Mitsuyuki Inaba

Professor, College of Policy Science & Graduate School of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University

Director, Center for Forensic Clinical Psychology, Ritsumeikan University

Group Leader (Web technology group), Digital Humanities Center for Japanese Arts and Culture, Ritsumeikan University

Associate Member, Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, University of California, San Diego

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About Me | Courses | Projects | Works

header About Me

Mitsuyuki Inaba is a professor in the College of Policy Science and Graduate School of Policy Science at Ritsumeikan University. He is also a project leader of the Web technology group in the Digital Humanities Center for Japanese Arts and Culture, Ritsumeikan University. His current research interests include Semantic Web/Ontology Technology, Text Mining, Learning Science, and CSCL. He is a member of the ACM, JSAI, JCSS, JSISE, JSET, IPSJ and the ADHO.

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header Projects

1. CSCL and Learning Communities

UNCHIKU

UNCHIKU is a CSCL system for higher education, which grows through social interactions among learners on the Web. On the system, users could participate in the community of practice for collaborative construction of XML formatted learning materials on the Web by posting their questions and comments as additional Web contents. This collaborative practice also promotes the participants' cognitive appropriation to the learning community through the awareness of the social relationships among themselves.

unchiku image
The UNCHIKU system (PowerPoint presentation, 10 pages)

Term: 2000 - present

References:

  1. Inaba, M., "An e-Learning Environment for Collaborative Learning Communities based on a Sociocultural Approach," Journal of Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education (JSISE) , Vol. 20, No. 2, 2003, pp. 179-191.
  2. Inaba, M., "Community formation and meta-cognition for Collaborative Learning on the UNCHIKU web-based CSCL system," The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) ET2002-3 (2002-05), May 2002, pp. 13-18.

GANCHIKU

GANCHIKU is a CSCL system for the community of learners in higher education, which allows its users to browse presentation slides as learning materials on the Web. It also assists the users to exchange and share the knowledge among the community though the collaborative annotation to any coordinates on each slide. The designer of web-contents could easily create the learning materials with MS PowerPoint or other generic presentation software.

Term: 2002 - present

KOUCHIKU

KOUCHIKU is a versatile tool for cooperative development of digital archives on the Web. It allows its users to define hierarchical topic graphs to organize the images or movies with textual description. The system also equips with the authoring environment for digital animations to present narratives as a series of pictures with narrations. Currently we are experiments of this system to assist collaborative learning at elementary schools, clearing house for regional information, and a platform to collect public comments from the local residents.

Term: 2003 - present

References:

  1. Inaba, M., "Research on Community Building for Collaborative Learning and Public Involvement through the Development of Regional Digital Archives," Proceedings of the conference on Japanese Society of Educational Technology, Sep. 2004, pp.1017-1018.
  2. Inaba, M., Hosoi, K., Hasegawa,T., Shoji, T.,and Niimi, I., "Research on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Systems for Creative Thinking through Context Creation," Art Research, Ritsumeikan University, No. 4, Mar. 2004, pp. 165-178.

2. Digital Archives and Knowledgeable Communities

KACHINA Library

KACHINA Library is a digital archives and clearing house for traditional Japanese literature. Since the library is implemented with the UNCHIKU system, the users could participate in the construction of annotation databases on the Web by posting their questions and comments. KACHINA Library also equips with the function for collaborative filtering based on the evaluation by the users so that the library could maintain the quality of the archives.

kachina library
KACHINA Library (PowerPoint presentation, 2 pages)

Term: 2000 - present

References:

  1. Inaba, M., "Formation of Online Communities and Collaborative Knowledge Management through Digital Archives," Art Research, Ritsumeikan University, Mar. 2001, pp. 111-126.
  2. Inaba, M., "Knowledgeable Archives: A platform for collaborative knowledge management on Digital Archives," The Proceedings of SIG Computers and the Humanities Symposium 2000, Information Processing Society of Japan, Dec. 2000, pp.231-238.

GANCHIKU-Map

GANCHIKU-Map is a platform for archiving and sharing urban memories that include the knowledge and cultural heritage embedded in a certain place. It enables its users to access geographical information databases on the Web and assists the users to exchange and share their information and memories about the place. The architecture of this system is based on the concept of Knowledgeable Archives, which allows the users to participate in the collaborative achieve construction. In this research, we are applying the system to preserve the memories of the old age in the Japan-town in Honolulu that are rapidly disappearing from people's minds and landscapes in the city.

ganchiku map
The GANCHIKU-Map system (screen image, png data)

Term: 2002 - present

Reference:

Gondo, C., Ohno, S., and Inaba, M., "A Platform for Preservation and Sharing of Urban Memories based on a Concept of Knowledgeable Archives," The Proceedings of SIG Computers and the Humanities Symposium 2003, Information Processing Society of Japan, Jul. 2003, pp. 31-38.

KACHINA Cube

KACHINA CUBE enables the members of a local community to share the regional narratives over the Internet. This system represents a region as a virtual 3D space that consists of a 2D map with a time axis. The users post and discuss historical episodes or folklores about the region on the 3D space. The architecture of this system is based on the concept of Knowledgeable Archives, which allows the users to participate in the collaborative archive construction. This research aims at the development of local identity and regional consciousness among members of a community through collaborative construction of regional digital archives. Currently we are working on the Kyoto Narrative Archives system that focuses on storing and sharing of the narratives in the Kyoto city.

Term: 2004 - present

Reference:

  1. Saito, S. and Inaba, M., "Knowledgeable Archives for Storing and Sharing of Narratives in a Local Community," he Proceedings of SIG Computers and the Humanities Symposium 2004, Information Processing Society of Japan, Dec. 2004, pp. 107-114.

SMIL Project

We are conducting research on digital archives for Japanese traditional performing arts, among which is Noh play. We have utilized the newest digital technologies to capture video data of the actual Noh performance, the shape of Noh masks, and the texture of Noh costumes. Those digitized resources have been accumulated into a database. As for dance of Noh play, we have used a motion capturing system for plotting the performer's body motion. Currently we are working on the development of an authoring environment that is based on the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) technology, and that is capable of integrating digitized resources into an interactive viewing system for Noh play.

Term: 2002 - present

Reference:

  1. Kojima, K., Inaba, M., Kaneko K, Akama, R., Hachimura, K., Seo, N., and Nagamura, G., "Createing Digital Contents on Traditional Performing Arts with the SMIL Techonology," IPSJ SIG Technical Report 2003-CH-60 (8), IPSJ, Oct. 2003, pp. 57-64.
  2. Kojima, K., Inaba, M., Kaneko K, Akama, R., Hachimura, K., Seo, N., and Nagamura, G., "Createing Digital Contents on Traditional Performing Arts with the SMIL Techonology," Art Research, No. 4, March 2004, pp. 179-186.
  3. Kojima, K., Akama, R., Hachimura K., Seo N., Nagamura, G., Kaneko, T., Shigeta, M., and Inaba, M., "Supporting Technologies for Digital Archives - The Development and Use of Digital Contents for Noh Play, The proceedings of Digital Contents Symposium 2005, May 25-27 2005.

3. Artificial Intelligence and Agent Technology

EBISS (Experimental Basis for Informatics and Social Sciences)

EBISS is a multi-disciplinary, open, collaborative project that aimed at investigating social problems by means of computational modeling and social simulations. This project has developed SARA, a multi-agent gaming simulation platform providing for easy construction of simulations and gamings.

ic image
Agent-based Simulator based on the SARA platform

Term: 1997 - present

IC (Internal Consultant)

IC is an intelligent agent that helps the user to explore the internet resources. Externally IC behaves as a conversational agent that assists Web browsing. Internally it is implemented as a multi-agent system which consists of the following three agents; 1) Natural language interface (NLI) agent that understands user's utterance and extracts his/her goals, 2) Planning agent that generates and executes plans to achieve the goals, and 3) Information agent that chooses appropriate information resources on the Internet and retrieves required information from the resources. Since IC utilizes local databases as well as resources provided on the Internet as knowledge bases, theoretically it has unlimited knowledge bases.

ic image
Architecture of the IC system

Term: 1995 - 1998

Reference:

  1. Inaba, M. "Internet Consultant: An Integrated Conversational Agent for Internet Exploration," Proceedings of 1995 The Global Information and Software Society Internet Conference (GISSIC'95), Oct. 17-20, 1995, pp. 65-78. [ps] [pdf]

MC (Maintenance Consultant)

MC is a conversational agent designed as a NL interface for the SMA (Software Maintenance Assistant) system, that is a workbench for software engineers who are working on the maintenance. MC can provide useful information triggered by the question from the software engineer. For example, it visualizes the behavior or data structure of the software, the procedure for maintenance tasks, and hint for solution of the system trouble.

Term: 1991 - 1996

Reference:

  1. Takeda, K., Inaba, M., Chin, D., Sugihara, K., and Miyamoto,I. : "Software Maintenance Assistant system," Manufacturing Agility and Hybrid Automation - I, Richard J. Koubek and Waldemar Karwowski (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Human Aspects of Advanced Manufacturing: Agility & Hybrid Automation (HAAMAHA '96), Maui, Hawaii, August 1996, pp. 192-195, International Ergonomics Association Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1996. [ps] [pdf]
  2. Chin, D., Inaba, M., Pareek, H., Nemoto, K., Wasson, M., and Miyamoto, I. : "Multi-Dimensional User Models for Multi-media I/O in the Maintenance Consultant," Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on User Modeling (UM'94), August, 1994, pp. 139-144.

ALAWAI (Agent Languages and AgentWare for Agent Invention)

ALAWAI is an integrated environment for rapid development of intelligent agents which collaboratively operate on a distributed environment. It provides agent system components such as multimedia user interface parts, inter-agent communication languages, plans, user models, and agent system framework to which those components can be visually glued together.

alawai image
Concept of ALAWAI

Term: 1995 - 1997

Reference:

  1. Takeda, K. and Inaba, M., "ALAWAI: Agent Languages and Agentware for Agent Invention," The proceedings of 7th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, August 24-29, 1997. [ps] [pdf]

MAUI (Multimedia Agent User Interface prototyper)

MAUI (formally called AP) is a prototyping tool for coordinated multi-agents system to support flexible working style by business persons. Graphical models are at the heart of its prototyping process. It includes a graphical editor for the models and an interpreter of executable specifications in the models. All the graphical models are defined in MERA (Meta-Entity-Relationship-Attribute), a specification language whose primitive constructs are entities, relations and attributes.

References:

  1. Takeda, K., Inaba, M. and Sugihara, K. "User Interface and agent prototyping for flexible working," IEEE MultiMedia, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1996, pp. 40-50.
  2. Takeda, K., Wang, X., Inaba, M., Sugihara, K., and Miyamoto, I. "Modeling and prototyping of distributed multimedia systems for flexible working," Proceedings of 1995 Pacific Workshop on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS'95), Mar.31-Apr.2, 1995, pp. 34-43. [ps] [pdf]

MISAKO (Frame-based Knowledge Acquisition Agent with NL Interface)

MISAKO is a conversational agent with Japanese NL interface. It supports knowledge acquisition and information retrieval with NL. One of the practical applications based on this system is the knowledge-warehouse for software development tools. The software engineer states with NL the task he/she was assigned and MISAKO lists up the tools that may be useful to achieve the engineer's goal.

Term: 1988-1991

Reference:

  1. Inaba, M. and Fujii, N., "Knowledge Acquisition from Table Structure in MISAKO," Proceedings of Japanese Information Processing Society Workshop 1989 (Fall), Sep 15-18, 1989, pp. 88-94.
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Mitsuyuki Inaba (inabam@sps.ritsumei.ac.jp)
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