ARGUS: An Automated Multi-Agent Visitor Identification System

Abstract

ARGUS is a multi-agent visitor identification system distributed over several workstations. Human faces are extracted from security camera images by a neural-network-based face detector, and identified as frequent visitors by ARENA, a memory-based face recognition system. ARGUS then uses a messaging system to notify hosts that their guests have arrived. An interface agent enables users to submit feedback, which is immediately incorporated by ARENA to improve its face recognition performance. The ARGUS components were rapidly developed using JGram, an agent framework that is also detailed in this paper. JGram automatically converts high-level agent specifications into Java source code, and assembles complex tasks by composing individual agent services into a JGram pipeline. ARGUS has been operating successfully in an outdoor environment for several months.