Creating knowledge-based multimedia applications

Multimedia systems have the power to involve users in rich interactions with diverse information. For interactions with complex, interrelated, bodies of information, hypermedia techniques can be employed to give the user non-linear access to the stored material. If a multimedia application is to offer the user more than this, for instance to provide advice, or help with a problem, then a more intensive interaction is necessary. Exploitation of knowledge-based system techniques may be relevant and the interaction will need to have dialogue-like characteristics. To find out how to create software of this kind, the Intelligent CD-I Project at the UK Philips Research Laboratories is prototyping knowledge-based multimedia applications, targeted on compact disc interactive (CD-I). The author gives an overview of CD-I and knowledge-based multimedia. He goes on to describe the cookery advisor CD-I system being developed by Philips