iJADE Web-miner: an intelligent agent framework for Internet shopping

There is growing interest in using intelligent software agents for a variety of tasks, including navigating and retrieving information from the Internet and from databases, online shopping activities, user authentication, negotiation for resources, and decision making. We propose an integrated framework for information retrieval and information filtering in the context of Internet shopping. We focus on applying agent technology, together with Web mining technology, to automate a series of product search and selection activities. It is based on a multiagent development platform, namely, iJADE (intelligent Java agent development environment), which supports various e-commerce applications. The framework comprises an automatic facial authentication utility and six other modules, namely, customer requirements definition, a requirement-fuzzification scheme, a fuzzy agents-negotiation scheme, a fuzzy product-selection scheme, a product-defuzzification scheme, and a product-evaluation scheme. A series of experiments were carried out and favorable results were produced in executing the framework. From an experimental point of view, we used a database of 1,020 facial images that were obtained under various conditions of facial expression, viewing perspective and size. An overall correct recognition rate of over 85 percent was attained. For the product selection test of our fuzzy shopper system, an average matching rate of more than 81 percent was achieved.