Abstract
This paper addresses issues in developing open multiagent systems, in which it is easy to expand the functionality by adding new agents with new capabilities, and which facilitate interoperability with other agent systems. We argue that an open multiagent system should define the following support elements for agent communication:
-
1.
A common set of speech acts to define the types of messages that an agent might send to another agent.
-
2.
A common service ontology by which the agents can describe their capabilities to each other, and reason about which agents have the capabilities needed to execute specific tasks.
-
3.
A common set of prescriptive conversation policies to define the acceptable exchanges of messages between agents.
In addition to the above, we also discuss the utility of having a matchmaking agent that can reason over agent capabilities to recommend agents for specific tasks, where the capabilities and requirements are defined using a common service ontology. This ensures that the semantics of matching agent capabilities to task requirements remains the same across the multiagent system.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
M. Barbuceanu. Coordinating agents by role based social constraints and conversation plans. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI '97), pages 16–21, 1997.
M. Barbuceanu and M. Fox. COOL: A language for describing coordination in multi-agent systems. In First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, 1995.
R. Bayardo, W. Bohrer, R. Brice, A. Cichocki, J. Fowler, A. Helal, V Kashyap, T. Ksiezyk, G. Martin, M. Nodine, M. Rashid, M. Rusinkiewicz, R. Shea, C. Unnikrishnan, A. Unruh, and D. Woelk. Infosleuth: Agent-based semantic integration of information in open and dynamic environments. In Proceedings of SIGMOD '97, 1997.
J. Bradshaw, S. Dutfield, P. Benoit, and J. Woolley. KAoS: Toward an industrial-strength open agent architecture. In J.M. Bradshaw, editor, Software Agents, chapter 17. AAAI Press, 1997.
P. Cohen and H. Levesque. Communicative actions for artificial agents. In ICMAS-95, 1995.
K. Decker, K. Sycara, and M. Williamson. Modeling information agents: Advertisements, organizational roles, and dynamic behavior. In Working Notes of the AAAI-96 workshop on “Agent Modeling”, 1996.
T. Finin, Y Labrou, and J. Mayfield. KQML as an agent communication language. In J.M. Bradshaw, editor, Software Agents. AAAI Press, 1997.
T. Finin, C. Thirunavukkarasu, A. Potluri, D. McKay, and R McEntire. On agent domains, agent names and proxy agents. In ACM CIKM Intelligent Information Agents Workshop, 1995.
T. Finin and G. Wiederhold. An overview of KQML: A knowledge query and manipulation language. Technical report, available through the Stanford CS Dept., 1991.
D. Geddis, M. Genesereth, A. Keller, and N. Singh. Infomaster: A virtual information system. In Intelligent Information Agents Workshop at CIKM '95, 1995.
N. Jacobs and R. Shea, “The Role of Java in InfoSleuth: Agent-based Exploitation of Heterogeneous Information Resources”, IntraNet96 Java Developers Conference, April, 1996.
Y. Labrou. Semantics for an Agent Communication Language. PhD thesis, University of Maryland at Baltimore County, 1996.
Y. Labrou and T. Finin. Semantics for an agent communication language (working report). 1997. In this volume.
McGuire, Kuokka, Weber, Tenenbaum, Gruber, and Olsen. SHADE: Technology for knowledge-based collaborative engineering. Journal of Concurrent Engineering:Research and Applications, 1(3), 1993.
C. Petrie. http://cdr.stanford.edu/ProcessLink/kgml-proposed.html.
M. Singh. A customizable coordination service for autonomous agents. 1997. In this volume.
I. Smith and P. Cohen. Toward a semantics for an agent communications language based on speech-acts. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 24–31. AAAI, AAAI Press/The MIT Press, 1996.
D. Woelk, M. Huhns and C. Tomlinson. “InfoSleuth Agents: The Next Generation of Active Objects”, Object Magazine, July/August, 1995.
D. Woelk and C. Tomlinson, “The InfoSleuth Project: Intelligent Search Management via Semantic Agents”, Second International World Wide Web Conference, October, 1994.
C. Zaniolo, “The Logical Data Language (LDL): An Integrated Approach to Logic and Databases”, MCC Technical Report STP-LD-328-91, 1991.
T. Winograd and F. Flores. Understanding Computers and Cognition. Addison-Wesley, 1998.
http://www.cselt.stet.it/fipa.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nodine, M.H., Unruh, A. (1998). Facilitating open communication in agent systems: The InfoSleuth infrastructure. In: Singh, M.P., Rao, A., Wooldridge, M.J. (eds) Intelligent Agents IV Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages. ATAL 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1365. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026766
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026766
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64162-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69696-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive