Electric Elves: Applying Agent Technology to Support Human Organizations
Hans Chalupsky, Yolanda Gil, Craig A. Knoblock, Kristina Lerman,
Jean Oh, David V. Pynadath, Thomas A. Russ, Milind Tambe
Information Sciences Institute and Computer Science Department
University of Southern California
4676 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292
Abstract
The operation of a human organization requires dozens of ev-
eryday tasks to ensure coherence in organizational activities,
to monitor the status of such activities, to gather information
relevant to the organization, to keep everyone in the organiza-
tion informed, etc. Teams of software agents can aid humans
in accomplishing these tasks, facilitating the organization’s
coherent functioning and rapid response to crises, while re-
ducing the burden on humans. Based on this vision, this paper
reports on Electric Elves, a system that has been operational,
24/7, at our research institute since June 1, 2000.
Tied to individual user workstations, fax machines, voice,
mobile devices such as cell phones and palm pilots, Electric
Elves has assisted us in routine tasks, such as rescheduling
meetings, selecting presenters for research meetings, track-
ing people’s locations, organizing lunch meetings, etc. We
discuss the underlying AI technologies that led to the success
of Electric Elves, including technologies devoted to agent-
human interactions, agent coordination, accessing multiple
heterogeneous information sources, dynamic assignment of
organizational tasks, and deriving information about organi-
zation members. We also report the results of deploying Elec-
tric Elves in our own research organization.
Introduction
Many activities of a human organization are well-suited for
software agents, which can devote significant resources to
perform these tasks, thus reducing the burden on humans.
Indeed, teams of such software agents could assist all orga-
nizations, including disaster response organizations, corpo-
rations, the military, universities and research institutions.
Based on