| FIPA | 97/10/10 |
| FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS | Munich |
| Source: Bruno Caprile, Ebrahim Mamdani, Toyoaki Nishida | cfp3 |
FIPA’s Third Call for Proposals
The third FIPA Call for Proposals is an invitation to submit proposals for technologies to be used in extending FIPA '97 specifications for agent based applications and services and equipment.
These proposed technologies are intended to be utilized in the development of specifications of component technologies that may be used by application developers. The time scale of specification development is 1998.
2. Structure of this Call for Proposals
3. Background to the third call
3.1 Summary of the FIPA '97 Specifications
3.2 Beyond the FIPA '97 Specifications
4. Technologies requested by this Call for Proposals
4.3 Agent Communication Language
4.4 Agent/Software Integration
4.7 Application-oriented Technologies
4.7.1 Personal Travel Assistance
4.7.3 Audio/Visual Entertainment & Broadcasting
4.7.4 Network Management and Provisioning
Rapid developments in agent technology are creating conditions for the deployment of applications, services, and products that are attractive to users by virtue of their ability to offer improved functionalities compared to those of existing technologies. FIPA has been established to promote a larger deployment of interoperable agent systems. This is accomplished through the standardization of component technologies that may be used by application developers across a wide variety of applications and providing a high level of interoperability across those applications. The current situation is that FIPA has produced a first set of specifications whose field trials are being carried out by the members of FIPA during the early part of 1998.
FIPA members are of the opinion that the current specifications are already a great advance and a remarkable achievement for only 12 months' effort. FIPA has therefore resolved to carry on with its activities and launch a new initiative for a further standardization effort. The FIPA '97 specifications themselves are complete and usable and thus perceived to be valuable in building commercial level applications. However, in the course of producing the various parts of these specifications the members have felt that there are additional items on which FIPA can begin a consensus forming work in 1998 using its well proven FIPA process.
It should be realized, however, that FIPA is not attempting to specify applications but only uses models of existing or possible applications to identify and assist in specifying the agent component technologies required to implement them. This enables the assembly of applications which would not have otherwise been feasible without standardization.
Those intending to submit a proposal(s) should consult Chapter 5 of this Call for Proposals.
FIPA is concerned only with specifications of interfaces and protocols associated with component technologies, but it may nevertheless be necessary to be made aware of certain technological solutions and to understand their technical operations sufficiently for the purpose of accurately capturing their operation as a ‘black box’ specification.
It is the intention to have the FIPA specifications considered by formal standards bodies for endorsement wherever appropriate.
FIPA meetings may be attended by member companies only, however, companies who have submitted proposals but are not FIPA members will be allowed and invited to attend the January 1998 meeting for the purpose of introducing their proposals.
FIPA is an open organization and expressly encourages any entity to become a member. Inquiries on membership should be directed to the address given in Chapter 5.
Application for membership to FIPA can be found on the FIPA homepage:
While FIPA plans to have a series of Calls for Proposals concerning different aspects of agent technology, there is currently no plan to have a further call on the specific subject of this document. Therefore, proponents should ensure that their contributions are submitted during this opportunity and comply with the deadlines specified. However, FIPA recognizes the evolution of technology and plans to issue further Calls for Proposals in order to:
1. extend the range of applications supported by specification of new technologies, and
2. replace previously specified technology as new technology matures.
A first draft of the FIPA '98 specifications, based on the submissions received, will be produced at the 9th meeting in April 1998. A second draft will be produced at the 10th meeting in July 1998 and a final specification approved and issued at its 11th meeting in October 1998. While FIPA intends to work by consensus, this very aggressive schedule may require the use of membership voting. The FIPA governing statutes are available on the FIPA homepage http://www.cselt.it/fipa.
Unlike other bodies which issue specifications targeted to specific applications, FIPA only uses applications for the purpose of identifying requirements for component technologies ("tools" in FIPA language) that are needed to implement the applications. This approach makes it possible to use standardized tools for building applications serving different needs with a high degree of interoperability. This point must be borne in mind to understand the structure of the document.
Chapter 3 provides background to this call. FIPA has recently completed its first specifications and most of the items of this call arise from the work that has been carried out so far in FIPA.
Chapter 4 contains the list of component technologies that are the target of this Call. This has been produced mainly from the work on the FIPA '97 specifications.
Chapter 5 is a guideline for responding to this call.
FIPA produced the FIPA '97 specifications in October 1997 which forms the starting point for this call. This chapter gives the summary of the FIPA '97 Specifications and our scope beyond it. The full document of the FIPA '97 specifications can be obtained from the FIPA home page: http://www.cselt.it/fipa.
The FIPA 97 specifications are the first output of FIPA (the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents). It provides specification of basic agent technologies that can be integrated by agent systems developers to make complex systems with a high degree of interoperability.
FIPA specifies the interfaces of the different components in the environment with which an agent can interact, i.e. humans, other agents, non-agent software and the physical world. See figure below:
FIPA produces two kinds of specification:
· normative specifications that mandate the external behavior of an agent and ensure interoperability with other FIPA-specified subsystems;
· informative specifications of applications for guidance to industry on the use of FIPA technologies.
The first set of specifications – called the FIPA '97 specifications – has seven parts:
· three normative parts for basic agent technologies: agent management, agent communication language and agent/software integration
· four informative application descriptions that provide examples of how the normative items can be applied: personal travel assistance, personal assistant, audio-visual entertainment and broadcasting and network management and provisioning.
Overall, the three FIPA '97 technologies allow:
· the construction and management of an agent system composed of different agents, possibly built by different developers;
· agents to communicate and interact with each other to achieve individual or common goals;
· legacy software or new non-agent software systems to be used by agents.
A brief illustration of the FIPA '97 specifications is given below.
This part of the FIPA '97 specifications provides a normative framework within which FIPA compliant agents can exist, operate and be managed. It defines an agent platform reference model containing such capabilities as white and yellow pages, message routing and life-cycle management. True to the FIPA approach, these capabilities are themselves intelligent agents using formally sound communicative acts based on special message sets. An appropriate ontology and content language allows agents to discover each other’s capabilities.
Part 2 - Agent Communication Language
The FIPA Agent Communication Language (ACL) is based on speech act theory: messages are actions, or communicative acts, as they are intended to perform some action by virtue of being sent. The specification consists of a set of message types and the description of their pragmatics, that is the effects on the mental attitudes of the sender and receiver agents. Every communicative act is described with both a narrative form and a formal semantics based on modal logic. The specification includes guidance to users who are already familiar with KQML in order to facilitate migration to the FIPA ACL. The specification also provides the normative description of a set of high-level interaction protocols, including requesting an action, contract net and several kinds of auctions etc.
Part 3 - Agent/Software Integration
This part applies to any other non-agentised software with
which agents need to "connect". Such software includes
legacy software, conventional database systems, middleware for
all manners of interaction including hardware drivers. Because in
most significant applications, non-agentised software may
dominate software agents, part 3 provides important normative
statements. It suggests ways by which Agents may connect to
software via "wrappers" including specifications of the
wrapper ontology and the software dynamic registration mechanism.
For this purpose, an Agent Resource Broker (ARB) service is
defined which allows advertisement of non-agent services in the
agent domain and management of their use by other agents, such as
negotiation of parameters (e.g. cost and priority),
authentication and permission.
Part 4 - Personal Travel Assistance
The travel industry involves many components such as content providers, brokers, and personalization services, typically from many different companies. In applying agents to this industry, various implementations from various vendors must interoperate and dynamically discover each other as different services come and go. Agents operating on behalf of their users can provide assistance in the pre-trip planning phase, as well as during the on-trip execution phase. A system supporting these services is called a PTA (Personal Travel Agent).
In order to accomplish this assistance, the PTA interacts with the user and with other agents, representing the available travel services. The agent system is responsible for the configuration and delivery - at the right time, cost, Quality of Service, and appropriate security and privacy measures - of trip planning and guidance services. It provides examples of agent technologies for both the hard requirements of travel such as airline, hotel, and car arrangements as well as the soft added-value services according to personal profiles, e.g. interests in sports, theatre, or other attractions and events.
One central class of intelligent agents is that of a personal assistant (PA). It is a software agent that acts semi-autonomously for and on behalf of a user, modeling the interests of the user and providing services to the user or other people and PAs as and when required. These services include managing a user's diary, filtering and sorting e-mail, managing the user's activities, locating and delivering (multimedia) information, and planning entertainment and travel. It is like a secretary, it accomplishes routine support tasks to allow the user to concentrate on the real job, it is unobtrusive but ready when needed, rich in knowledge about user and work. Some of the services may be provided by other agents (e.g. the PTA) or systems, the Personal Assistant acts as an interface between the user and these systems.
In the FIPA'97 test application, a Personal Assistant offers the user a unified, intelligent interface to the management of his personal meeting schedule. The PA is capable of setting up meetings with several participants, possibly involving travel for some of them. In this way FIPA is opening up a road for adding interoperability and agent capabilities to the already established
Part 6 - Audio/Video Entertainment & Broadcasting
An effective means of information filtering and retrieval, in particular for digital broadcasting networks, is of great importance because the selection and/or storage of one’s favorite choice from plenty of programs on offer can be very impractical. The information should be provided in a customized manner, to better suit the user’s personal preferences and the human interaction with the system should be as simple and intuitive as possible. Key functionalities such as profiling, filtering, retrieving, and interfacing can be made more effective and reliable by the use of agent technologies.
Overall, the application provides to the user an intelligent interface with new and improved functionalities for the negotiation, filtering, and retrieval of audio-visual information. This set of functionalities can be achieved by collaboration between a user agent and content/service provider agent.
Across the world, numerous service providers emerge that combine service elements from different network providers in order to provide a single service to the end customer. The ultimate goal of all parties involved is to find the best deals available in terms of Quality of Service and cost. Intelligent Agent technology is promising in the sense that it will facilitate automatic negotiation of appropriate deals and configuration of services at different levels.
Part 7 of FIPA 1997 utilizes agent technology to provide dynamic Virtual Private Network (VPN) services where a user wants to set up a multi-media connection with several other users.
The service is delivered to the end customer using co-operating and negotiating specialized agents. Three types of agents are used that represent the interests of the different parties involved:
The Personal Communications Agent (PCA) that represents the interests of the human users.
The Service Provider Agent (SPA) that represents the interests of the Service Provider.
The Network Provider Agent (NPA) that represents the interests of the Network Provider.
The service is established by the initiating user who requests the service from its PCA. The PCA negotiates in with available SPAs to obtain the best deal available. The SPA will in turn negotiate with the NPAs to obtain the optimal solution and to configure the service at network level. Both SPA and NPA communicate with underlying service- and network management systems to configure the underlying networks for the service.
Having created the FIPA '97 specifications, it is now the intention of FIPA to address new technical issues where there exists a need for a broader consensus leading to standards. Many of the issues described below have been suggested by teams working on the seven parts of the FIPA '97 specifications as areas where further understanding is necessary to help the designers of open agent-based systems.
Beside the applications being already considered in parts 4 through 7, FIPA members perceive Manufacturing and Electronic Commerce as two broad and extremely important application areas in which standardization of agent technologies is expected to play an increasingly critical role. In this respect, it is interesting to notice how FIPA 97 parts 1-7 already deal, either directly or indirectly, with Electronic Commerce. For example, negotiation protocols can help agents arrive at agreements in commercial transactions. Security, authentication, non-repudiation, Quality of Service are all further examples of issues where agents can arrive at a decision through direct communication and interaction.
Manufacturing is one of the most mature industries from the perspective of agent understanding, development, and early deployment. The industry has been faced with several recent pressures, which have made it technically aggressive: (1) As a way to overcome high integration costs, agent-based "wrapping" and mediation are being applied; (2) Agent-based, goal-oriented automation, negotiation, and fuzzy reasoning are directly applicable for rapid response; (3) To manage complexities, automated negotiation, role-based commitment, and federated reasoning can be considered as the next step for dynamic, highly distributed Virtual Enterprise structures.
Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a general term for the conducting of business activities of all kinds through electronic media. In particular, it has become commonly used to refer to commercial activities conducted using the Internet, and especially the World Wide Web. Software agents have many potential applications in the general domain of e-commerce. Examples include acting for buyers to locate goods for sale, compare different goods, negotiate terms (including price) and transmit funds and track delivery of the good. Indeed for electronic goods such as digital media, the agent could actually take delivery of the good. For sellers, agents can assist the promotion of the good (assisting the product discovery agents), take part in negotiation, manage delivery, receive payments, manage accounting and control inventory. Clearly, a large and disparate set of activities.
This chapter presents the essence of this Call. The following sections describe the areas of technology proposed for specification in 1998.
Any examples and reference solutions given in this chapter are for clarification. FIPA neither requires nor endorses them for use in this call for proposals.
The FIPA '97 specifications included the concepts of agents, agent communication channel, agent management system, directory facilitator, agent platform, domain, their operations an their life-cycles. To extend upon this work, the following technical areas are called for.
Mobility aspects of intelligent agents becomes increasingly important as agents are not only restricted to their home agent platform, but are allowed to migrate to other platforms and perform certain tasks locally. The use of mobility is illustrated by the FIPA application scenarios, as well as the possibility to download software and to monitor physical events occurring on a remote platform. Mobility can be regarded as a refinement and extension to the FIPA '97 specifications towards the following directions:
· Migration: The current standard was designed to support further evolution towards agent mobility. The migration between platforms implies a revision of the life-cycles, of the addressing of the agents, their management as well as the platform management. Agents may migrate with their data and a current state of computing, to resume their task on a new platform. As such, mobility implies work on control of processes and resources. This work is closely linked to security issues and agent management.
· Localisation: As agents migrate, keeping track of them becomes a dynamic problem that has to be tacked by an extension of the existing specifications. Those new issues include the problem of disappearing of agents, lost and wrong addresses, ghost agents, and so on.
· Communication: Communication channels can be interrupted at a certain platform and resumed elsewhere. As such message buffering and forwarding mechanisms have to be revisited to assure their consistency in the mobile world. The Agent Communication Channels have to provide those services -inside and between -the platforms, in a transparent manner.
· Message handling: As agent migrate, their handling has to foresee cases when they cannot be contacted during transitory periods of time.
· Exception handling: A dynamic world brings a family of new problems like lost contacts, new addresses, garbage collection problems after the passage of agents etc. Exception handling has to be extended accordingly.
Agents as well as their related services need to be performed in a secure and trusted environment. Many services carry personal data that has to be protected, e.g. banking applications or electronic commerce where parties need to be authenticated, access control checked, integrity, confidentiality, and non-repudiation insured. The security problem is even more critical in the world of mobile agents where in addition to the preceding constraints, it has to insure the security of the platform against viral infections and any kind of attacks by malicious agents or groups of agents. Mobile agents have also be protected against hijacking and abuse.
The security items have been classified under three categories: as services, security management and social authorization. A short overview of them lists the main areas of work:
· Services: The security services to be specified are: the authentication of user, seen as a physical person; the peer-entity authentication handling the co-operation between agents; the access-control to prevent against unauthorized use of resources, the integrity of the following points: the mobile agent, the individual data transfer and of the whole information flow; the confidentiality of information; the non-repudiation in both cases where the recipient of the data is insured of the origin of the data, and the sender is provided with a proof of delivery; accountability of services; logging including detection of security relevant events; audit of the behaviors.
· Security management: includes specification on: management of passwords; the management of keys and their use application in accordance to the security policy; the certification of public keys by Certification Authority; the use a Trusted Third Party; the management of the authentication information (e.g., passwords, authentication keys); the management of the user and agent privileges (Access Control Information Base).
· Social authorization: In the FIPA’97 specifications, the definition of the ‘order’ of the speech act has shown a critical point which the definition of the social notion of authority allowing an agent to give orders to other agents. In certain way this definition of authorization can be seen as an extension of the more traditional security approaches. It leads to the definition of agent roles and to give a meaning to these roles. Of course this meaning must be shared by agents.
4.3 Agent Communication Language
The FIPA '97 specifications include a rich model of inter-agent communications, together with interaction protocols and a catalogue of messages representing communicative acts. To extend upon this work and further increase the utility of agent-agent communication technology, the following technical areas are the subject of further work in FIPA '98. The technologies called for are:
· Conformance: The current standard leaves open the question of conformance testing, while recognizing its desirability. Approaches to testing the conformance of agent implementations to the standard are solicited. This may include alternative or supplemental approaches to the definition of the formal semantics, though consistency with the existing standard will be preferred.
· Dynamic introduction of new protocols: The current set of protocols defined in the FIPA standard is limited, for pragmatic reasons as well as the need to keep the standard general. However, in many cases, alternative protocols or modifications to existing protocols may be useful in a given domain or even in a given agent to agent interaction. A technology which allowed agents to express, agree and implement a protocol on a case by case basis would add an extra dimension of flexibility to agent interactions.
· New communicative acts: If needs are identified for communicative acts that are not represented or not convenient in the existing standard, suitably expressed definitions may be added to the catalogue in the FIPA '98 specifications.
· Rules of behavior: In many circumstances, agents will be expected to behave according to some explicitly represented rules of behavior. For example, different markets impose different constraints on market participants, including, for example, how they negotiate with each other, the status of deals, and other more subtle constraints (such as insider trading rules in stock markets). Technologies are sought to help to encode such rules, express them to agents, and ensure compliance.
· Message level: Messages of agent-agent communication and agent-human communication are classified according to the knowledge level of agents. For example, two agents can communicate by FIPA ACL, macros of ACL, sublanguages, or natural language. According to the standardized message level, translation between message levels may be provided. Otherwise, two agents must know by what message level they can communicate. This message level may include also multi-modal interaction between human and interface agent. It may be also classified according to the agent society.
· Content description method: Agent must read and write information. For example, GA (Guide Agent) deals with program indices whose format must be standardized. However, formats of every information content cannot be standardized. It is recommended that content description method be standardized such that any agent can read or write according to self-defined recipe inside of information content.
4.4 Agent/Software Integration
There exists a wealth of non-agent legacy software systems which provide useful services. For agents to become truly valuable assets they must be able to dynamically interface with, control, and brokering existing software systems. While FIPA 97 part 3 already specifies methods for an agent to integrate external software systems providing ARB and WRAPPER services, the need now arises of extending the current specification along the directions illustrated below:
· Intelligent software brokerage: For a realization of a truly transparent, secure, cost-effective and inter-domain software resource sharing environment for FIPA agent community, more sophisticate resource brokering capabilities will be required in a conjunction with the current "Yellow Page" service. Such capabilities include, inter-ARB (Agent Resource Broker) communications, negotiation-protocols, advertisement and so forth.
· Mediators: A wrapper agent is a tailored agent-adapter to a non-agent system. What the wrapper agent is actually providing is both a translation service (translating the content of the ACL messages into commands on the underlying software system) and a connection service (facilitating communication with non-agent entities or software systems - i.e. outside the agent sphere). These are fundamentally useful services, for example a translation agent could provide an ARCOL-to-KQML or a KIF-to-PROLOG service, while a connection agent could provide for the routing of ACL messages over a GSM connection. Definition of a mediation ontology / service should define actions and predicates which allow an agent to request a translation and / or connection service.
· Taxonomy for software system types: Use of taxonomy of software systems is a fundamental way to provide an efficient scheme for describing and finding of appropriate software services for FIPA agent community. This technology should provide a representation scheme for software taxonomy and management tools; a set of generic vocabularies designating software categories is also welcome.
4.5 Human-Agent Interaction
The human user is an important part of the physical world that some agents have to deal with. Technologies are sought for the items below.
· User profiles: Generic technologies are sought for user profile that can be used by many different applications as far as the human is involved in the interaction. In particular, those related to but not limited to the following items:
· ontology: The profile's slot and value range may be expected to be standardized. For example, ‘occupation’ slot in user profile is recommended to have values like ‘doctor’, ‘engineer’, and so on;
· user behavior log: Standardized archive of user behaviour will be crucial for adaptation to and learning of user characteristics;
· user modeling: Generic frameworks for modeling
user's background knowledge, habits, plan, goal, and intention
are welcome.
· Integration with personal services: Human-agent interaction facility should be able to effectively interact with personal services such as email, news, and information retrieval.
Natural language interaction (or multi-modal interaction):
A sublanguage may be provided as a standard. The sublanguage
should allow for secure exchange of intentions between the human
user and the agent. Such framework is welcome which integrates
verbal and non-verbal communications.
Content ontology and software ontology standardization is to be considered. Ontology (Knowledge representation scheme) is a terminology for each application domain.
· Ontology management: A key technological issue in FIPA is the expression and use of ontologies as the content for agent communication. FIPA defines ontologies for Agent Management (part 1), Agent-Software Integration (part 2) and four application areas (parts 4-7). In support of this, FIPA requests technologies, methodologies and standards (either de facto or de jure) which support:
· the definition and maintenance of ontologies;
· the expression of dependencies between ontologies;
· the translation of ontologies;
· the extraction (elicitation) of ontologies and extension of the existing ontologies;
· ontology structure and organization.
· Methodology for ontology definition: When many specialist application agents will emerge, it is sensible to have a standard FIPA methodology indicating which steps to take in order to define a task ontology for the specialist agents. The methodology should be self-explaining and sufficiently simple so that designers of specialist agents can readily start defining ontologies for specialist applications. A checklist will be made available to support the methodology.
· Commerce negotiation ontology: One really interesting feature of agents is their negotiation capabilities. A first step has been done in this way in FIPA’97 by the proposition of a standard version of contract net, english auction and dutch auction. The various applications considered in FIPA’97 can use the negotiation protocol for price negotiation (e.g., in video on demand, in network service provisioning, in travel transaction). The price negotiation requires not only the specification protocols it requires also the sharing of ‘commerce negotiation ontology’ describing what is a price, what is a tax, and so on, allowing the comparison of price, given a meaning to the notion of price reduction etc. In a general way the negotiation of a price also includes parameters like the quality of service (e.g., an hot-line assistance and facilities to cancel a reservation).
4.7 Application-oriented Technologies
4.7.1 Personal Travel Assistance
Two areas are suggested as the primary new focus of Personal Travel Assistance in FIPA’98. This application specification will continue to serve the primary needs of the core technical specifications in both cases:
· Travel ontology: A more complete and applicable ontology for travel is suggested. Hopefully this will be a test of a FIPA initiative in ontology definition and management.
· Mobile-communicating agents: Elaboration of the mobile agent scenarios is suggested as well to serve the possible technical development of how mobile agent platforms are to be integrated with the FIPA '98 specifications (platform, communications, and software access for mobile agents).
It is expected that technologies developed in other parts of this call, especially those related to agent-human interaction, will be fruitfully incorporated into the framework of Personal Assistant.
4.7.3 Audio/Visual Entertainment & Broadcasting
This call for proposals solicits technologies and solutions for manufacturing, including but not limited to:
· Agent definition: Agents in AVEB application are IA (Interface Agent), UPA (User Preference Agent), CA (Control Agent), GA (Guide Agent). However, more refined classification of agents is recommended to be supplied.
· Domain: The domain of AVEB application now consists of user domain, user group domain, and content provider domain. A detailed domain classification may be required.
· Resource management: CA (Control Agent) should have capability of resource management for DSM (Digital Storage Media) and amount of program price. For example, suppose that the free space of your DSM is only 50M byte. One hour later, a program that is very suitable to your user profile will be broadcast, but total size of this program is over 100M byte. You may not want your home system to miss the program. Possible solutions are: (1) CA may remove either old programs or programs with lower priority from DSM in order to create enough free space to store the new program. (2) alternatively, CA may store the new program with quality lower than the original to make the total program size smaller. (3) or finally, CA may ask other CAs whether they have already saved that program in their DSM.
4.7.4 Network Management & Provisioning
This call for proposals solicits technologies and solutions for manufacturing, including but not limited to:
· Charging / Billing: Charging and accounting for
processing power and hardware resources when an agent is hosted
on a remote agent platform, and charging and accounting for
services offered by other agents / systems should be treated
differently. The Charging and Accounting for processing power and
hardware resources should be part of Network Management while the
billing for services belongs to the domain of electronic
commerce.
· Log management: In order to be able to reconstruct
fault scenarios, logs of actions performed by agents should be
kept for future reference.
· Integration PA / PCA / PTA: It seems to make sense
to integrate some of the PA (Personal Assistant) / PCA (Personal
Communication Assistant) / PTA (Personal Travel Assistance)
capabilities and functionalities that they have in common.
The following issues should be addressed:
· Elements and functionalities to be integrated into generic personal agents;
· Elements and functionalities to be incorporated into more specific agents.
· Specialist agents: In order to be able to use
complex underlying network and transmission technology
effectively, and to be able to negotiate about for example
bandwidth in different networks (e.g., ATM / IPv6 / FR / ISDN /
SMDS), specialist agents need to be developed that are capable of
translating technicalities into services and functionality for
the user and vice versa.
Agent solutions for integration, rapid response, and virtual enterprises are applicable across the large range of manufacturing. This range extends from "lower" execution systems (the control and coordination of machinery and production) to the product design and issues of engineering change, to the higher-level business matters of capacity planning sales order and fulfillment and such. Proposals to any or all such problems are welcome, but consideration of agents toward product and process engineering, and machine and material processing issues are most encouraged. Towards this end, consideration of ISO’s STEP standards and OMG’s Manufacturing Execution Systems(MES)/Machine Control(MC) working group within the Manufacturing Domain Task Force are further encouraged.
This call for proposals solicits technologies and solutions for manufacturing, including but not limited to:
· Manufacturing domain ontologies and modeling: Domain experience is critical for two reasons. First, the application focus should address real problems to engineers, operators, and to the manufacturing business itself. Second, the ontology for product definition and machinery is fairly mature in other standards and this integration point with agents will be critical. Toward the call for Ontology definition and management, this application should test the ability to represent such mature models and address issues of different ontology description languages. The extension of software integration to include mediation as well as wrapping can be tested against current data and controller issues.
· Real-time systems: Machine controllers are asynchronous and event-driven, much like agents themselves, but additional aspects of real-time control need to be addressed in the application. Not just for this application, understanding of real-time can help mature agent technology very generally. Toward extending the FIPA model of mental attitudes, such issues push for the inclusion of reactive and subsumptive architectures.
· Internet-based security and distributed system design: The application of agents toward virtual enterprise integration necessitate strong consideration of an internet backbone, secure transactions, and proper architectural placement of different agent types. Toward the call for security standards in agents, this application can test such designs for supply chain integration.
· Conflict detection, resolution, and prevention.
· Resource management and negotiation: For rapid-response manufacturing, agent goals and responsibilities can well text and extend the scope of communication acts and protocols. This is a basic application need in manufacturing and a basic test of agent communication, especially in the matter of beliefs and uncertainty among a set of collaborating agents.
· Workflow and process modeling: Traditional manufacturing processes are heavily based on rigid, predefined process routings. Workflow models have many similarities to such routings and also have relationships to multi-agent system workflows. The relationships between agent standards and workflow standards can be well considered in such an application.
· Roles, commitments, and compliance: Because of the strong, often legal, nature of commitments in virtual enterprises, the spheres of such commitments between groups of agents needs to be considered by FIPA and applied. The workflow and social notion of roles should be addressed as a special matter of agent security and compliance management.
· User and task modeling: Integration of such as system with end-users is critical. This ranges from dialog with the end-user (delegating responsibilities, receiving notices, or being asked for direction) to learning from the end-user as expert about the task of running a manufacturing line, for example. As a tangent application to what is typically considered of user dialog and modeling, this other call for proposals can be tested toward such other needs for user interfacing with agents.
FIPA's interest in electronic commerce is twofold. Firstly, in its various guises, e-commerce occurs in many if not all of the FIPA reference applications. It is a common, though broadly defined, thread of requirements and technologies. Secondly, the act of participating in such e-commerce activities will stretch the capabilities of agents implemented using FIPA standardized technologies, and lead to the extension of existing technologies and the addition of new technical capabilities.
This call for proposals therefore solicits technologies and solutions for e-commerce activities, including but not limited to:
· Buying / Selling: Agents must be able to handle money transactions in a secure way.
· Negotiation protocols: Examples of protocols which facilitate commerce agents to negotiate for a given good or service. This would include the (possibly new) communicative acts used, ontological and representational commitments, and other contextual information to allow negotiation to be effectively conducted to the satisfaction of all parties involved.
· Financial management: Tools and technologies to cover aspects of charging for goods (including billing and maintaining accounts), electronic payment, and general accounting practices.
· Authentication: An important necessary (though not sufficient) first step is to be able to authenticate the identity of both seller and buyer agents, and the users or organisations they represent.
· Non-repudiation: Non-repudiation mechanisms ensure that deals are made in such a way that they can be enforced, or that there is redress for the injured party if the deal fails after being agreed.
· Representation of goods and services: To be able to trade in a market for a given good, agents must be able to represent that good. While ontologies for particular domains are specific to that domain, there may be generic taxonomies or other representational tools that will facilitate the development of such market knowledge.
· Market mechanisms: For agents to be able to trade with each other, there must be markets where they can gain the necessary knowledge of the goods available, promote their goods and strike deals. Especially in the case of open markets, buyer and seller agents must be able to enter, trade and exit the market in a standardized way.
Those intending to submit a proposal(s) should take note of the following important information.
1. Notify their intention to submit a proposal on or before 31 December 1997 to:
2. Submit their proposal in electronic form, MS Word (V6.0x) or HTML (the latter is preferred) by 10 January 1998 to the address shown immediately above.
3. Attend the meeting on 26-30 January 1998. Additionally, proponents should be prepared with visual aids for a brief (15 minutes) presentation of their proposal in the event it is requested.
In the submission the proponent should
· provide a description of their proposed technology and further should identify how that technology meets the relevant criteria;
· optionally identify and describe additional technologies which can be utilized to enhance the applications target of the FIPA 1998 specifications.
· optionally state the proponent’s position vis-a-vis the IPR possibly included in the submitted technology.
Proponents should be aware that all material presented to FIPA shall be deemed of a non-confidential nature and hence will be made available to FIPA members and participants in the January ’98 meeting. Proposals received will be posted on the FIPA home page and will be made accessible for consultation by FIPA members.