KPN Research's statement of interest and background for FIPA

KPN Research is the R&D facilities for Royal PTT Netherlands, the formerly national but now privatised Dutch telecommunications and postal organisation. KPN Research is interested to find out more about the FIPA initiative in order to determine in a later stage if and how to participate.

KPN Research has been involved in intelligent agents research for a number of years now and has recently begun investigations into applying the technology to real-world applications. A list of relevant publications is included at the end of this document.

Initial research included the study of distributed blackboard systems as a basis for cooperative but otherwise autonomous systems for telecommunications network configuration (1988/9).

Joint work with Bellcore resulted in an agent-based architecture for telecommunications networks and services as well as in a mechanism for negotiation among agents (1992). This mechanism provides algorithms and interaction protocols for collaboratively finding win/win solutions to conflicts between reticent, autonomous agents. The negotiation mechanism could potentially be proposed as input to item 10 and/or 11 of the FIPA list of required agent technologies (library and refinements for interaction protocols).

More recent work involves a study into the use of mobile agents for network management (1995/6). In the mean time, I co-authored (joint work with GTE Labs) a paper giving an overview of the state of the art in multi-agent technology and distributed AI applied to the particular domain of telecommunications. Currently I am co-organiser of an ECAI (European Conference on AI) workshop on Intelligent Agents for Telecommunications Applications to be held in Budapest next August.

By the end of 1995, our network operator PTT Telecom signed a contract with General Magic to use their product Telescript for developing telecommunications services. Although Telescript is now largely defunct, PTT Telecom's interest in using similar kinds of technology has not diminished. KPN Research is involved in realising these services. For obvious reasons I can not go into details concerning the intended applications here.

KPN Research would very much like me to participate in FIPA's next meeting in Yorktown Heights. My role would primarily be that of an active contributor to the discussions. Because KPN Research is not yet completely clear in what capacity they would like to participate in the FIPA initiative, it is too early to submit more detailed proposals on either technology or requirements (even though we have appropriate material ready). Still, given my long-time involvement with agent technology, various applications, and application requirements within the telecommunications domain I expect to be able to contribute significantly in the discussions pending any further decisions.

Relevant publications:

E.P.M. van Liempd, H. Velthuijsen, and A. Florescu, BLONDIE-III: a distributed implementation of a network configuration problem, IEEE Expert, 1990(3):48-55, 1990.

N.D. Griffeth and H. Velthuijsen, The negotiating agent model for rapid feature development, in: Proceedings Eighth International Conference on Software Engineering for Telecommunications Systems and Services, pp. 67-71, Florence, 1992.

N.D. Griffeth and H. Velthuijsen, Reasoning about goals to resolve conflicts, in: Proceedings International Conference on Intelligent Cooperating Information Systems (ICICIS), IEEE Computer Society Press, M. Huhns, M.P. Papazoglou, and G. Schlageter (eds.), pp. 197-204, Rotterdam, 12-14 May 1993.

N.D. Griffeth and H. Velthuijsen, in: Proceedings 12th International Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pp. 187-202, Hidden Valley, PA, 19-21 May 1993.

H. Velthuijsen, Distributed Artificial Intelligence for runtime feature-interaction resolution, in: Computer, Vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 48-55, August 1993.

N.D. Griffeth and H. Velthuijsen, The Negotiating Agents Approach to Runtime Feature Interaction Resolution, in: Feature Interactions in Telecommunications Systems, L.G. Bouma and H. Velthuijsen (eds.), IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp. 217-235, 1994.

R. Weihmayer and H. Velthuijsen, Distributed AI and Cooperative Systems for Telecommunications, in: Worldwide Intelligent Systems: AI Approaches to Telecommunications and Network Management, J. Liebowitz and D. Prereau (eds.), IOS Press, Amsterdam, Chapter 11, pp. 227-260, 1995.

H. Velthuijsen and R. Weihmayer, Intelligent Agents in Telecommunications, in: Agent Software, Unicom Seminars, London, 25-26 April 1995.

Hugo Velthuijsen.

KPN Research Phone: +31 70 332 6258

P.O. Box 421 Fax: +31 70 332 6477

2260 AK Leidschendam, Email: H.Velthuijsen@research.kpn.com

The Netherlands