FIPA Agent Research Articles

Location‐aware middle agents in pervasive computing

In the vision of pervasive computing, numerous heterogeneous devices, various information services, and users performing daily activities are physically co‐located in a environment. How can we coordinate the services and devices to assist a particular user in receiving a particular service so as to maximize the user’s satisfaction? To solve this human‐centered coordination issue, we propose an agent‐based service coordination framework for pervasive computing. It is called location‐aware middle agent framework. The middle agent takes account of the user location in cognitive way (based on location‐ontology), and determines best‐matched services for the user. Based on this coordination framework, we have developed a multi‐agent architecture for pervasive computing, called CONSORTS (Coordination System of Real‐world Transaction Services). In this paper, we first outline some requirements of the human‐centered service coordination in pervasive computing. Secondly, we describe location‐aware middle agent framework to fill the requirements. Lastly, we outline CONSORTS, an prototype of location‐aware middle agent framework, and two applications of CONSORTS, location‐aware information assistance services in a museum and wireless‐LAN based location systems on FIPA agent Networks.

MULTI-AGENT INFRASTRUCTURES FOR OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE COORDINATION

Coordination in multi-agented systems (MAS) can be conceived as either an agent activity (the subjective viewpoint) or an activity over agents (the objective viewpoint). The two viewpoints have generated two diverging and often contrasting lines of research, as well as different and noncompatible technologies, however, their integration is mandatory for modeling and engineering complex MAS. In this paper, we explore the issue of integration at both the model and the technology levels. First, by taking FIPA agents and coordination artifacts as reference notions for subjective and objective approaches, respectively, we sketch a framework where agent interactions with coordination artifacts are modeled as physical acts, deliberated and executed by agents analogously to communicative actions. Then, we show how the JADE infrastructure for FIPA-compliant agents, and the TuCSoN infrastructure providing agents with coordination artifacts can be integrated at the technology level, allowing JADE agents to access TuCSoN tuple centers through JADE services.

The Design of Communicative Act Libraries: A Linguistic Perspective

The FIPA Agent Communication Language includes a library of communicative acts supporting generic types of social interaction, such as information exchange and action performing. However, when developing specific applications, it is desirable to support agent interaction by means of more expressive constructs. In this paper, a structured approach to the design of communicative act libraries is put forward, which takes into account both the criteria of reusability and expressiveness. A linguistic approach is taken to ensure the expressiveness requirement. The proposal is illustrated by the design of an advisory sub-catalogue of reusable communicative acts.

Deploying FIPA-compliant systems on handheld devices

LEAP is a runtime environment for deploying agents on a network of Java-enabled devices. It complies with FIPA international standards for multiagent systems. The Lightweight Extensive Agent Platform project is the first attempt to implement a FIPA agent platform that runs seamlessly on both mobile and fixed devices over both wireless and wired networks.

Developing Real Applications With Agent Technologies

In this paper, we present an agent library to develop multi-agent applications. Such an agent library has been realised taking into account FIPA specifications. FIPA specifications give the minimum amount of technology deemed necessary for the management of agents in an open agent system, including agent roles, an agent communication language, an agent management content language, and a standard way to interact with non-agentised software. Therefore, the library offers the prototypes of the agents necessary for the management of a FIPA agent open system and an agent prototype that the user can specialise to build the other agents necessary for her/his application. The library has been implemented both in C++ and Java. The two implementations support a logical distribution, i.e., the agents correspond to different threads, and a physical distribution, i. e., agents of the same applications run on different machines. The Java library has been used to develop a multi-agent system, that facilitates users to use a video on demand service, and a first prototype of the system is under experimentation. The C++ library is used for the development of a multi-agent system that should integrate the different software modules performing sensory data interpretation, planning, faults diagnosis, . . . of a robot working in a space station.