The goal of the Electric Elves project was to develop software agent technology to support human organizations. We developed a variety of applications of the Elves, including scheduling visitors, managing a research group (the Office Elves), and monitoring travel (the Travel Elves). The Travel Elves were eventually deployed at DARPA, where things did not go exactly as planned. In this article, we describe some of the things that went wrong and then present some of the lessons learned and new research that arose from our experience in building the Travel Elves. The project was quite successful with impressive prototypes and many papers on the research.

Many different architectures have been proposed for the design of autonomous agents. In this article, the application of the belief-desire-intention architecture to the artificial soccer domain is described. We show how it supports efficient deliberation in a highly dynamic environment. The mapping from input to output can be done in simple ways (for example, strictly reactive) or in more sophisticated ways, for example, with models that are inspired by human decision processes. We found that mental notions such as capabilities-skills, belief, goals-desires, and intentions-plans are useful pictures to make agent programming transparent.

Much of our intelligence derives from our ability to manipulate our environment through collaborative endeavors. Most extant computer programs and interfaces do little to take advantage of such manifestly human talents and interests, leaving broad avenues of human-computer communication unexplored. Although it is still considered controversial, there are many who believe the harnessing of social communication to be rich in possibilities for modern software. In this article, we look at a number of autonomous agent systems that embody their intelligence at least partially through the projection of a believable, engaging, synthetic persona. Among other topics, we touch briefly on samples of research that explore synthetic personality, representations of emotion, societies of fanciful and playful characters, intelligent and engaging automated tutors, and users projected as avatars into virtual worlds.

TACAIR-SOAR flew all U.S. fixed-wing aircraft. The general goal was to generate behavior that "looks human" when viewed by a training audience participating in operational military exercises. Its most dramatic use was in the Synthetic Theater of War 1997 (STOW '97), held 29-31 October 1997 (Ceranowicz, 1998; Laird, Jones, and Nielsen 1998; Laird et al. 1998). STOW '97 was a United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) that was integrated with the United Endeavor 98-1 (UE 98-1) training exercise. As an ACTD, the overall goal of STOW '97 was to permit an early and inexpensive evaluation of advanced technologies that show promise for improving military effectiveness.

This article shows how tools to create intelligent agents can be improved by taking advantage of established software-engineering principles such as high-level languages, maintenance-oriented development environments, and software reuse. We describe how these principles have been realized in the Herbal integrated development environment, a collection of tools that allows agent developers to exploit modern software-engineering principles. We present an example integrated agent development environment that realizes these principles and provides lessons for other agent architectures, both existing and in development. Creating complex software is not a new problem, and the software-engineering community has developed principles to guide solving complex problems with software. Developing intelligent agents is a complex software-engineering activity but the benefits of applying software-engineering principles such as high-level languages, maintenance-oriented development environments, and software reuse to intelligent agent development have not yet fully migrated to the agent-development community.

American Airlines (Fort Worth, Tex.) has utilized speech-recognition technology to enhance its automated flight information system, AI Magazine Volume 20 Number 1 (1999) ( AAAI) consortium representing 60 percent of all newspapers circulated in the United Kingdom, has developed an intelligent agent-based classified advertising web site. The ADHunter system collects and indexes as many as 1 million automobile, help wanted, and property classified ads. Heritage Mutual Insurance (Sheboygan, Wis.) is using intelligent software to improve its underwriting process. The company's rule-based paperless personal lines processing application automates the procedure for evaluating and issuing a variety of insurance products. David Blanchard is the editor of Intelligent Systems Report (Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio; www.isreport.com),

Shell U.K. Exploration and Production (Aberdeen, U.K.) has implemented an advanced forecasting system for predicting oil field production. The expert system helped Shell achieve over $1.6 million in cost savings for its Brent Field site within 2 months of implementation. The National Research Council has awarded Nestor (Providence, R.I.) a grant to develop a neural network-based video sensor system, crossingguard Arvin Industries (Columbus, Ind.) is working with the U.S. Air Force to develop a neural network system that can determine the quality of noise in such vehicles as automobiles and aircraft. The neural network will help determine what exactly an annoying sound is and how it can be fixed. Using virtual reality hardware and software, Parke-Davis (Morris Plains, N.J.) has been able to improve the molecular modeling research techniques it uses to develop new pharmaceutical products.

Kaire International (Longmont, Colo.), a multilevel marketer of skintravel without having to speak with a reservation agent. Busey Bank (Champaign, Ill.) is using intelligent-agent technology to launch its David Blanchard is the editor of Intelligent Systems Report, Intelligent Manufacturing, and Electronic Commerce Update. Online versions of these publications are available on the World Wide Web at www.lionhrtpub.com. This network security application will be used to improve efforts to detect and eliminate international toll fraud. United Airlines (Chicago, Ill.) has deployed an employee reservation system based on speech-recognition technology.

Microelectronics supplier TRW (Redondo Beach, CA) is using virtual reality (VR) to decontaminate nuclear facilities. Clothing manufacturer Wrangler (Greensboro, NC) has developed a neural network system to improve production planning and forecasting. The system generates forecasts based on consumer-demand data, rather than retail buyers' orders, to drive production planning. Unisys Corp. (Blue Bell, PA), an information-management company, is using an intelligent agent-based system to provide self-service humanresource applications to its 36,000 employees worldwide. The intelligent agents allow employees secure and controlled access to their records through the World Wide Web.

A team that includes AI Ware (Cleveland, Ohio), a vendor of intelligent systems for design and manufacturing applications, has been awarded a $3.8 million grant by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop an aluminum diecasting process monitoring and optimization system. The team will develop a neural network-based system with self-improving capabilities to detect as well as predict process and quality problems, and that can suggest corrective actions before quality degrades below acceptable limits. Caterpillar (Peoria, Ill.), a manufacturer of construction, earth-moving equipment and engines, working with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, has developed a virtual reality environment for testing new machine designs. These tests assess the vehicle's design and determine visibility from the cab. Verity (Mountain View, Calif.), a supplier of information retrieval tools based on intelligent agent technology, has teamed up with Netscape Communications Corp. (Mountain View, Calif.), a provider of open software for the Internet and other global networks, to bring Verity's Topic agent technology to the Internet.