Evaluating the FIPA standards and their role in achieving cooperation in multi-agent systems

Abstract

Focuses on the analysis and evaluation of certain aspects of the current specification standards provided by FIPA (Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents). The work reported in this paper is based on the development of a multi-agent application-an audio-visual entertainment broadcasting (AVEB) system. This has resulted in determining the advantages and limitations of using the FIPA standards to build complex multi-agent systems (MASs). The development and testing of the AVEB application are part of an EU project called FACTS (FIPA Agent Communication Technologies and Services, ACTS Project No. AC317). A main result of using FIPA has been the identification of the usefulness and power of its protocols. The reason for the importance of the protocols in developing MASs is that it provides a degree of expressing cooperation within the MAS architecture. As the protocols stand currently, they are not sufficient to capture a complete explicit model of the cooperative requirements in MASs. However, they do provide a basis from which to start. We examine this feature of FIPA further, in order to evaluate its role as a bridge between the mental agency and social agency requirements in the development of cooperation in MASs.