The Federation Architecture for Interoperable Agent-based Concurrent Engineering Systems

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to the development of concurrent engineering software applications based on a knowledge sharing technology. In this approach, individual programmers write their programs in the form of separate modules called software agents, which interoperate with their peers using an expressive communication standard called Agent Communication Language. The runtime activities of the individual software agents are coordinated by task-independent programs called facilitators. Facilitators perform a wide variety of tasks, including the automated selection of agents to accomplish subtasks, the mediation of terminology, the buffering of partial knowledge in communication between agents, and the management of communication with other facilitators on other machines. Once set in operation, software agents interoperate to accomplish the overall task in a heterogeneous distributed architecture called federation. The paper discusses the major aspects of this approach and briefly describes three concurrent engineering applications developed in light of this approach.