows to make appointments between participants taking into account their different constraints and preferences. PASHA II offers an option to choose the strategy to be applied when requesting an appointment. Each user has an agent communicating with his calendar, a manager of material resources and with other agents. no separation between professional and personal data. There is no coordinating agent managing a set of agents dedicated to other tasks. nc no user profile taking into account the different locations of other data. They do not consider the query principle with fuzzy logic, or even a global system allowing agents to search the Internet for information concerning a meeting. Another parameter not taken into account by PASHA II is that only the CM Calendar Manager database developed by Sun Microsystems (registered trademark) is taken into account, there is no multi-source system and therefore no agents serving bridge between the different systems. The users must all have the same system and are therefore limited. PASHA H does not work on portable systems and does not take into account the different heterogeneous worlds in which users evolve.

British Telecommunications (registered trademark) is also an important player in this market since a lot of information is made public on their website. In addition, by patent WO99 / 05597, a system is implemented using the collaboration of intelligent agents with one another. In the near future their system will surely employ intelligent agents to manage the various types of data like the management of diary, e-mails, telephone calls, to-do list. The common platform for exchanging messages between agents is called ZEUS (registered trademark). However ZEUS is not designed to be able to interact with intelligent agents with portable devices. It will therefore not be planned to use a user profile providing the various sources of user data. With ZEUS as a platform, it is unlikely that the user will be able to have data stored in several places, for example in a database stored on an Internet server and on a PDA for example. Fuzzy logic may be used when request for an appointment since a few others are interested in this logic for applications of the same type. In view of the information published by British Telecommunications, it seems that their system will be based more on the use of agents managing tasks. The concept of personal assistant on which British Telecommunications works is a program running on fixed machines internal to a company either on a local computer or on an internal server. The system is not intended to work with portable devices or even with a remote server. In the event that users are using Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes then a gateway should allow agents to communicate across the ZEUS central edge. Patent W099 / 17194, entitled "Resource management system" is one of the main building blocks of a system using intelligent agents to manage the workload and the flow of information in a company.

Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, to name a few, do not offer ways to prioritize certain tasks. Nor do they have intelligent agents who automate the tasks done today manually. Using Microsoft Outlook software, it is possible to publish data on an Internet page and make it accessible by communicating the address of the server on which the publication of users' availability is located. It is thus possible to know the schedule of a user if this one carried out the steps for. This software is therefore not suitable for assisting the user, but it does provide the basic building blocks on which our system is based.

The aim of intelligent agents is to suppress intermediaries such as secretaries, and this is undoubtedly the main obstacle to the development of the systems using them. The present invention is based on other uses of agents because we believe that intelligent agents are intended to assist men i.e. to do all the work that can be automated and to leave decision-making to man.

A standard is being developed by the Internet Society for using data from one application to another. For example, we can refer to the following documents: Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) (RFC 2445), iCalendar Transport Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP): Scheduling Events, Busy Time, To-dos and Journal Entries (RFC 2446) , iCalendar Message based interoperability Protocol (iMEP) (RFC 2447), Calendar attributes for vCard and LDAP (RFC 2739), Calendar Access Protocol (CAP) (draft-ietf-calsch-cap), Implementors' Guide to Internet Calendaring (draft- ietf- calsch-imp-guide), Fixing the iCalendar Registration Process (draft-stracke-calsch-ical-reviewer), CAP Realtime iTIP based Scheduling Profile (CRISP) (draft-stracke-calsch-crisp). These standards will be used by the system presented in the invention to simplify the exchanges between agents.

Since the system presented in this patent application takes into account the fact that data can be saved in places which are not permanently accessible by intelligent agents, it will surely be necessary to use tools allowing to establish a link between the different databases. Patent application EP0917077, entitled "Wireless remote synchronization of data between PC and PDA", offers a solution to connect devices to each other and to the network so that intelligent agents can obtain information to implement the system.

Patent application EP0921670, entitled "Electronic Scheduling devices", allows you to make appointments remotely using your phone. This system uses voicemail and e-mail.

Patent application EP0697671, entitled "Electronic secretary System", can also be used to show that a telephone interface representing a secretary is an element that the telephone call management agent will use in our system. To optimize this management, note also the patent application WO99 / 21101 allowing to connect or disconnect a portable telephone according to the importance of the caller during a meeting and this by using a graphical user interface.

Another type of user interface has been developed in US Pat. No. 5,877,759. This interface employs intelligent agents in the background, which are used to seek information or to make appointments. Making an appointment is always assisted by sending e-mail and does not make it possible to manage complex constraints or even to keep data confidential. In any case, the link with other types of network such as that managing portable devices is not taken into account. In addition, in no case is the environment in which the user operates is taken into account. Concerning the use of an intelligent agent for the management of e-mails, certain information is available in the various articles like "l ^ arning rules that classify E-mail" written by Wiliam W. Cohen of AT & T, "An open agent architecture "by Philip R. Cohen and Adam Cheyer or in patents US5765178" Electronic mail receiving system allowing receiving party control of a display format of received mail ", EP0420779" User selectable electronic mail management method ".

Regarding the use of a coordinating agent, information can be found in the article "Coordination of multiple intelligent software agents" by Katia Sycara and Dajun Zeng. However, this article does not address the case of a system having calendars using different formats although heterogeneous databases are used. That is to say that the system has only one type of intelligent agent for making appointments and this one takes care of fetching information in a type of calendar. Another type of agent takes care of looking for information on the Internet for example but in any case when they talk about heterogeneity of the data they consider the different formats between the format of the Internet and the format of the calendar . There is never any reference to the possibility of expanding the system with data stored on portable devices or even to the fact of having data on several heterogeneous systems.

With regard to PDAs, US Pat. No. 5,842,009 describes a PDA having an interface making it possible to obtain information on appointments or on tasks. There is no question, however, of having a tool managing the scheduling of appointments on this type of PDA and again σ

less having intelligent agents serving as personal assistant to manage the data in a global way by making them interact with other types of data.

Regarding the use of intelligent agents to establish a request to the yellow pages, information can be found in an article entitled "an intelligent directory inquiry assistant" written by A de Roeck among others.

With regard to the intelligent agents responsible for managing the activity and the stress state of the user, the patent US6065138 presents a system listening to the user and the patent US5579238 presents a system for studying the force with which a user hits the keyboard. Regarding the intelligent agents responsible for managing the user's work environment to find out if he has a camera for video conferencing, a microphone to interface with a voice recognition module and other devices, it will be possible to find information in the document entitled "Intelligent multi-modal Systems" written by KC Tsui et al, published in BT technical journal vol 16 No3 July 1998. Regarding agents for making appointments, some information is available on the following site: http://www.es. ualberta.ca/~qihua/scheduler/report.html "An intelligent meeting scheduler". The agents are mainly dedicated to making appointments. They only work on one platform. There is also no coordinating agent interacting with other agents. Regarding the use of intelligent agents with PDAs, the document entitled

"Multimodal user interfaces in the open agent architecture" written by Douglas B Moran et al, and published on January 6, 1997 proposes the global principle of using intelligent agents with PDAs to manage its calendar. The user can interact with other users but in fact he keeps his own data in a single database. JJ does not distinguish between his personal database and his professional database. JJ therefore has no confidentiality from the point of view of an external user. A user profile is never taken into account to specify where to get the data and the type of agent to use to accomplish the task.

The main features that the prior art never understands and which consists in making the present system new and inventive is that never an intelligent personal electronic assistant has included the possibility of managing the entire working environment of the user while keeping its data in different places on heterogeneous platforms. For this, there is a profile qualified as technical in the sense that it is not a user profile in charge of managing user behavior. For the agents to do their job, the system also obviously includes this last type of profile. Brief description of the figures

Figure 1 shows the system as a whole, the different modules or agents that make up the entire system as well as the different environments in which the system is designed to operate.

FIG. 2 represents more particularly examples of environments in which the system assists the users.

Figure 3 shows the different steps used to make an appointment.

Figure 4 shows the approach taken by the intelligent electronic personal assistant to solve the task of making appointments.

Figure 5 shows the interface for making appointments.

Figure 6 shows the graphical user interface of the intelligent electronic personal assistant.

Description

The world in which users operate is a heterogeneous world where the exchange of data is not yet very easy. Each company uses one or more proprietary systems to record its own data. Some standards are emerging such as Ncard and Ncalendar (registered trademarks) in order to exchange data such as business cards and calendars. XML (eXtended Markup Language) will undoubtedly be the standard format for exchanging data such as a business card and calendar in the future, however everyone should agree to develop a common DTD (Document Type Definition) for these two applications. The Internet will also surely evolve in this direction by using more and more XML as the data exchange language. Assuming that intelligent agents are used to modify information relating to a user and that this information is on a portable device, it will be necessary to send from a server, an XML document and an intelligent agent capable of making it interact. data with the portable device. By the patent application FA572683 required by the author of the present application, a method is used making it possible to process information in XML format using a program dependent on the technical profile of the machine which must process the XML information . This program would therefore be used to interface between the calendar, contacts, the entire environment running on the portable device and the partner server for data exchange. The idea therefore came to use XML to exchange calendar type data or any personal information with another system in order to increase productivity, efficiency of everyone by working on a tool managing calendars, contacts , making appointments and the like while keeping each user's data confidential.

Figure 1 shows the concept of the invention highlighted. The following concept is based on the interaction between intelligent agents dedicated to solving the tasks of users working in heterogeneous environments. The modules or intelligent agents are represented by the elements 1000 to 1017. Today the users work under integrated environments, for example Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Symantec (registered trademark) to manage their calendars, contact list, task list to carry out, manage e-mails when the data is professional in nature and when it is on fixed workstations. In Figure 1, the different 1000-1017 modules can interact with different networks: intranet 1600, GSM 1500 RTC 1400, UMTS 1300 in future years, Internet 1200 and other 1100 networks like palmnet (registered trademark) or pager network or the ISDN network which is not mentioned in FIG. 1 although no difficulty would arise in integrating the system with this network. Also, users are required to have personal and professional data whether for calendars, contacts, emails, telephone numbers and others. These data can be stored in completely delocalized databases such as in a base 1611 stored on the hard disk of a personal workstation 1610 connected to the Intranet or on a base 1621 of a PDA 1620, or on a base 1631 of any workstation 1630 however connected to the Intranet Increasingly, they use databases stored remotely on the Internet in order to access data regardless of their location. These databases are represented by the elements 1121, 1211, 1221, 1222, 1231 and 1232. The users are also led to work from their personal assistant of the Palm pilot type (registered trademark) for example. Each database now has its own system for managing data. XML is not yet implemented for data exchanges between the various systems mentioned above. To access the data, for example, you must use methods developed by the creators of these databases. Microsoft uses OLE for example. In general, the data registered in a proprietary database is not directly accessible. And even if XML was already implemented, there would still be a tool to manage the flow of data between different environments. A user can have several differentiated databases on several different types of platforms as we have just presented. For example, the user can have a professional base 1611 on his workstation 1610, and a personal base 1621 on his PDA 1620. The professional base can be synchronized on the network (Intranet or Internet) automatically, and accessible to all. The personal database, on the other hand, is simply replicated regularly on the network and will only be accessible to him alone and to his personal agent. It may also not be replicated at all. It is of course necessary that the system can access the information contained in both professional and personal databases, or at least indications relating to the content of these databases. For this, a user profile 1005 is created. This profile 1005 is different from the profile 1004 which aims to learn the behavior of the user. This first profile 1005 contains at least the data essential for the functioning of the system:

• User identification • Password

• Data necessary for access to the professional database (location, type of database, type of agent, identification, password, access algorithm, procedures in the event of failure to read or write)

• Data required for access to personal databases • Contact mode and contact details of the user (GSM, SMS, email)

In addition, profile 1004 may also include other information which may be of interest for improving the performance, efficiency, flexibility and ergonomics of the system. For example, we can very well consider integrating the information on the user's working time slots. The system can therefore dispense with consulting the personal database during working hours, if the user has defined his personal database as being only accessible for appointments outside working hours. We can also integrate a list of people (contacts) and a series of weights as to the relative importance of these people and the behavior of the system when faced with an urgent request for an appointment. you from one of these. You can also program the system to respond to appointment requests automatically based on the requester. All this information is shared between the two types of profiles 1004 and 1005.

For users with a secretary, this one has a relatively complete right of scrutiny over the working environment although this gaze is granted by the manager she helps. Regarding data in general, a strong trend appears for data management using portable terminals such as the Palm pilot, Psion (registered trademark), Pocket PC (registered trademark) and all PDAs or phones portable allowing to manage data, all type 1120, 1310, 1410, 1510 and 1620. Indeed, the market for portable devices is exploding and no solution allows to have a similar working environment independent of the machine on which the user is connected to. A strong trend is also emerging for the delocalization of calendar-type data to be stored on the Internet and therefore more easily accessible and from a station with an Internet connection 1220.

The underlying idea of the system is that an agent is a process in a multitasking environment. This agent has different states. These states change based on interaction with other agents. The agent is programmed to have a goal based on the profile of its user. It is not possible from the outside to know the behavior of an agent. The agents exchange messages with each other. The agents representative of each user are attentive to any change in the databases to which modifications take place. The main program runs on a 1230 and / or 1640 server. The system can also run on each workstation 1210, 1220, 1610, 1630. Some modules can run on servers and others on workstations. From the resource profile, it is possible for the coordinating agent 1000 to know the places where he must fetch the data and possibly the resources such as intelligent agents to perform the various tasks which he has to solve. The coordinating agent 1000 is located on the internal server of a company 1640, on an Internet server 1230 or even on a mobile device of the PDA 1620 type. This coordinating agent 1000 communicates with a set of intelligent agents and a user profile 1005 previously mentioned. This coordinating agent 1000 exchanges with other agents 1001-1017 information in a standard data exchange format, for example of XML type, coordinating and managing: The detection and the type of connection that the user uses, module 1001 calendars and making appointments, module 1002 contacts, module 1003 e-mails, module 1012 telephone calls, module 1013 faxes, module 1011 tasks to be carried out, module 1008 memos, implemented in the agenda module 1002 information retrieval on the Internet, module 1016 information retrieval on the intranet, module 1010 user performance level , module 1009 material resources of the type of rooms to be allocated for a meeting, module 1006 material resources of the type of office equipment required (projector or other), module 1006 non-material resources such as ordering refreshments from a specialized establishment , module 1018 (not shown in FIG. 1) the daily activities of the user, module 1017 the purchases of the user in the event of online purchases on the Internet. work environment peripherals, module 1007 (this can also be a separate module) the communication environment (Internet, Intranet, GSM, UMTS, Palmnet, Bluetooth, pagers and others), module 1007 user profiles for behavior and preferences, module 1004 technical profiles for resource uses such as databases or previously mentioned modules, module 1005 user knowledge management, module 1014 the appearance of the graphical user window, module 1015

The different agents will now be described in relation to the overall system. They all have their own user interface and interact with other types of agents. • Using the connection detection agent and its type

An agent is used to detect if a user is connected to the system, thereby communicating to the coordinating agent the authorization to transmit messages intended for the latter. This module also makes it possible to detect the type of connection such as the connection from a PDA, a workstation on the Intranet or the Internet, his personal workstation connected to the Intranet or to the Internet or from a phone. Knowing the type of connection allows the coordinating agent to transmit the messages in an appropriate form optimizing the reception of data depending on the medium. This is very useful when you are connected with a PDA for example and the capacities of the machine are limited. Naturally, it is not very useful to transmit information which cannot be well interpreted by the user. This therefore makes it possible to communicate with the user in an appropriate manner.

• Use of the coordinating agent This agent is used to manage the activations of other agents to obtain responses to the requests requested. Its role is very special. It is programmed in Java (registered trademark) although it is not a unique solution from the moment when another programming language manages processes in parallel. Today the various agents are programmed in Java because Java is portable and allows the execution of processes in parallel. This agent uses a database which stores user profiles such as the location of data on possible calendars and other resources seen previously. The coordinating agent is the one who calls other agents to obtain the data enabling him to manage the entire system. XI is the bridge between all the modules and the different architectures. This agent also accesses data on the user and informs other modules such as the one managing e-mails. There is a file that lists the conditions, constraints and preferences that all agents use to respond to requests from the coordinating agent. The coordinating agent requests requests of the style: searches for information on this appointment ..., then the search agent executes the search, having as parameter what the coordinating agent passed him. The response of this search agent is then given and the coordinating agent determines whether it is necessary to initiate an appointment for an interval of time sufficient to allow the user time to read the information collected.

It goes without saying that when a user receives electronic mail which must be read and assimilated, then this agent will employ another agent who will determine according to the least significant stress moments calculated in relation to the activity of the user the right time to reserve time for reading and possibly responding to emails. This function will be defined later. The same goes for telephone calls that must be listened to and that are in the voice mailbox. This agent also allows you to manage the level of interruption that the user is ready to accept during an appointment or during a task. that it performs on a predefined time slot. This agent also makes it possible to manage in the background the interactions with memos themselves managed in the agenda management and appointment scheduling module. These memos can relate to user-defined durations and concern certain working environments and not others. The coordinating agent also calls on a database containing the actions to be carried out to carry out the tasks requested by the user. For example if a user wants to organize a meal with another user then the list will contain the following information, for example:

• find the name of a restaurant in the neighborhood which is about 5 minutes away

• find the phone number of this restaurant

• send a proposed meeting for a common meal to the people concerned

• according to their answers, enter on the screen the validation proposal as well as the information necessary for the user to book. The agent managing the activities of the user will take care of performing the tasks related to the list provided by the coordinating agent. It will be possible to organize a reservation by Internet the day when the infrastructure will allow it.

The same suggestion can be taken into account for a user wishing to go on vacation or weekend somewhere and require information on a certain destination, on certain travel agencies, on their offers. It is also necessary to be able to contact the agendas of people who may be interested, such as the partner's agenda in the life of the user or that of the school to find out if there are outings already offered for children during these periods. The user profile is indeed one of the only solutions for knowing where to get personal data relating to the user. The coordinating agent can also be used to send requests to interact with the agent managing the user's activities, for example, the reservation of means of transport. It can also give for example the state of traffic at a given time and at a given location. The main role of the coordinating agent is to issue requests and evaluate the responses to make decisions on the actions to be taken. The coordinating agent can also be used to compare offers. It can be used to program videoconferences and to configure them.

This agent also serves to specify to a secretary that 200 photocopies of a special document must be made for the scheduled appointment at a given time. This officer is responsible for updating the secretary's to-do list. Automatically, refreshments can be ordered for this meeting according to the tastes of the participants. • Using the agent to manage the scheduling of appointments

The use of these agents is a very good example of cooperation of autonomous agents in a multi-agent system. People must negotiate proposals, then often counter proposals to arrive at a common agreement taking into account the constraints or preferences of each of the participants. There are problems when several people with different preferences are contacted for an appointment and each of these people does not know the constraints of the other people. Each representative agent of a person has the skills to fetch information that the user needs, to negotiate with other agents the schedules of appointments for example according to several levels of relative priority. For appointments, when the user requests an appointment with a person or a group of people, his intelligent electronic personal assistant will negotiate with other personal agents or other agents representative of other personal assistants intelligent electronics of the people in question and will initiate a negotiation process taking into account various constraints such as the relative importance of the appointment taker compared to the different people contacted, relative priorities of the time slot, place, object of the meeting, relative priorities of material resources such as the availability of rooms to organize the meeting, the availability of the material to be assigned to this meeting. The agents questioned for making appointments have certain characteristics, such as managing entries using fuzzy logic. Another interesting parameter of the system is that it keeps all data concerning users private. It is the agents among themselves who, after negotiation, will arrive at an arrangement. At no time are the data located on the different systems in question disclosed to a non-master user. A user can indeed in this system have data in the form of a proprietary system, for example Microsoft, Lotus, Symantec with regard to fixed systems and in addition to the data located on their PDA or mobile phone stored in a different format. In our system, agents can interface with different systems accessing different databases. The agents are chosen from an agent database having agents intended to operate under different operating systems. In the implementation of our system, we consider the use of intelligent agents as an aid to users or as an aid to secretaries representing people like managers of companies or people with an overloaded timetable in which a optimization based on different criteria such as the importance of the people with whom an appointment must be made, the time slot, the place, the subject, the importance of the subject of the appointment will make everyone happy. The agent system is interactive with data on the user and his behavior in order to find the agent who will give him the answers to his requests. The agents do not currently make a decision about making an appointment. They exchange data then when all the data is compatible with the agenda of the people, that the priorities and importance are respected, a choice is proposed to the users at the end of the process negotiation. They must validate the result of negotiation between agents so that the agents update the different databases specific to each person who has been contacted.

The description of this agent will be completed when Figures 3 and 5 are described.

• Use of agents for contact management

Agents are also used to manage the contact database. Contacts can be divided into a plurality of areas including the professional area and the personal area. The role of these agents is to get all the contact information of people to keep the contact lists up to date. If necessary, this agent will go to a database located on the internet to go and ask for the business card of the people to meet. Again, contacts are not necessarily saved in the same places. Also these places are not necessarily homogeneous in their storage format. For example, updating your contacts from a contact list stored on the Internet can be automated using these agents. This list could contain all the elements relating to contacts, for example a list of Ncard (electronic business card of a person in electronic format). This list could be located on the Internet or on a company's internal network. This list does not exist today when it would be necessary.

• Use of agents to manage electronic coumer

These agents are used to manage e-mails for filtering according to the importance of the e-mail in relation to its content in order to be able to specify for example to the user whether an e-mail should be read urgently or whether he can wait. Mail can come from several addresses. It is the agents who take care of reading messages and sorting them. If an email arrives and it is related to a close appointment then it is noted to read soon, when there are several "soon" to read then the system reserves a time slot of a few minutes to read these e-mails through the coordinating agent. A color code distinguishes the origin and importance of the mail processed. This email management agent uses the data of the header, the addresses of the recipients if there are several and the subject of the email to define priorities to be given. Several priority levels are given: high, medium and low. The date on which to read them is also based on various parameters such as the header, the addresses and the subject. The system takes into account the time taken in the past to read the mails coming from certain addresses, in relation to the same subject and in relation to the various recipients and determines the importance according to this historical parameter. This agent has its own user interface allowing to view the mails according to their importance. Also three icons will allow you to view the mails permanently according to their priority. • Use of agents to manage phone calls

These agents manage the user's mailbox and telephone calls. The calls can come from the personal environment or the professional environment. Certain calls according to their origin are judged important or not and according to this importance are intercepted to be sent either on the user station or on their voice mailbox. An agent of this agent type makes use of the information contained in the other databases relating to the types of appointment in which the user is currently present or in relation to his possibility of being interrupted. If the incoming call is screened, the agent answers for example to the caller that the person cannot be disturbed. This type of agents has the role of handling all objects relating to telephone calls.

• Use of agents for fax management

This agent makes it possible to perform filtering functions on faxes according to the environment in which they must be considered. This agent makes it possible to divert certain private faxes from a main machine to print them, so that the user can keep the confidentiality of the data of these faxes. The faxes are temporarily stored in a memory and are sent for printing when the user wishes. Also, the agents can examine the content of the faxes and warn the coordinating agent that the user must be given a certain amount of time to read these faxes, perhaps before an appointment.

• Use of agents for task management

This agent is an agent which makes it possible to manage tasks by going to interact with a list of operations to be carried out to accomplish a task. Depending on these various operations, the system will allocate time to the user to perform the actions to be performed. A list of actions to be carried out depending on the task is found in one of the databases that the user can access because the address of this database is found in the resource database 1021.

• Using agents to manage memos

This agent is used to manage user memos in relation to these activities. Memos are information valid for a period predefined by the user. They must help him during the validation phase of making an appointment. These memos can be posted periodically to prevent the user from forgetting. However, the frequency of recall of these memos will vary depending on the actions that the user performs. The user can define the period of validity of these memos and also the context in which they must appear, for example the personal environment or the professional environment. • Using agents to search for information on the Internet or the Intranet Agents are used to fetch information on the Internet or on the Intranet when a user needs information on the subject of a Appointment. An agent is launched in search of information on the Intranet site or on the Internet. The various information found is stored in a file and a time slot preceding the meeting will be reserved for reading this file. The search agents take into account the history of the searches carried out previously in order to be able to obtain the information desired by the user. These search agents are used to manage the classification of certain documents necessary for users.

• Use of agents to manage user activity.

Depending on the stress level of the users, tasks requiring very little stress will be performed. The level of stress is measured in relation to the movements of the mouse such as the double click used improperly or measured by the intensive use of the keys of the keyboard to erase or even by the fact of pressing on many keys at the same time, all this compared to its daily use in the environment. Tasks requiring very little stress are, for example, reading unimportant emails, telephone interviews with people with whom the importance of not missing their interview is paramount. After the learning phase, the appointment scheduling agent will advise against making certain appointments at known time periods representing a moment of stress where the user is less efficient, all of course taking into account all of the constraints recorded in the system. This agent communicates fully with the agent managing the multi-mode interface.

• Use of agents for the management of equipment Other agents are considered to manage equipment profiles such as the timetable of the equipment or the allocation of rooms or even their condition, if they require repairs. , maintenance, cleaning, upkeep or specific preparation before a particular appointment.

• Use of agents for the management of non-material resources

The purpose of these agents is to order refreshments from a specialized establishment and to reserve a person to serve during a meeting with many participants, for example. • Using agents to manage user activity

These agents make it possible, among other things, to manage daily news in electronic format from the Internet, news groups, etc. They allow traffic management by taking the routes of the user and collecting information for the user. assist in their daily worries about motorway congestion. A thesaurus is also available to help it formulate press releases.

• Use of agents for online payment

This agent is responsible for taking all data relating to online purchases, paying for transport tickets for a user according to the ruser profile, ie a user may want to buy a business class ticket if it is for his work and an economy class ticket if it is for his personal use. Once the booking process has been established, the agent will ask the user to confirm their purchase by entering the information to authorize payment. This agent is responsible for managing your purchases and notifies the user of the status of his purchases. This agent also manages the secure payment of purchases by making it possible for the merchant to view the buyer's data and by exchanging confidential information with his agent in encrypted form.

• Use of agents for the management of peripherals in the working environment This agent has the role of examining the working and communication environment. It is in a way a module interacting with a multi-mode interface. If a user has a camera, the agent will ask the user to be able to view it to determine his state of fatigue using other agents or if the user has a microphone then he will be offered to interface with the intelligent electronic personal assistant by entering voice commands.

In the system implicitly implemented, a voice recognition or manual character recognition module using the stylus of a portable device for example or with an electronic slate connected to the computer and having the user interface above, can be used for the entering information. The module managing the peripheral environment, module 1007 or else a separate module not shown in FIG. 1, includes a multi-mode interface making it possible to manage the data when it is entered using the voice or through images when a camera is used. We note in passing that the camera is used to convert data in the form of images into digital data that can be processed by the user state module 1009. Likewise, this agent manages the various peripherals adapted to interact with the system. Some printers will surely be more suited than others to do a job for example, depending on their speed. If a document is to be printed confidentially then this agent will initiate the print job to a local printer. • Use of agents for the management of the communication environment

Depending on the Internet, Intranet, GSM, UMTS, Palmnet, Bluetooth, pagers and other communication environments, the user will not be offered the same services as regards the capacities and speed of execution of the processing of certain tasks. If the bandwidth is low and the central system has a lot of interactions to establish with a personal database then the system will ask the user to connect preferably with a system with more data exchange capacities. One might think that a wave of service using intelligent agents and XML as the data exchange language will soon see the light of day and therefore it will be necessary to be able to incorporate them into the system, however if these reduce the performance of the latter, the The device management agent will allow you to choose the services that the user will be able to use effectively.

• Use of agents to manage user profiles with regard to behavior and preferences These intelligent agents learn the behavior of users in order to help them gradually in their decision-making. Initially preferences are entered in the database 1020 and allow other agents to be informed about the preferences and constraints that a user may have.

• Use of agents for the management of technical profiles for resource uses

These agents are used to provide physical information on the types of agents that can be used and on the data to which they can access. The database 1021 gives indications on the addresses of the various servers making it possible to respond to requests.

• Use of agents for knowledge management

These agents are used to inform users about the state of knowledge in a company. More and more companies have a knowledge database, unfortunately, users cannot make effective use of it. The role of this agent is to get information from this database to increase the speed of execution of employees' tasks. With this tool, people will be better able to learn from the experiences of colleagues. This module is quite similar to the data search module on the Intranet.

• Using agents to manage graphical user interfaces Depending on the medium on which the user operates, the system will not be presented in the same form. Some interfaces are shown in Figures 5 and 6. The interface module can be downloaded from a server on which the system is registered. The graphical interface can also be a program saved on the support machine. The use of mobile agents allows the interface to be a program coming from a server and going to run on the remote machine. Finally, the process highlighted in patent application FA572683 developed by Mr. Julien Clausse is another solution to obtaining an interface which can be used in the present case.

FIG. 2 represents different examples of use of the invention. A user can connect from a workstation 201 or 202 or even a laptop 203 via the Intranet 220 to the system. In this case, the 241 agents are located on a server internal to the company. It is possible to connect from laptop 262, 263 or from PDA palrn pilot for example 261, 264. The difference between versions 261,262 on the one hand and 263, 264 on the other hand is the fact that link modules reside on remote machines to access the system. The downloading of a user interface is shown in the case where it is not possible to install a personal link module on the supports. A WAP interface is quite possible in this case.

Figure 3 shows the steps for making an appointment. A lot of constraints have to be managed and that is why agents are very useful. Today, users have several types of data backup formats, either Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Organizer, PDA or data in paper format. Obviously when the data is in paper format, then there is no possibility for an agent to go and interact with another agent. The essential advantage of the multi-agent system is that the data is only accessible by intermediary agents, ie if an agent asks a person if an appointment is programmable then the agent of the person in question will answer only yes or no but will not provide any data on the calendar of the person in question as to whether a time slot is taken for personal reasons or for any other reasons. The agent can also suggest another solution for holding the meeting. Regarding the constraints provided to the request, we note that it is very interesting to manage the constraints on material or real estate resources in parallel with the constraints from the participants.

The people contacted will each have agents who will respond to requests from the initiating agent. At a certain point, a solution suitable for all participants will be found and then the result of the search will be sent to everyone for validation. Since the agents will have to fetch data sometimes located on another device such as a personal computer or a mobile phone or a PDA presented in Figure 2, the agents must have a module allowing them to communicate with these devices . For the moment the TCP / TP module implemented in the agents allows the transport of information.

Each time a request is made by an initiator, mathematical functions are applied taking into account the different levels of priority and constraints to optimize the speed of agents to find possible solutions to requests and increase the efficiency of negotiations. These mathematical functions apply according to the density of the calendars of users, the number of participants and the general importance of the meeting to set up. This is for the purpose of looking at which period, an appointment can take place in relation to the result of the function giving the best approximations of the number of slots available for this appointment. What is added in this section complements the description made about the agents used to make appointments.

By schematizing this appointment booking process, different stages are identified. First, an actor 301 initiates an appointment request by specifying the fields defined in FIG. 5. Once the request has been made, the coordinating agent will interrogate the various databases 312, 313 and 3 14 of each invited and inviting participant. Once the metadata has been acquired, the coordinating agent will negotiate with the intelligent agents of the guests in order to find time slots available for each and satisfying everyone's preferences and constraints. Once the time slots have been selected, a validation request is sent to all participants asking for their agreement, knowing that the time slot (s) offered by the system are already satisfactory. If all respond positively then an update order for user databases is placed. If a negative answer, then the system resumes a negotiation or cancels everything according to the strategy which had been selected initially.

Figure 4 shows what the coordinator module does to acquire data on resources. This coordinator module informs the appointment management module 401 of the addresses of the databases to which to send the requests. The profiles database 402 returns these addresses. The appointment scheduling module then sends requests 423 to the various servers 407 and 408 to obtain information concerning the users involved. Note in passing the abstraction module used to interface between the databases and the appointment scheduling module. This abstraction module generally allows access to heterogeneous sleep systems such as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes.

FIG. 5 represents a view of the user interface 500 concerning the scheduling of appointments. For example, a user has a user interface in front of him on his mobile or fixed terminal. H is defined with the system as master or slave user. Master means that he has all the rights on his personal electronic assistant and slave means that the rights of the user of the agent system are reduced, in the case of a secretary representing a person for example. The user initiates an appointment booking request for example by defining the name of the people to contact 508, 509 or a type of person to meet 510, for example “quality manager”, their possible importance in relation to the requester 511, a date 514, 515 or a date range 518, 519, 520 defined according to the principle of fuzzy logic (approximately around 10 h, duration of approximately 1 hour) using mathematical functions. The user enters through the same time the start of the appointment 523, 524 as well as its duration 527, 528. The user also defines the place 532, 533 with a relative priority in relation to the criteria 534 and a relative precision 535 also defined by the principle of fuzzy logic. Constraints and preferences regarding time data are of the same type as other preferences and constraints. The user does the same for information on rooms and equipment. The user also defines a subject 541 for the appointment as well as parameters which seem important to him 544. The user interface can be modified to take into account what the user wishes to appear as parameters. This interface can therefore be simpler or more complex, it is up to the users. Users can choose from four 545 strategies for requesting an appointment:

• If a person refuses an appointment request then nothing is done and the appointment will not take place

• If a person refuses an appointment request, then we propose another solution until the proposal is not suitable

• If a person refuses an appointment request, then that person automatically becomes an initiator of an appointment

• We take into account a fourth strategy which consists in being able to move appointments

We can consider the case of a task coordinating agent 1000 which in fact serves in the negotiation process With strategy number 3 for example, in this process, the person with the highest level of constraint will become the coordinating agent and will send proposals to the other speakers and if they are accepted, an appointment will be organized or if they are rejected, another agent will become the coordinating agent.

FIG. 6 represents a graphical user interface 600 operating on the platforms on which the user works. The user interface is adapted to the medium. It can either be implemented on the medium, or downloaded from a server, or be a dynamic Internet page. The use of mobile intelligent agents is not excluded in order to be able to execute code on the remote machine which connects and which must serve as support for the user to use his intelligent personal electronic assistant.

This interface has different windows where the results of certain agents are visible, such as the fax 609, telephone 610 and e-mail 611 agents. This interface can be completely personalized. Users can choose the windows they decide to get quickly within sight. This interface offers to visualize the different environments in which the users are likely to evolve. In this interface, through the file menu it is planned to give an option allowing you to visualize your own work rate, to visualize what you do to better manage your actions. This functionality increases in value when it is possible to visualize the work carried out over a long period and to compare with what the system would have proposed to optimize productivity. The principle is based somewhat on the same foundations as software allowing you to visualize your expenses to control your budget. Here, the budget is not only financial but much more temporal. The time and the quality of the management of its working environment are the values on which this system finds all its power.

A final remark characterizing the system concerns the contact of users. Some systems use email to send messages between agents. There remains a problem today when the devices receiving the coumers are not permanently connected to the network. Thanks to the use of the agents of the present system, it is possible to ensure that when a user of a portable device connects to the network, a process makes it possible initially to exchange information concerning various possibilities of taking Appointment. Then in a second step, during a next connection, the process brings up a window on the user's screen asking him to validate a proposed appointment resulting from a negotiation between the agents taking into account the information collected. by the agent during the first connection. With this system, even delocalized from the network, the data will be accessible and the appointment booking process always faster than one of the current current solutions consisting of carrying out a manual verification in one's own agenda to decide on a booking. appointment received by email. The system offers the opportunity to keep your timetable up to date and to automatically record appointments. The system presented no longer asks the user to enter the data in its different calendars. He just asks to accept or refuse proposals.

Concrete example of use

A concrete case of our system gives all the power of the intelligent electronic personal assistant. Imagine a boss who has small children, he uses a nanny to babysit every day because his / her life partner also works every day. JJ receives the information from the nanny that she will be unavailable the next day when he already has an appointment scheduled. In this case it is necessary to arrange the agendas to warn everyone and find a solution. At first, we can imagine that the intelligent electronic personal assistant will take into account the request for absence of the nanny initiated by the boss from either a phone, his PDA or his PC connected to Internet On these last two systems, a liaison officer works who will contact the coordinating agent on the Intranet. This first searches for resource data. If a request is made by telephone, a telephone call management agent located on the Intranet will contact his own coordinating agent through his telephone agent. Once the coordinating agent is contacted, he is responsible for contacting the agent managing the contacts to find the data relating to the user with whom the boss wants to cancel an appointment. The latter will return data such as telephone number, e-mail address to the coordinating agent. Then this agent will ask a call management agent to send a message to the person or will ask an email management agent to send an appointment cancellation message. The person will thus avoid traveling the next day for nothing which could not have been the case if it had been necessary to wait the next morning for the presence of a secretary to contact the person in question. In the event that the person contacted has the means to interface with agents, then the agents will negotiate a future meeting opportunity with each other. Of course, several agents involved in the canceled appointment will be summoned to update any data relating to the appointment that was in question, to modify the timetable for the equipment or the rooms, etc.

Another advantage of the general system is that it provokes meetings which until then did not take place for lack of good organization. Take the case of people working on several sites but around the same project. If a person X belonging to site 1 comes once a week to site 2 and must meet several people Y and Z belonging to site 2, and people do not have a secretary to make their appointment for them and that they are not often available to make an appointment, so it is likely that it will take several weeks for people to meet. The case is even more obvious when a group meeting is attempted. With the system, everyone's respective schedules are optimized, and the final gain for people and for the product that requires validation by different people will see its delivery times shortened. The system also makes it possible to meet ISO9000 quality standards in terms of improving working methods to reduce the time allocated to different tasks in a company. Although the invention disclosed in this document has been described by means of specific implementations, numerous modifications and variations can be envisaged by those skilled in the art, both in terms of the architecture of the system and of the functionalities of the agents described. , without departing from the scope of the invention as described in the claims.

Claims

claims

1. Intelligent electronic personal assistant to assist in the management of information for at least one user and to automate the management of tasks using devices which can be connected to at least one wired and wireless telephone network, comprising a plurality of specialized modules managing a type of information using computerized reasoning techniques, a graphical user interface management module and a coordinator module communicating with these so-called modules Characterized in that it includes in addition personal and professional data recorded in at least a database for each of said users, at least one additional database containing information on the profile of at least one user, on their associated resources and on the identifiers of said specialized modules making it possible to manage said resources, a ap connection detection module similar communicating and a module for managing the configuration of the working environment allowing adaptation of said specialized modules.

2. An intelligent electronic personal assistant according to claim 1 wherein the various specialized modules managing the information are used for time management, information management and management of means of communication.

3. An intelligent electric personal assistant according to claim 2 wherein the modules managing the information comprise at least one module from among modules for detecting the type of connection, managing at least one calendar and making appointments, managing at least one contact list, management of at least one type of electronic mail, management of at least one type of telephone call to at least one telephone number, management of fax corresponding to at least one number, task management, memo management, Internet management, Intranet management, performance level and daily user activity management, material resource management, management of non-material resources, management of preferential and technical profiles, management of the working environment, management of the communication environment and management of the graphical user interface.

4. An intelligent electronic personal assistant according to one of the preceding claims wherein the different modules can communicate with each other without outside intervention and are autonomous with respect to each other.

5. An intelligent electronic personal assistant according to claim 3 wherein the work environment management module has a multi-mode interface for obtaining information concerning the user from at least one hardware computer peripheral, comprising an interface for managing voice commands and visual commands, an interface for managing voice or written commands passed according to fuzzy logic and an interface for communicating with the communication environment in which the user is located.

6. An intelligent electronic personal assistant according to one of the preceding claims wherein the coordinator module makes it possible to manage and view the flow of information between the various specialized modules and the activity of the users, the management module of at least one graphical user interface. , the modules for detecting the connections of the connected devices and the module for detecting the configuration of the working and communication environment making it possible to adapt said complementary specialized modules.

7. An intelligent electronic personal assistant according to one of the preceding claims wherein the modules are mobile intelligent agents.

8. Method implemented in the intelligent electronic personal assistant according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that it comprises the following steps: a) Identification of the user from the machine on which he is located via a human interface machine b) Detection by the device of the type of communicating device and the type of working environment of the user c) Access to the database of resource and user profiles d) Use of a coordinator module adapted to the types d '' devices and the working environment and making it possible to manage the various specialized modules according to the tasks to be performed, the information systems to be accessed and the media on which the information is recorded e) Execution in heterogeneous environments of the tasks by specialized modules

9. A computer program comprising portions of program code for the execution of at least one of the steps of the method according to claim 8 when said program is executed on a medium such as a computer, a personal digital assistant and a telephone.