ACTS Project AC323 OCEANS - Open Communication Environment for Agent-based Networked Services List of participants I ITALTEL spa (prime contactor) UK Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine D Fraunhofer Geselschaft / IAO N SINTEF S UI Design Contact: Dr.Stefano Antoniazzi Head of Customer Equipment and Networks Lab. Advanced Research Dept., ITALTEL spa Tel: + 39.2 4388 9376 Fax: + 39.2 4388 9120 E-mail: Stefano.Antoniazzi@italtel.it Address: ITALTEL spa Palazzo Quadrifoglio - C02 20019 - Castelletto di Settimo Milanese (MI) ITALY --------------------------------- With the advent of world-wide networks characterized by cheap access, such as Internet, a new market scenario enabling a largely unexplored set of interactive applications and services is emerging. New categories of end users are going to be targeted as well. In particular, the OCEANS project focuses on a horizontal consumer market which includes residential users, small office/home office (SOHO) environments, as well as other heterogeneous customers such as hotels, schools and museums. The users addressed are characterized by limited time and budget, and simply look for attractive features and services to be provided by cheap appliances which are quickly installed, easily used and with zero-administration effort. In such a context, the user interface of interactive terminals is felt as a key factor for the successful and widespread deployment of both current and future interactive services. A base assumption is made, common to the targeted areas, that end-users neither have expertise in using conventional computers, nor are usually interested to learn to use them. In other terms, the project vision is a "Grandma's interface to the information society". Therefore, a rethinking of the interaction metaphors designed for the traditional business-oriented information technology world is strongly required. Such a rethinking should be driven by the experience with completely different approaches, such as the TV, game consoles and multimedia kiosks. In addition to their importance for customers, it is also becoming more and more evident that user interfaces represent the most critical and complex task to be performed by advanced terminals. Hence, their impact on both software and hardware design is very high and it is expected to grow further in the future. Finally, in a longer term perspective, user interfaces will not be concerned just with remote control devices and visual/aural presentation techniques. In fact, the ultimate user interface of an interactive application will be potentially a very sophisticated software system, which could be able to exploit some kind of user model and carry on smart dialogues. Such a focus on the user interface domain clearly reflects two principle objectives of the OCEANS project: - exploitation of agent technology and 3D graphics for improved usability and user acceptance and provision of recommendations - improvement of multimedia services with intelligent behavior A complementary issue is related to networking. OCEANS technologies are intended to support applications and services which are delivered on a network infrastructure, with an obvious attention for the Internet and its future evolution. This issue leads to other two principle project objectives: - specification of an open communication environment for interactive multimedia services - recommendation on standards for interoperability in agent systems However, it should be pointed out that the main emphasis of the project is put on client-side technologies, hence concerned with customer equipment (terminals and, eventually, local networks), rather than access/core networks or content provider issues. To summarize, it can be observed that the explicit OCEANS objective of providing an open communication environment, actually includes two main aspects: - communication between users and system components (agents) - communication among system components (agents) OCEANS research and development will concentrate in particular on the user terminal side. Server-side and network-related issues will be addressed, but only to the extent of their impact on terminal requirements and architecture. The suitability of the developed technologies to different classes of terminals will be investigated, with special focus on innovative home appliances such as set-top-boxes and Internet-enabled TVs, rather than more conventional PCs. Two main scenarios for interactive multimedia services will be targeted: client/server applications and user-to-user applications. Electronic commerce, multi-user games and intelligent information retrieval have been already identified as candidate OCEANS application areas. Internet is considered as the reference platform for the integration and demonstration of emerging and innovative technologies. A smooth transition from current access networks for residential customers (narrowband Internet) to future ones (broadband) is taken into account as well. The OCEANS project mainly focuses on technological issues, hence there are no field trials planned. However, testing of the developed system and applications will be conducted on selected sample users in the context of specialized usability laboratories. The results of the project will contribute to demonstrate the technical feasibility as well as the user benefits of next-generation software architectures for consumer multimedia terminals designed for a mass-market of non-expert users. --------------------------------- OCEANS partners, and Italtel in particular, are interested in sharing information and, possibly, setting up new projects with other projects/companies/institutions about: - virtual reality technologies for consumer terminals - intelligent agents - distributed agents ---------------------------------