MOBILE DIGITAL ASSISTANTS FOR COMMUNITY SUPPORT

We applied mobile computing to community support and explored mobile c omputing with a large number of terminals. This article reports on the Second International Conference on Multiagent Systems (ICMAS'96) Mobi le Assistant Project that was conducted at an actual international con ference for multiagent systems using 100 personal digital assistants ( PDAs) and cellular telephones. We supported three types of service: (1 ) communication services such as e-mail and net news; (2) information services such as conference, personal, and tourist information; and (3 ) community support services such as forum and meeting arrangements. A fter the conference, we analyzed a large amount of log data and obtain ed the following results: It appears that people continuously used PDA s in their hotel rooms after dinner; e-mail services were used indepen dently of the conference structure, but the load on information servic es reflected the schedule of the conference. Postquestionnaire data sh owed that our trial was considered interesting, although people were n ot fully satisfied with the PDAs and services provided. Participants s howed a deep interest in mobile computing for community support.