The AVID research project aims for a novel integration of multimedia presentation formats and intelligent agent technology. In particular AVID, which stands for Agents and Virtual environments In DLP, aims at a tight integration of the object models underlying the various technologies involved, in a uniform platform based on the (object-oriented) distributed logic programming language DLP.

A somewhat futuristic approach, which clearly indicates the need to go beyond traditional WIMP (Windows and Menus) interfaces, is sketched in [Angelic], which presents under the rather poetic label of angelic guidance a vision of how intelligent agent technology could be merged with virtual actors in rich media 3D environments to assist the user in a variety of (possibly related) tasks.

To remedy the noted deficiency, we propose a tight integration of agent object models and the object models underlying Web3D, in the framework of an object-oriented logic programming language. Moreover, we may extend the agent communication language used for inter-agent communication to realize shared objects and events in multi-user virtual environments, due to the distributed nature of our logic programming language DLP.

Finally, our research efforts in the AVID project should result in a framework for developing multi-user, multi-agent applications in rich media Web3D environments, based on the distributed logic programming language DLP.

In the first year students start with a general Introduction to Multimedia. This course centers around three themes: the convergence between media, platforms and delivery technology, the availability of broadband communication and its impact on the development of standards such as MPEG-4, and multimedia information retrieval as an essential ingredient of the growing multimedia information repository on the Web.

Over the past six years, our research efforts have focussed on developing models and software architectures for multimedia and hypermedia applications. (A full version of this description, including publications, is available online in the SIKS report (2001)).

This research has resulted in two Ph.D. theses:

• 10/4/2001 -- Structured hypermedia -- a matter of style
• 8/5/2001 -- Diva: Architectural Perspectives on Information Visualization

The intelligent multimedia research theme may be regarded as continuing the hypermedia and visualisation projects described before. Our efforts are directed towards realizing the technology needed for developing intelligent multimedia applications. In particular, we aim for developing demonstrators in the area of persuasive technology, and thus explore design methods and patterns for the realization of emotionally charged virtual worlds. This work is being done in cooperation with dr. C. Dormann and dr. Z. Ruttkay from CWI.

• year 1: realization of Web Agent Framework (WAF)
• year 2: realization of ACL for multi-user environments (MU-ACL)
• year 3: integration of WAF and MU-ACL
• year 4: thesis