A review on agent communication language

2002

This technical report provides an evaluation of several possible languages and semantic formalisms that could be used in agent communication to play the role of a content language in the EU Agentcities.RTD project. The conclusions and background information may however be useful for agent developers more generally. This document includes a description of candidate languages, a list of criteria applied, evaluations of the five candidate languages and a final evaluation. The five candidate languages were DAML+OIL, ebXML, FIPA-SL, KIF and Prolog and the choice made for the EU Agentcities.RTD project was to develop services in KIF, FIPA-SL or both. Furthermore it is expected that the number and type of content language used in the EU Agentcities.RTD project will evolve over time as tests are carried out. The review process which led to the authoring of this document was carried out in the context of the Agentcities.RTD IST funded project (IST-2000-28385) and we would like to thank all p...

2002

Agent technology is an exciting and important new way to create complex software systems. Agents blend many of the traditional properties of AI programs—knowledge-level reasoning, flexibility, proactiveness, goaldirectedness, and so forth—with insights gained from distributed software engineering, machine learning, negotiation and teamwork theory, and the social sciences.

2004

Today's software platforms that support the construction of agent systems in accordance with the FIPA specifications essentially provide enabling infrastructure services, and are still far away from adequately rendering support to current methodologies and theories for building agent systems, especially when social concepts play a significant role. Elsewhere, we have presented the RICA theory, that smoothly integrates relevant aspects of Agent Communication Languages and Organisational Models, so as to provide guidelines for agent system design. This paper explores the impact of this theory on the actual development and implementation of agent-based applications. For this purpose, the RICA metamodel is considered as a programming language, in which roles, interactions, communicative actions, etc., are first-class language entities. We show how this language can be effectively implemented as a software framework that extends the JADE platform, and provide an example that illustrates its potential.

2015

When designers, developers and systems architects attempting to design, build and test agent applications, particularly communities of multiple agents, and agents need to talk to each other there is a standard for agent communication language. This article provides an overview of the two main communication language Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML) and The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents – Agent Communication Language (FIPA-ACL).

2001

This paper deals with communication protocols between agents and between agents and users [3]. It presents a new communication model which is based on a careful analysis of speech act theory and on two fundamental principles applied to communication: a) communication is considered as a negotiation process and, b) communication results in an exchange of mental states. Using this model of communication and the conceptual graph formalism for the representational level, we propose a new agent communication language, called CG-KQML+ which is an extension of the KQML language. The paper also shows the use of CG-KQML+ in a MAS called POSTAGE which aims at helping users in their correspondence task. In POSTAGE, software agents manage administrative correspondence on behalf of and in cooperation with their users. Users and agents have interactions which respect administrative correspondence rules. A POSTAGE agent is responsible for sending the generated message to the addressee's POSTAGE agent. The paper presents the second version of POSTAGE which is implemented using the Prolog+CG language. This paper deals with communication protocols between agents and between agents and users [ 3]. It presents a new communication model which is based on a deep analysis of speech act theory [ 22] [28] and on two fundamental principles: a) communication is considered as a negotiation process [14, 18], b) communication results in an exchange of mental states [7, 24]. Thus, we consider agents' communication as exchanges of mental states (goals, beliefs, etc.) and exchanges of what we call communicational states (CS). Communication is considered as a negotiation game where agents negotiate about proposed CSs. An agent proposes a CS and other agents react to the proposal by accepting, rejecting the proposed CS or even asking for further information. Such an action establishes a relationship between the CS and the agent that is called an agent's positioning. Using this model of communication and the conceptual graph formalism for the representational level, we developed a new agent communication language, called CG-KQML+ which is an extension of the KQML language [12]. CG-KQML+ overcomes some limitations of KQML: KQML performatives are limited to the assertive and directive categories, inappropriate choice of performatives, different interpretations of KQML performatives. The paper also shows the use of CG-KQML+ in a MAS called POSTAGE (POSTman AGEnt) [2]. The aim of this MAS is to help users to achieve correspondence tasks. In POSTAGE, software agents manage administrative correspondence on behalf of and in cooperation with their users. Users and agents interact respecting administrative correspondence rules. A POSTAGE agent is responsible for sending the generated message to the addressee's POSTAGE agent. A first version of POSTAGE has been implemented using ECLIPSE [11] and Delphi [9]. Since that time and by using the Conceptual Graph formalism more fully, we enhanced our standardization work as well as our formulation of POSTAGE. Now, a new version of POSTAGE has been implemented with Prolog+CG language [ 15]. Being a CG-based extension of Prolog, Prolog+CG provides the abstraction level needed to easily implement a CG-based application. Indeed, our new version of POSTAGE is more concise and readable. Moreover, the integration of Java and Prolog+CG [16] enabled us to develop the front/end interface using Java and the kernel of the system using Prolog+CG. Section 2 presents our agent communication model. Section 3 presents CG-KQML+. Section 4 presents the POSTAGE multi-agent system. Section 5 discusses some future works and concludes the paper. 2 The communication model When interacting, agents can engage in two kinds of communication: agent/user communication and inter-agent communication (Figure 1). Agents communicate with users in order to characterize their needs and to provide them with answers or solutions. Agents communicate with each other in order to exchange various kinds of information. When communicating with other agents, an agent uses a specific Agent Communication Language (ACL). An agent's architecture contains a communication process which handles communication activities as well as other processes used to perform various tasks such as planning, decision making or negotiation. In this paper, we focus on the communication activity.

2003

With the rapid technological development particularly in the computer industry, many computer programming languages are being developed with many computer programs written in these languages. Writing good programs takes time and effort. It is therefore necessary that programs once written should be able to work together (interoperate) with each other so that a program written in one language can benefit from the advantages that may be associated with another program written in another language. One of the problems with interoperation of programs is the heterogeneity of the programs. This is because programs are written by different people, at different times, in different languages and with different interfaces. Agent-base Software Engineering is an attempt to facilitate the creation of software products that can easily interoperate in such settings. In Agent-base Software Engineering, programs are written as software agents (software components) that communicate with each other by exchanging messages through a communication language. For a successful communication in such heterogeneous environments, the agents have to share knowledge with each other. The aim of this tutorial is to discuss agent communication and knowledge sharing. A discussion about agent communication, methods of agent communication, agent communication languages, content languages and knowledge sharing between agents is presented together with constraints that may inhibit successful knowledge sharing and agent communication.

2007

Abstract This paper proposes dynamic semantics for agent communication languages (ACLs) as a method for tackling some of the fundamental problems associated with agent communication in open multiagent systems.

Computer, 1998

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1996

Thischapter d i scusses t h e d e sirablefeatures o fl a nguages a n d p r otocols f o r communication a m ong i n telligent i n formation a g ents. T h ese desiderata ared i videdintosevencategories:f o rm,content,semantics,im plementation,n e tworking, e n vironment, a n dreliability. T h e K n owledge Q u ery a n d M anipulation Language K QML i s a n e wl a nguage a n d p r otocol f o r e xchanging i n formation andk n owledge. T h is w o rki sp a rto fal a rger e ort, t h e A R PAKn owledge S h ar-ingE ort,wh ichisaimedatdevelopingtechniquesandmethodologiesforb uildinglarge scale k n owledgeb a sesthataresharablea n dreusable.K Q MLisbo tha messageformatandamessage handlingprotocoltosupportrun timeknowledge sharinga m onga g ents. K Q MLis described a n de valuateda sa na g ent c o mmunicationlanguagerelative t o t h edesiderata. ToappearinIntelligentAg entsV olume I I P r oceedingsofthe1995Workshopon Agent T h eories, A r chitectures, a n d L a nguages. M. W ooldridge, J .P. M u ller a n d M.T ambeeds.L e ctureN o tesi nA r ti cialI n telligence,S p ringer-Verlag,1 9 96. Software agent technologies Scripting languages Agent communication languages Languages for software agents Theoretical frameworks Models of human communication Coordination protocols Agent languages KQML Tcl/Tk Java Telescript CORBA ILU OpenDoc OLE

2000

ABSTRACT This paper proposes the use of the Unified Modelling Language (UML) as a formalism for defining an abstract syntax for Agent Communication Languages (ACLs) and their associated content languages. It describes an approach supporting a formal automatic mapping from high-level abstract specifications of language structures to specific computer language bindings and in-memory structures that can be directly used by an agent platform.