A Personal Agent that Supports Communication in the Ubiquitous Communication Environment

In the coming ubiquitous communication environment, a large variety of devices will be connected to the network, and web services will evolve further, allowing users to receive communication services more flexibly than today. In addition, most devices will be permanently connected to the Internet. In order to create an easy-to-use ubiquitous communication environment for human-to-human communication, we consider a personal network (PN) that consists of a home network and personal area networks (PAN). In the PN, input/output (I/O) devices available in the user’s immediate surroundings are used. This paper focuses on the network configuration management functions for a PN. A protocol that controls communication in the higher layer using XML and HTTP is proposed. Finally, this paper discusses a personal agent (PA) that is always at hand to support the user. We have developed a prototype of the personal agent system and verified its basic operation.