The Requirements for Personal Mobile Assistants in a Mobile Telecommunications Environment

The telecommunications environment that will exist in the near future will consist of a complex web of interacting devices and services. Users will need help in dealing successfully and productively with this environment, which will be made more complex by their own mobility. They will need on-line software systems that can represent them in their absence, represent them in routine or mundane interactions, and assist them in complex interactions. We term such on-line, software systems “assistants.” The complexity, dynamic, nature, and openness of the environment will necessitate intelligence for the assistants. The unique demands and needs of each user will require assistants that are customized or personalized. The proliferation of agents will require that they be able to interact with each other productively. In this paper we consolidate these requirements into an architecture for interacting personal assistants.