Development Research Map

Standards

The main purpose of standards is to achieve interoperability among agents and especially among different agent systems in heterogeneous environments. Standards potentially influence all aspects in the development of agent based systems. For example methods and tools try to keep up to the latest standards and available tools and methods in turn influence the development of new standards. At the architecture level no widely agreed standards have emerged so far. While e.g. several methods and tools claim to support or realise the BDI architecture, no standards body exists, which is able to certify anything like "BDI-compliance". Agent related standards with the greatest impact and visibility were introduced by the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) the Knowledge Sharing Effort (KSE) and the Object Management Group (OMG).

The Knowledge Sharing Effort (KSE) was initiated 1990 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The idea behind the KSE was to have virtual knowledge bases (VKB) that share knowledge by exchanging propositional attitudes. The VKB can be seen as an agent (or as owned by an agent). The propositional attitudes are composed of a proposition and an attitude the agent has towards the proposition (believing, fearing …). The Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML) was invented to be used as agent communication language (ACL) [KQM92;FFMM94] (see also UMBC KQML Web). To achieve a mutual understanding of exchanged propositional attitudes, KQML employs a layered approach with three layers containing the contained proposition (syntax), the meaning of the proposition (semantics), and the attitudes that the agent has towards the proposition (speech-act). In addition to KQML, the KSE conceived the Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) as a possible format to encode the content of a message [KSE95]. KIF was proposed to the ANSI (ANSkif) and later adopted by FIPA [FIP02].

FIPA is the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (see www.fipa.org), which aims to develop standards to facilitate interoperability among agent systems. One of FIPAs specifications is the FIPA-ACL [FIP92b]. Like KQML it is based on speech act theory and follows the three layer approach separating content, meaning, and speech act. Unlike KQML FIPA-ACL does not include performatives dealing with the management of agent systems [FIP92c]. Separate FIPA specifications are used to standardize platform services for multi-agent systems, e.g., the abstract architecture [FIP92d], or the agent management and directory facilitator service [FIP92e]. In addition, FIPA provides a fourth (conversation) layer on top of the three layers provided by the ACL. Several interaction protocol specifications exist (e.g., request [FIP92f], contract-net [FIP92g]) that predefine conversations between agents.

[KQM92]	KQML Advisory Group. An Overview of KQML: A Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language.
[FFMM98]	T. Finin and R. Fritzson and D. McKay and R. McEntire. KQML as an Agent Communication Language. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM'94), 1994.
[KSE95]	Knowledge Sharing Effort. KIF Knowledge Interchange Format.
[FIP02a]	FIPA ORG. FIPA KIF Content Language Specification. Document no. XC00010C, 2002.
[FIP02b]	FIPA ORG. FIPA ACL Message Structure Specification. Document no. SC00061G, 2002.
[FIP02c]	FIPA ORG. FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification. Document no. SC00037J, 2002.
[FIP02d]	FIPA ORG. FIPA Abstract Architecture Specification. Document no. SC00001L, 2002.
[FIP02e]	FIPA ORG. FIPA Agent Management Specification. Document no. SC00023J, 2002.
[FIP02f]	FIPA ORG. FIPA Request Interaction Protocol Specification. Document no. SC00026H, 2002.
[FIP02g]	FIPA ORG. FIPA Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification. Document no. SC00029H, 2002.