Combining interface agents and situated agents for deploying adaptive web applications

Abstract

A web site presents a graph-like spatial structure composed of pages connected by hyperlinks. This structure may represent an environment in which situated agents associated to visitors of the web site (user agents) are positioned and moved in order to monitor their navigation. This paper presents a heterogeneous multi-agent system supporting the collection of information related to user's behaviour in a web site by specific situated reactive user agents. The acquired information is then exploited by interface agents supporting advanced adaptive functionalities based on the history of user's movement in the web site environment. Interface agents also interact with user agents to acquire information on other visitors of the web site and to support a context aware form of interaction among web site visitors. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.