CONSORTS: A Multiagent Architecture for Service Coordination in Ubiquitous Computing

One of the fundamental issues of Ubiquitous Computing is concerned with the coordination gaps between devices, services, and users. When numerous devices, various information services, and users who have different intentions are physically co-located in a environment, how can we coordinate the services and devices to assist a particular user in receiving a particular service so as to maximize the user's' satisfaction there? In order to solve this human-centered service coordination issue, we have been developing a multiagent architecture for Ubiquitous Computing, called CONSORTS (Coordination System of Real world Transaction Services). In this paper, we first outline some coordination gaps in Ubiquitous Computing, and describe three design concepts of the CONSORTS to bridge the gaps: physicallygrounding, cognitive resource managements, and location-mediated service coordination. Then, we show the outline of CONSORTS architecture, and two applications of CONSORTS, context-aware information assist systems in museums and wireless-LAN based location system on AgentCities Networks.