Social innovation is an attempt to solve various social problems. It requires the creation of new value in a local community. However, a concrete method for creating new value in a local community is yet to be established. Therefore, in our study, we aim to construct a framework for creating new value in the local community by designing a social support system of the local community. To construct such a framework, we propose a designable evaluation network (DEN), which is a social network that expresses the evaluation relationship between people/artifacts and people/artifacts in a local community as a network structure. Moreover, the evaluation relationship in a DEN is formed through a designable evaluation model, which is a mathematical model with designability. It is possible to construct a framework by designing a social support system on a computer using a DEN and conducting operations to create new value for a local community.

Tourism is one of the most important industries in the world. An excavation of tourism resources is an effective approach to promote the tourism industry, and many excavation methods that have been devem Fortuitous Tourism Resources Candidates. Therefore, it is necessary to excavate Fortuitous Tourism Resources loped for Potential Tourism Resources that are resources with low name recognition and high attractiveness. However, an excavation method of Fortuitous Tourism Resources that are resources with high attractiveness by chance, due to influences of environmental factors, has not yet been developed. Fortuitous Tourism Resources are extracted froCandidates in order to find new Fortuitous Tourism Resources. In this paper, an excavation method of Fortuitous Tourism Resources Candidates, by analyzing data focusing on differences in familiarity of tourists, is proposed. Furthermore, we conducted a demonstration experiment in Kyoto, Japan, to practice the proposed method. As a result, three Fortuitous Tourism Resources Candidates are excavated using the proposed method, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by the experiment.

Global problems, such as environmental issues, refugee crises, and food shortages, transcend borders and must be addressed at the international level. The goal of our research is to examine ways in which we can clarify common features, similarities, and differences in people's thinking to confront problems among people who speak different languages. In our study, we first designed an interactive analysis framework for analyzing the similarities and differences in thinking among different people. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed framework, we conducted experimental discussions combined with making a mind map about environmental issues among Chinese and Japanese-speaking participants. After the discussion activity, we analyzed the logs and mind maps by focusing on keywords and the flow of information. Our results showed that the participants had various ways of thinking about environmental problems and their solutions. We succeeded in summarizing the similarities and differences as discussion points and share them using our framework in a visible form.

The Walk Rally application is a mobile application that encourages users to walk around an area using mobile terminals. Several Walk Rally applications have been developed for use in various situations. However, depending on the area and the purpose of use, the information presented in the application and the functions required for it are different. Therefore, it is necessary to individually develop Walk Rally applications suitable for specific situations, and this of course becomes expensive. In this study, we developed a Walk Rally application development environment named Machinavi, where various functions are independently developed as business logic to enable use in various situations. Customizing the business logic to the purpose of use makes it possible to develop Walk Rally applications suitable for various situations. We used Machinavi to develop three Walk Rally applications for three specific situations: an event, a sightseeing spot, and a commercial area. The results of experiments and a questionnaire survey demonstrate the effectiveness of the Walk Rally applications developed using this development environment.

In this paper, we describe the structure of a Vision-Based Indoor Positioning (VBIP) system which is a pure software solution without any hardware deployment. We conducted an experiment by providing our VBIP system to navigate visitors through three different buildings with a total length over 350 m during Science and Technology Festival 2018 at Waseda University. This large scale experiment pointed out our incomprehensive thinking while designing the algorithm only based on human behavior, and motivated us to remodify our algorithm based on natural features in the environment. We further conducted another experiment and found out that our VBIP system is improved. VBIP system can now reduce the drift error of VIO (Visual Inertial Odometry) to around 1.4% for over 350 m tracking. For the experiment result, we believe that VBIP is one step closer to perfection.

In recent years, many studies have been conducted to realize easy route navigation for pedestrians using augmented reality (AR). Many of these studies use methods where the direction or sign is indicated using AR. However, only a few have focused on using AR for route navigation to follow. Our research aims to realize easy route navigation using an AR character agent. We develop a navigation application wherein the user follows an AR character agent. We evaluate it from the behavior of the user. For that purpose, we conduct an experiment at a university festival using the navigation application. We then analyze the experimental data and questionnaire responses. The results show that route navigation by the AR character agent makes route identification easy. However, problems involving many participants feeling uneasy or being lost are encountered. Problems in accuracy caused by errors in the positional information are also observed. In future, a method to indicate directions more accurately must be considered.

At events and sightseeing spots, congestion can be a factor that lowers customer satisfaction, so there is need for methods that mitigate congestion. Currently, there are methods for mitigating congestion such as changing the layout of an event and restricting customer behavior. However, there are problems in that it is difficult to reduce congestion at events in which the layout cannot be changed, and there is a risk the satisfaction level will be reduced due to restricting customer behavior. Therefore, we propose a method aimed at reducing congestion by allowing users to voluntarily select a detour to avoid congestion by providing users with not only obvious information but latent information with a walk-rally application. In demonstration experiments at real events and sightseeing spots, we confirmed that the proposed method is effective at reducing congestion and clarified how to use latent information effectively for mitigating congestion.

One of multimedia content acquisition method on the Web is using tag which is describe of content. However, different words may be tagged to the same or similar subjects, because tagging is performed in an essentially arbitrary manner by a human. In addition, tags are provided in specific language from the content. This model proposes the method of automatically tagging which compensate insufficient described content by using multilanguage. Our experimental evaluations showed that users could obtain more appropriate images with this method.

We investigated whether shoutengai, old shopping districts in Japan, can be revitalized by solving the disparity problem in the number of customers among shoutengai according to their location and by solving the problem of inequality in popularity among the stores in a shoutengai. We developed the “store appeal value”, which is unique index of showing the attractiveness of a store and developed a walk rally application based on incentives based on the store appeal value. We investigated whether shoutengai can be revitalized by using our walk rally application. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed application , we conducted a demonstration experiment involving three shoutengai in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. By analyzing the behavior logs obtained from the experiment, we clarified that our store appeal value is appropriate. We were also able to show that it is possible to revitalize shoutengai by using our walk rally application, that is, to distribute customers among shoutengai and among stores in a shoutengai.

Service-oriented computing environments (SoCEs) such as the Language Grid can be regarded as the synthesis of their individual services. However, to make sustainable SoCEs, the user will want assurance that the billing structure is valid of and apportionment of cost burden among users is fair. To analyze the factors involved, we conduct donation and investment games for a machine translation service, where the service users participate in gaming. The results confirm the existence of users that actively try to make donations and social investments, users that remain passive to this kind of service, as well as users who tend to free ride on other users. Furthermore, we find that setting bonuses based on the total amount of donation and investment is effective in incentivizing some players to donate and invest. We also show how to reduce the cost of developing and executing gaming exercises for domain practitioners or experts. We define a game as a workflow of collaborative tasks executed by players. We develop game definition criteria to simplify game descriptions. We develop a gaming environment that enables web-based games to be implemented by using the game definitions.

Recently, the number of foreigners living in or visiting Japan has increased. Foreigners in Japan use a wide range of languages, and handling all of these languages is difficult. Although machine translation can be used to provide economical translations, cases exist in which this technology does not generate sentences that properly communicate the meaning of the original text depending on the source language. This research proposes a translation process that applies statement restriction rules to create sentences that can be easily machine translated in order to improve the quality of multilingual translation. It is based on the hypothesis that statement restriction rules meant to improve the translation quality of a given language pair (such as Japanese to English) will also improve machine translation quality for other language pairs. In this research, we create Japanese statement restriction rules based on Japanese-English translations, and demonstrate that the proposed translation process can be effective in translating Japanese sentences created with these statement restriction rules into English, Chinese, and Korean.

In tourism, it is necessary to promote sightseeing areas and tourist amenities as well as to encourage repeat visits by improving the tourists' levels of satisfaction. In this paper, we focus on impressions of sightseeing spots as an important factor in improving tourist satisfaction. Many studies have analyzed the relationship between tourists' impressions of a sightseeing area and their overall evaluation of that area, but few studies have focused on the tourists' first impressions. We analyzed the tourists' first impressions of each sightseeing spot in the area and investigated the relationship between these first impressions and the tourists' overall evaluations of each spot. Our results showed that first impressions contributed to the tourists' satisfaction and increased the tourists' motivation to revisit. We also discovered that first impressions could be significantly changed by altering the way in which tourists navigate between sightseeing spots and the way in which spots are combined.

Tourist numbers have increased considerably in recent years and tourism is now a key industry in the world. While major tourism resources are attracting attention, there are other areas that also hold some value as tourist sites but are not recognized as such. In this paper, these sites are called 'potential sightseeing resources'. It is acknowledged that tourist sightseeing satisfaction will increase by visiting potential sightseeing resources. Thus, a method to recognize potential sightseeing resources is required. In this study, to effectively use potential sightseeing resources situated within various local events, we developed an application that acts as a guide system to support tourism, guiding users to potential sightseeing resources situated within the same areas as a local event. We also analyzed accelerated patterns leading users to potential sightseeing resources and verified the effects via an experiment. As a result, it was confirmed that the application was successful in leading users to potential sightseeing resources by the application, however, certain conditions are required for non-monetary incentives to be effective.

China is beset by environmental problems. This study focused on addressing China's environmental problems by using a language grid to provide a Japanese environmental education program, 'manufacturing soap from waste oil,' to Chinese students at home and evaluating their practice. The teaching and work experiments comprised observations of the knowledge-transfer process under a multilingual environment and the students 'work during experimental activities, respectively. The results show that a better training effect was obtained by the family groups who performed both teaching and work experiments than by the student groups who performed the teaching experiment only.

It is assumed that Japanese can analogize the meaning of original text if they read the original text according to the commonality of written expressions, such as the commonality of Kanji and Chinese characters in case of Chinese-Japanese translations. In this study, participants rewrote translated sentences while viewing simultaneously the original sentences written in Chinese and the translated sentences into Japanese by Language Grid as a machine translation service. We analyzed how chat between a Japanese rewrite worker and Chinese participant was affected when the original sentences and machine-translated text were simultaneously displayed during the rewriting work. Additionally, we analyzed and evaluated the effect of the simultaneous display on the rewritten translated text. We found that the simultaneous display affects the rewriting work such that it is possible to analogize the meaning of the original text. Furthermore, the simultaneous display improved the translation quality of the rewritten translated text.

Due to globalization, there is an increase in not only the use of machine translation services but also in the risk of failure to transfer. This risk becomes particularly significant if users are transmitting their country's specific knowledge and know-how to exchange cultural information with users in other countries. To mitigate this risk, it is necessary for users to adapt to the translation services in order to improve the translation's accuracy. Thus, in this study we focused on the transmission effect of sharing technical knowledge with a user having a different mother tongue (Chinese) by using a machine translation service. We performed experiments simulating expert knowledge transmission classes and tasks with a system consisting of multilingual chats and a corpus of terminologies. Our evaluation of the transmission reveals how the Chinese knowledge receiver could have learned depending on the pattern of organizational structure and the level of detail of the information. We also found that the use of symbols and numbers was effective. After these simulations and evaluation, we were able to propose how to more effectively use machine translation in the transmission of technical knowledge.

Gaming simulations based on multiagent model treating social communication are conducted to analyze and to understand various problems in a society. Multiagent model is suitable for modeling the problems which are associated with relationship between human and human/human and environments. The main aim of this research is that domain experts of the target problems describe their own problems as game definitions. The domain experts are not always familiar with software engineering. We define game as the workflow of collaborative tasks executed by the players. We designed game definitions for describing such a game simply. We developed the gaming execution environment which enables us to conduct web based gaming using the game definitions.

In this study, we tried that we could obtain more data for analysis in multi-party and multilingual gaming simulation. In particular, we proposed that we change a difficulty of the gaming simulation in time with players' level of the gaming simulation because a difficulty of a game which adjust players' level of the game amuse them, and because adding change or amusement in a work motivates people to do the work. As a result, we succeeded to increase amount of talk in the gaming simulation, and we verified to be able to obtain much data and analyze them.

It is very difficult for students who do not have a business career or experience to understand business models or structures. In addition, business models from the student viewpoint remain largely within a model-based understanding, and students do not have practical opportunities to create an image of business uncertainty. Our goal is to provide an experimental learning environment beyond the level of the students' hypothetical thinking about uncertainty in business. We have developed a versatile participatory simulation environment as an active learning environment for the university classroom. We apply a multiagent-based approach to represent the uncertainty of the business environment. This paper introduces one of our active learning programs, the Croquette Factory Game, for understanding business interaction with uncertainty. We show that this program provides beneficial educational effects for students in understanding a business model with uncertainty.

The internationalization of economic and social activities is forcing people who use different languages and belong to different cultures to collaborate far more often. An analysis of the status of multilingual communications among such people is required. We apply gaming simulation methods to analyze this topic. In this study, we design an environment that can game multilingual communication online by describing just simple game scripts. This advance is significant as people with domain knowledge of the applied problem are not always computer experts.

We discuss the complementarity effect between translation services as a human task and machine translation services when these services are provided as part of a language translation Web service workflow. Previous research has found that mistranslation and loss of meaning often occurs in the machine translation workflow. To correct these errors, we set up two types of editing service allocation: a prior rewriting service process by humans, and a follow-on rewriting service process by humans. We conducted experiments to evaluate the adequacy and fluency of the sentences, as well as the costs and affinity. The results indicated that a Japanese rewriting task provided as a follow-on rewriting service by a Japanese person produced more fluent sentences than an English rewriting task provided as a prior rewriting service by a Japanese person, although they were nearly equal in adequacy. In addition, we analyzed the working characteristics of humans and found that there was no correlation between the human editorial operating time and the fluency of the output sentences. However, the experimental result suggested that the editorial operating time was potentially correlated to the adequacy of the output sentences. We concluded that it is preferable to assign the editing services of humans according to their personal working characteristics.

Miscommunication problems are often caused by not only language barriers but also cultural ones. To avoid this, it is effective to know in advance about intercultural differences, such as differences in behavior, attitudes, and ways of thinking. We propose a methodology for cross-cultural understanding by exploring and looking at analytical thought process variation. Through the participatory case study experiments, we found that we could extract differences of protocol patterns among the participants groups: American, South Korean, and Japanese. © 2014 Authors.

Gaming as a tool benefits communication and education process within groups. This paper introduces a face-to-face negotiation game developed by the authors. This game deals with a health-care dilemma involving a businessperson's work life and personal life. Players as a businessperson are tempted to work hard to get a promotion, however, at the same time, a person has to negotiate and find balance at work and in healthy life. This paper illustrates unique settings of a design and practice of the lifestyle modification game by examining a case study. Two versions with a different structure of player interaction were created in order to discuss issues on bridging gaming method and collective intelligence. One is the design for multi-layered interaction among players and the other is based on one-on-one communication between businessperson player and tempter player. Practices of the lifestyle modification gaming with two versions were evaluated through a questionnaire survey given to university students. Although a gaming field with multilayered interaction generated laughter in the communication, it was suggested that the sum of interaction and the creation of new ideas was not necessary correlated.

Knowledge Transfer via machine translation is increasing. In this study, we analyzed monolingual user's translation refinement process through a controlled experiment for the knowledge transfer using Language Grid. In this expenment, user edited onginal sentences based using a back-translation on rule instruction. From this experiment, we discovered pre-edited sentence could have been a different nuance and meaning. The text in the field of multilingual communication often was ungrammatical sentence unlike the test sentence for machine translation. Therefore, it is difficult to rewrite the sentence. As a result, these processes need a commumcation channel for sharing knowledge between the original author and pre-editor.

Gaming can be used as a communication tool for multinational/multicultural people to share and un-derstand problems. We integrate a multi-language communication environment and a gaming environment, where people can play games with multi-cultural context. We further conduct a controlled experiment of language service management to investigate relations between gaming results and field survey or theoretical model.

To solve the problems in business and society, the case method which enhance the conflict-resolution skills has been mainly carried out in a single language environment. We propose a new educational system to conduct the global case method in a multilingual environment. We evaluated our system by using a case 'Japanese foreign student Mr Koichi Tanaka'. As a result, we found that it was possible to address issues in their native language. We were aware of both the cultural similarities and difference between two groups, Korean and Japanese.

Nowadays, more than 2 million foreigners are living in Japan. Most of them has a different culture or a custom by ones national origins. Therefore, when a natural disaster occurs, they might be beset with various problems. Because of these factors, we suggest a multi-language virtual DIG system in this study. Foreigners could participate in disaster-preparedness drills called DIG by using this system. In addition, the local government could obtain the behavior model data of each foreign community might choose when the disaster occurs. By using this system, we could support both foreigners and local government to increase the ability to respond to the disaster.

Gaming simulation is noticed as basis on which we think about a complex problem, such as international environmental problems, and civic problems. Tagging is an important method of analysis for this experiment, but it is trouble that tagging has large cost for analyst. Thereupon, we noticed social acceptability of service, then we propose a method that prompt subjects to tag voluntarily, and introduce it. As a result, we could reduce a cost of tagging by analyst, and verify that we could do analysis more accurately.

The case method is an effective teaching technique for business management education. The main objective with this method is to spark discussion and share ideas. However, discussions are generally conducted in a single-language environment, which is difficult for non-native speakers. We therefore developed a multilingual case method system for global classroom environments to benefit students of different cultures and who speak various languages. The system provides a learning environment in which students can communicate in their native language through the Language-Grid service. We evaluated our system by conducting experiments using a short case of an unresolved cultural conflict. Japanese and Korean students participated in the experiments. The system enabled sufficiently effective communication in their native languages. We were also able to address cultural differences, for example, Japanese students tend to think of cultural conflicts more negatively than Korean students. © 2013 IEEE.

A multilingual gaming simulation is suggested as the basis of an experiment by which we discuss complex problems such as global civics or environmental problems. Assigning tags is a very important way to analyze this experiment. However, assigning tags has a cost that is too large for analysts. In this study, we suggest and introduce a method for participants to voluntarily self-tag, focusing on gamification and crowdsourcing. As a result, we verified that it is possible for analysts to reduce the tagging cost when analyzing and to analyze results more accurately. © 2013 IEEE.

We discuss here the complementarity effect of rewriting services in a language-translation Web service work-flow. The communication mediated by the machine translation service includes mistranslations and changed meanings, which are caused by the quality of the machine translation. To reduce these problems, we propose service reallocation and assemblage of the rewriting service by humans at each stage of the workflow. We set up two rewriting service allocation patterns: 1) a reallocation pattern as a previous rewriting process, and 2) a reallocation pattern as a follow-on rewriting process, for workflows consisting only of machine translations. A team of human judges provide multiple assessments of adequacy and fluency of sample sentences that are translated from English to Japanese using each pattern. Results indicated that the Japanese rewriting task as a follow-on rewriting service provided greater fluency than an English rewriting task as a previous rewriting service, with nearly equal adequacy. © 2013 IEEE.

Citizens today are discovering that many critical issues remain to be solved, such as global climatic change, natural disaster response, resource and energy problems, and institutional fatigue of political and economic systems. Scientists, as experts, can make valuable contributions in given areas by providing technological solutions and an awareness of the latest technology. Creating new social systems and innovations that encourage sound social decision-making is also essential to ensure the sustainable preservation and use of natural environments, social infrastructures, and human resources, all of which took eons to develop and should be passed to the next generation. To tie scientists contributions to the publics welfare in an organic manner, scientists must contribute to public-centered organizations tasked with establishing innovation and strengthening contact with local knowledge bases. To ensure that scientific knowledge and expertise are actually converted into societal value, it is further necessary to create both settings and frameworks in which a diverse set of actors, who will act as leaders in innovation, can interact and reach consensus. In this chapter, outreach communication is discussed as a feasible approach to tackling these problems. Originally, the word outreach meant to exceed or go beyond or reaching out to the community, and it was mainly used in the public welfare field. It covers the welfare service activities that a community outreach worker, who normally works in a hospital or local health center, provides to those who need help or social support in external venues (Rowe 1999). However, outreach has recently been widely applied to the initiative activities that a researcher, who works in a public research organization or university, provides to or shares with the public or people outside the academic community. In science and technology fields especially, this word is used to express an attempt to promote public understanding of scientific knowledge and to delineate possible future scenarios with regard to science and technology for the next generation. These types of outreach activities are called science communication or science and engineering communication. Lately, these words are widely used not only in the science and technology fields but also in the humanities and social sciences fields.

A "knowledge system" is a system to allow users to select technical knowledge on a lexical basis from technical papers written in English and share that knowledge. It supports users to read technical paper written in English, understand technical knowledge in English, and complement knowledge with other users' knowledge. We experimented for accumulating English special knowledge, translating it to Japanese, and adding information how much people know the knowledge. And we evaluated the complementation and comprehensiveness of the technical knowledge between two different systems that we proposed and among the users. The experiment(s) showed that the number of Japanese-translated words tends to increase with increasing number of users and the environment facilitates acquiring technical knowledge in their mother language. Using this system, users can collect knowledge comprehensively. In addition, the system provides an effective way to create a high-quality environment for helping users to read English-written technical papers. Copyright © 2012 ACM.

In this paper, I propose an analytical method for international communication using a multilingual gaming or gaming simulation. The term 'service outreach' means the service for knowledge delivery or sharing using the communication service. If we extract and reuse the service component elements from the existing game, we can develop enormously valuable services. In this paper, I release the findings of the investigation into the service experience during the gaming and make specific mention to get a new service evaluation model for service outreach.

<p>In this paper, we describe "Langrid-Gaming," a multilingual participatory gaming simulation approach using a Language Grid. Gaming simulations provide an incentive for the participants to be involved more actively by dramatizing the issues. In Langrid-Gaming, participants have a goal first. They communicate or negotiate through role-playing and select the next action, and they exchange information to reach the goal. Langrid-Gaming enables the design of a multilingual environment for collaboration wherein participants use their mother tongue to communicate and interact with one another in multilingual chatting. For fieldwork, we conducted multilingual participatory gaming workshops using Langrid-Gaming. In these workshops, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese participated; the theme of the Langrid-Gaming was the "global food problem." In conclusion, we obtained the following results: the participants shared and thought together about the global food problem, offering their perspectives on the problem. In the workshops, they could see and experience a major population crash that occurred during the game, and they concluded that they will run out of food unless we change their ways. They also found that advanced countries need to help developing countries increase their yields and adapt to climate change. Participants can discuss topics easily, and the system is suitable for helping to solve global problems.</p>

In case of the large scale "Langrid Gaming" using Language Grid, we take a lot of trouble with gathering participants. In addition, the more participants, the more difficult it is to observe their behavior. This paper describes the attempt to reduce the cost of gathering participants and to simplify observing participants by introducing player agent. Moreover, we found that it was possible to extract various negotiation protocols through gaming played by various players and agents.

Langrid Gaming - A multilingual gaming simulations using Language Services on the Language Grid - is useful tool for education and resolution for international social problems. We need more practices to accumulate know-how and refine a learning model, but it is difficult to design such games for non-programmer, and it is expected that people who want to design and use such games are not programmer. In this study, I advance a framework to implement some kind of Langrid Gaming easily; I make new DSL "Karina" to describe targeted games and implement a translator to convert Karina script into CGI programs.

Gathering players is unavoidably costly when we run large-scale "Langrid Gaming", which is a Language Grid-linked multilingual and multinational gaming simulation. If people can be replaced in the gaming simulations, the cost decreases. Thus, a player agent has been introduced. First, game experiments were conducted in natural language, and parallel texts and player agents were developed by analyzing the experiments. Second, experiments were conducted in Japanese Experiment 1) and in Japanese and Chinese (Experiment 2). Negotiation protocols were analyzed, and new parallel texts were developed from Experiments 1 and 2. Third, experiments were conducted in Japanese (Experiment 3) once again, and Experiments 1, 2, and 3 were compared and analyzed. The following results were obtained. (1) Using parallel texts enables a player agent to be introduced. (2) Various negotiation protocols can be extracted by repeating an experiment with a greater variety of participants. (3) Valid parallel texts can be extracted by analyzing negotiation protocols and functions of utterances. (4) Adding new parallel texts reduces fruitless utterances and changes the negotiations protocol. © 2011 ACM.

Langrid Gaming, which provides multilingual communication for gaming simulations using translation services provided on the Language Grid, is a useful educational tool and can contribute to the resolution of international social conflicts. This tool has been enhanced on the basis of the experience and know-how obtained from the participants' comments and suggestions. However, the object and the model object of the gaming tool are usually defined as Java or PHP objects, which makes it difficult for non-programmers to develop a new game. In this study, we propose a framework to implement various types of Langrid Gaming easily. In particular, we designed a new domain specific language (DSL) called 'Karina' to describe targeted games, and implemented a translator to convert Karina script into CGI programs. This script development environment makes game building easy and simplifies the development procedures, regardless of whether the gaming developer is a programmer or not. © 2011 ACM.

In recent years, as the Internet spreads, the use of the Web Service has increased, and it has diversified. The Web Service is registered with UDDI, and the user selects service there and can use it for the provider by making a demand. In future, if the Web Service comes to be used more widely, the number of Web Services will increase, and the number of registrations at the UDDI will also increase. The user examines the large number of available services, and needs to choose the service that best matches their purpose. Quality of Service (QoS) is used as an index when a user chooses a service. Many studies show that the scoring of QoS for service selection is important. Quality of Service is registered by the provider and is treated as an objective factor. However, subjective evaluation, the evaluation of the user after the service use, is also needed to choose the best service. In this study, we use a new element, evaluation, in addition to QoS for service selection. We have expanded the existing filtering technique to make a new way of recommending services. Our method incorporates subjective evaluation. With this model, we apply the technique of information filtering to the Web Service recommendation and make an agent. Also, we simulate it after having clarified the behavior and tested it. The results of testing show that the model provides high levels of precision. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

The new intelligence system named Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is now in the limelight. In this AmI environment, when multiple people in various situations cooperate mutually, they need to to be supported simultaneously and effectively. Furthermore, peoples' context and activities change continuously, so it is also necessary to achieve dynamic correspondence between people. Therefore, a planning agent has been developed to enable context-aware service composition. The planning agent creates plans dynamically to support multiple people in different environments. In the experiment, the dish event scenario was adopted and the planning agent allotted multiple people ingredient collection tasks. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

People communicating through machine translators cannot tell what the purpose of their communication is or what other people are thinking because of the poor quality of translation services. If they are able to share their understanding within a "common ground" like a communicative or behavioral protocol, they can overcome their difficulties in communication, and we can improve information systems to help them improve mutual understanding. We designed a multilingual participatory gaming simulation, and conducted multilingual gaming experiments with Japanese and Korean participants. We extracted the protocol for conversation with mistranslations from the game logs and designed an agent to support conversation. Then, Japanese and Chinese played it and we observed and analyzed the behaviors of agents and the interaction between players and agents. Consequently, we obtained two main sets of results: (1) an agent function that notified players of the time that had elapsed since the conversation had broken down effectively speeded up their negotiations and achieved more active communications. (2) Tagging by participants was difficult and ineffective in leading to specific protocols and conversations when mistranslations occurred. Copyright 2010 ACM.

Participatory gaming simulation that is used for science communication at the science café or science workshop is a powerful technique for understanding the specialized scientific knowledge. In general, there is a short talk by an invited speaker on a new or controversial science-related topic at the science café. And followed by a discussion, the audience gets the chance to ask any questions they may have. However, the audiences, who are ordinary citizens, don't have enough technical knowledge about the topics, so it is not easy to understand the complicated scientific issues. To help solve the problem, we have been working to develop participatory gaming simulation as educational communication tools. In this paper, we report the findings of an analysis of a science communication trial using participatory gaming simulation that deals with global warming.

In this paper, we describe new methodologies for reinforcing the social consensus building of the multicultural coexistence assistance using participatory simulation in civil societies. In this methodology, both human and intelligent software agents participate in a participatory gaming simulation. This simulation, which has mutual interaction between humans and agents, can achieve the gathering and analyzing of beneficial information to solve problems in multicultural civil societies. This type of simulation will help to provide knowledge for the formulation of social consensus, and to create new opportunities for discussion with people with different cultures and social backgrounds. © 2006 IEEE.

Some procurement negotiations are difficult to conclude smoothly using existing information processing systems because they need to first develop fuller buying/supplying specifications through bilateral negotiations between the buyer and supplier. In this paper, we propose an e-procurement model that provides a specification improvement mechanism, whereby a buyer can improve his/her procurement specifications using the supplier's knowledge. We conducted a simulation based on a real procurement case study to establish the effectiveness of our e-procurement model. Simultaneous procurements using multi-agent based technology can help buyers improve their own specifications. In addition, the e-procurement model helps suppliers to enhance the order-acceptance potential. © 2005 IEEE.

This paper proposes a new e-procurement model for a large number of buyers and sellers interacting via the Internet. The goal of e-procurement is to create a satisfactory match between buyers' demand and sellers' supply. From our real-world experience, we view e-procurement as a process of negotiation to increase the matching quality of two corresponding specifications: one for buyers' demand and another for sellers' supply. To model scalable e-procurement, we propose a co-adaptive matchmaking mechanism using mutual relevance feedback. In order to understand the nature of the mechanism, we have developed two types of software agents, called e-buyers and e-sellers, to simulate human buyers and sellers. Multiagent simulation results show that the matching quality is incrementally improved if agents adaptively change their specifications. A realistic example is also provided to discuss how to extend our simulation to real-world e-procurement infrastructure. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.

Making it easier to design interactions between agents and humans is essential for realizing multi-agent simulations of social phenomena such as group dynamics. To realize large-scale social simulations, we have developed the scenario description languages Q and IPC (Interaction Pattern Card); they enable experts in the application domain (often not computing professionals) to easily create complex scenarios. We have also established a four-step process for creating scenarios: 1) defining a vocabulary, 2) describing scenarios, 3) extracting interaction patterns, and 4) integrating real and virtual experiments. In order to validate the scenario description languages and the four-step process, we ran a series of evacuation simulations based on the proposed languages and process. We successfully double-check the result of the previous controlled experiment done in a real environment.

Making it easier to design interactions between agents and humans is essential for realizing multi-agent simulations of social phenomena such as group dynamics. To realize large-scale social simulations, we have developed the scenario description languages Q and IPC (Interaction Pattern Card); they enable experts in the application domain (often not computing professionals) to easily create complex scenarios. We have also established a four-step process for creating scenarios: 1) defining a vocabulary, 2) describing scenarios, 3) extracting interaction patterns, and 4) integrating real and virtual experiments. In order to validate the scenario description languages and the four-step process, we ran a series of evacuation simulations based on the proposed languages and process. We successfully double-check the result of the previous controlled experiment done in a real environment.