FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

 

                                     Michael Berger                       and r,Michael Watzke, Siemens AG

                     <{Michael.Berger@mchp.siemens.de, Michael.Watzke@}@mchp.siemens.decom>

 

 

Problem Statement: FIPA specifies parts of agent platforms and provides a definition of a platform-compliance by defining normative specifications with mandatory parts for internal and external platform behavior. To be FIPA-compliant, a platform has to implement all current mandatory specifications while FIPA-compliance does not specify if whether an agent platform is running completely on one machine / device or if whether it is distributed over several machines / devices (compliance refers to Agent Management Specifications and Message Transport Specifications). The agent platform can be based on devices with very limited resources, e.g. mobile phones, where it is impossible to support all relevant functionality defined as mandatory by FIPA.SometimesFurthermore, for some applicationsand platform providers often do not need support of , all the mandatory functionality, but instead only use certain parts of it. is not necessary at the same time. Furthermore, there are also devices with very limited resources, e.g. mobile phones, were it is impossible to support all relevant functionality defined as mandatory by FIPA.

 

Objective: There are three five main objectives of this work-plan:

·         Definition of the process of defining compliance levels, thatlevels that means: which kind of specifications should be considered (preliminary, experimental, standard) and how to deal with changes to the specifications used in defining compliance levels.

·         We need definitions of several levels of the term “FIPA compliance (specifically compliance refers to Agent Management Specifications and Message Transport Specifications)”. There will be a minimal-l-FIPA compliance level, which represents the lowest requirements, up to a full-FIPA compliance level which comprises the highest requirements (all current mandatory parts of normative specifications). In between, there may be different levels which group specific functionality together.

·         For the definition of these FIPA compliance levels, mandatory and optional functionality of all informal and formal specifications should be taken into account.

·         Until now, the definition to be FIPA compliant,of the term FIPA compliance was always related always to the platform. What we also need, is a more device specific view which allows to express, sayif up to which level the software in a device (as part of an agent platform) is FIPA compliant. That is important for device manufacturers, which do not want to provide platforms, but want to sell devices with FIPA-compliant software on it.

·         Existing specifications should be harmonized if necessary.

 

Technology: The definition of the compliance levels will be based on criteria from platform,application and service development as well as include requirements from device manufacturers.

 

Specifications generated: There will be a new specification which will take all existing specifications into account, which define FIPA2000 compliance or all relevant specifications during execution of that workplanwork plan.

 

 

Plan for Work and Milestones: The plan is for a 1612 month program of work and includes the following steps:

 

         2001/0907            Finish workplan, publish workplan, get acceptance from FAB

2001/10    E, stablish TC, open call for contributions

         20021/0109          Deadline for contributions

         2002/01    2001/10Presentation of contributions, structuring, discussion

         2002/071  Deliver first draft of preliminary specification

         2002/1004            Review specification, second draft

         2003/01    Review specification, third draft

         20032/047            Making specification as experimental

 

Future Work:After finishing that specification, it has to be updated with the outcome of every new specification or change to any previous specifications in order to keep the compliance level definition up to date. That update process definition is going to be a part of the outcome of that workplanwork plan as well.

 

Dependencies:

·[FIPA00001] FIPA Abstract Architecture Specification

FIPA Abstract Architecture Specification

FIPA Human-Agent Interaction Specification

FIPA Nomadic Application Support Specification

FIPA Agent Communication and Content Languages Specifications

FIPA Agent Security Management Specification

FIPA Agent Management and Configuration Specifications

FIPA Interaction Protocol Specifications

FIPA Communicative Act Specifications

FIPA ACL Message Structure and Representation Specifications

FIPA Agent Message Transport Specifications

FIPA Agent Software Integration Specifications

FIPA Device Ontology and Ontology Service Specifications

FIPA Domains and Policies Specification

 

 

Additional References:

·         Device capabilities and requirements from manufacturers

·         Existing FIPA-based application and service implementations, requirements from application implementeers and service providers

·         Existing FIPA-platform implementations, requirements from platform providers

 

Support:

·         Fabio Bellifeimine (TI Labs)

·         Bernhard Burg (HP Labs)

·         Patricia Charlton (Motorola)

·         Heimo Laamanen (Sonera)

·         Heikki Helin (Sonera)

·         Jamie Lawrence (Broadcom)

·         Stefan Poslad (Queen Mary University London)

·         John Shepherdson (British Telecommunications)

·         Steven Willmott (EPFL)