Press release

A group of individuals from 26 companies, 8 countries and the communities having a stake in agent technologies have gathered in London on 18 and 19 April to discuss the establishment of the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA), an international organisation to promote the industry of Intelligent Physical Agents (IPA). IPAs are meant to include all devices intended for the mass market, capable of executing actions, to accomplish goals imparted by or in collaboration with human beings or other IPAs, with a high degree of intelligence.

The group agreed that the most effective way of promoting the industry of IPAs is by producing in a timely fashion specifications of generic agent technologies that are usable across a large number of IPAs and provide a high level of interoperability with other applications.

The group also agreed that the goals should be realised through the open international collaboration of all players in the field.

A first list of agent capabilities that are candidate for specification in the near term (by end of 1997) has been prepared. A partial list include basic capabilities for:

1. human-agent interaction (e.g. speech input/output primitives)
2. agent-to-agent interaction (e.g. finite set of basic message types / communication primitives and standard library of interaction protocols)
3. aspects of societies of agents (e.g. authentication, privacy, delegation)
4. interaction with the physical world (e.g. sensors and actuators).

All interested parties from all over the world are invited to join in the creation of FIPA. To this end the next meeting will be a workshop, held in the New York area on 24-26 June, with the main goal of refining the list of specification items that are believed to be achievable in 1997 and a first identification of those items that will actually be specified in that time frame.

The group works towards completing the formation of FIPA and establishing a workplan for 1997. The plan currently includes a Call for Proposals to be issued at its third meeting in October 1996 and completion of a first specification by December 1997.

Further information can be obtained from:

http://www.cselt.it/ufv/leonardo/fipa.htm