FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

Resolutions of the 26^th FIPA meeting in Helsinki, Finland
July 22^nd-26^th 2002.

 

 

1.        Board Resolutions

The Board acknowledges the resignation of Kogure-san, and thanks NTT and Kogure-san for the excellent work performed during his 3 years on the Board of FIPA.

 

The new board size will be 5 people; effective for next election process.

 

The general assembly will be held on Monday October 14^th in Pensacola.

 

Reduce to 3 meetings, 3 days for 2 of them and 4 days for the one with an AGM once a year. The expected annual schedule is approximately January, May, October.

 

These meetings will not allow having a workshop and will focus on technical issues. The board recommends that TCs have interim meetings and make use of teleconferencing technology for more frequent interaction.

 

The Board approves the proposition to publish the FIPA specifications in a major edition house. A FIPA editorial board will be in charge of the realization of the book(s). The members of the editorial board are nominated by the Board.

 

The board appreciates the offer by the Japanese Standards Association to translate FIPA specification FIPA0001. The board will negotiate with the JSA over the terms of publishing the translation.

 

 

2.        Finances and Audit Committee

The finance and Audit committee checked the FIPA accounts. The 2001-2002 year was financially difficult with a loss of approximately 160KCH. This is partly due to FIPA supporting 3 meetings during the year (from June to June). The new Board will have to manage a tighter budget and save money on expenditures like meetings and publicity.

 

 

3.        FIPA approves the Secretariat’s report of the previous three months (f-out-00122).

FIPA requests that the secretariat remind all committee chairs to update their relevant sections of the FIPA website with current information.

 

4.        Resolutions of Technical Committees, Working Groups, and Special Interest Groups

 

 

TC AdHoc Resolutions

 

TC AdHoc proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions

 

• Consideration of five identified architectural approaches for service discovery. Decision for the DF plug-in solution (interface for accessing ad-hoc and P2P implementations by the DF).
• Continuing to write the white paper about relevant technologies for FIPA agents in mobile ad-hoc environments and possible solutions (ad-hoc and P2P technology descriptions, interface definitions, other important issues like security and profiles). Contribute to the white paper over TC ad-hoc reflector.
• Draft a specification until FIPA27 which contains the decided architectural approach and the interface to one of the underlaying P2P / ad-hoc technologies. The interfaces to other P2P / ad-hoc technologies will be done later based on that example in a library style.

 

Thanks to: Tadashi Araragi, Celeste Campo, Heikki Helin, Heimo Laamanen, Mikko Laukkanen, Santtu Toivonen, Michael Berger.

 

 

TC Semantics Resolutions

 

TC Semantics proposes that FIPA adopt the following resolutions

·         To adopt an approach based on Jones and Pitt’s semantic approach

·         To produce a white paper structured around requirements, philosophy and technology as soon as possible

·         To explore the potential for a content language that is coherent with the Jones and Pitt approach to semantic frameworks that also meets the requirements for efficient representation and utility in web services environments (in particular have a natural expression in XML)

 

Thanks to: David Levine, Jim Odell, Marian Nodine, Jeremy Pitt, Makoto Okada, Heimo Laamanen, Shaw Feng, Michael Kerstetter. Andrew Jones, Jeffrey Bradshaw, Frank McCabe

 

TC Ontology resolutions

 

• White paper: Plan for updating and completing white paper. Paper sent out and call for other contributions has been made.
• Multiple reference of ontologies within content language: use of standard URN solution has been proposed. Some current analysis will be added to white paper.
• Upper ontology contributions to the white paper have been accepted about ACL model, further contributions and discussions are being requested via the white paper feasibility activity.
• DAML+OIL inputs approved: Creation of a repository to host the files on the FIPA web site needs to be set up – a formal request to the board that this is established.
• Send a call for other contributions for ontology models and representations of the FIPA systems.
• FIPA agent ontology requirements planned to be submitted to webont before next meeting.

 

Thanks to: Monique Calisti, Jonathan Dale, Heimo Lammanon, Stefan Poslad, Tadashi Araragi, Santta Toivonen, Patricia Charlton, Fabio Bellifemine, Hiroki Suguri  (apologies are offered to anyone whose name was omitted)

 

TC X2S resolutions

 

The X2S TC recommends FIPA to approve the following resolutions:

• recommend FIPA to publish the minutes of this X2S meeting, the list of approved changes, and all the modified specifications in the public X2S area of the FIPA Web site for review from the entire community. All membership is invited to carefully consider and review all the approved changes that, in some cases, breaks compatibility of the existing implementation.
• recommend FAB to produce a guideline document for maintenance of the specifications and publish it on the public area of the Web site (see for instance the doc. no. 61 and doc. no. 37)
• invite membership to collect information about implementations and usage of the FIPA specifications
• considered that the formal semantics model of the cancel and subscribe communicative acts has been now corrected, X2S recommends FIPA to promote to experimental the specification no. 35, fipa-susbscribe Interaction Protocol and to include that specification in the list of documents to be proposed for standard on October
• the following specifications have been identified not to be proposed for standard because they do not meet the X2S quality criteria:
• spec no. 31, FIPA English Auction Interaction Protocol Specification
• spec no. 32, FIPA Dutch Auction Interaction Protocol Specification

·         this decision can be reconsidered if, before the next FIPA meeting, X2S was made aware of any existing implementation or of any FIPA member still wishing to propose them to standard               

• recommend the promotion of document no. 14 to Informative document
• recommend FAB to approve the creation of a new normative document that contains the subset of document no. 14 where the QoS ontology is defined.
• recommend FIPA to register the name fipa in the IETF/IANA name space. Steve Willmott will prepare all the necessary documentation for such a registration to be done by FIPA next week (the Board?)

 

Thanks to all those people who have contributed to the meeting by sending comments or by actively participating to the discussion and, in particular, the editors of the documents: Jonathan Dale, Jim Odell, Misty Nodine, Heikki Helin.

 

TC Services

• To analyse the input from Mitre and Fujitsu to provide motivations for the service model
• Input from Fujitsu by 28th August
• To hold a teleconference call on 12th September (IBM to host and detail)
• Finalise web service and agent service cross-modelling
• Prepare submission for AC.NET Web Services Working Group meeting on 9th/10th September

 

Thanks to: Monique Calisti, Patricia Charlton, Thierry Bouron, Margeret Lyell, Jonathan Dale, David Levine and all FIPA members.

 

Security WG resolutions

The FIPA Security WG proposes the following resolutions:

1. To progress with work on its new work-plan (f-wp-00011):

a. To complete and submit written input on the use of the encryption within the message transport specification to the X2S TC (following discussions with the X2S TC);

b. To develop ontologies / models / specifications for agent message integrity, agent message confidentiality and agent authentication and then circulate them to solicit comments from targeted individuals in the wider agent / security community;

c. To develop profiles for combinations of confidentiality, authentication and integrity models for different requirements;

d. To focus more of the work within the security WG on activities such as interim meetings outside of the main FIPA meetings;

e. To encourage the PISA project to submit it’s privacy framework as input into FIPA’s draft security related ontologies and policies and domains specifications.

 

That the following be thanked for their active input at this meeting: Farooq Ahmad, Tadashi Araragi, Monique Calisti, Patricia Charlton, Shaw Feng, Rune Gustavsson, Heikki Helin, Michael Kerstetter and Stefan Poslad.  (Apologies are offered to anyone whose name was omitted).

 

Image Committee  resolutions

 

• A more detailed summary (bunch of slides) of the Image Committee discussion will be sent to the image mailing list and to the FIPA secretariat (Responsible: Monique).

 

• The Image Committee aims to improve the visibility of FIPA for enabling a better interaction with all the members and with the external community. Several concrete initiatives have been discussed in Helsinki:
• The Image Committee recommends a “What is FIPA and how to contribute” short (and eventually partly in parallel to the plenary) session to be held at the FIPA meetings in the Monday mornings. This session should not run for more than 30-40 minutes and the main goal is to enable new people to understand the FIPA objectives, its structure, the current activity and how to contribute to the standards. Action points:
• Bernard prepares the slides that he would use for the short session.
• Monique submits a request to the board to take the HOW TO session into account when organizing the next meeting agenda.
• Publications of the FIPA Specs in the form of books (in addition to the on-line files). Monique has explored the possibility to do that in collaboration with Birkhauser (a subsidiary of Springer and Verlag in Switzerland). A summary of the offer will be sent to the board and the image committee asap. Several further actions need to be undertaken:
• Ask Jacquie to explore at least an alternative offer from another publisher.
• Clarify copyright and various contractual issues reporting back to the board asap.
• Ask the board to create a FIPA editorial board identifying the selection criteria (i.e., commitment, familiarity with the specs, networking, contacts, etc.). The Image Committee proposes the following three candidates: Jonathan Dale, Fabio Bellifemine, Monique Calisti.
• The editorial board would be responsible for supervising the whole process, interacting with the selected publisher, inviting additional editors (for instance TC chairs), putting together the specs and organizing them (by volumes for instance), advertising the initiative and supporting the publisher for the distribution of the publications.
• Eventually, an external person would have to be hired for the formatting of the specs in the style required for book publication. The editorial board would supervise this activity.
• CD-ROM: in addition to the books and to the online publication. To investigate also this channel (ask Michael to explore this opportunity).
• Improve the HOW TO CONTRIBUTE session on the FIPA Web site (Jacquie+ Image).
• Put together a one-page flyer for massive distribution in order to attract new potential organizations (Jacquie, Monique). Paper copy + e-mail distribution.
• The Image Committee discussed a number of additional actions:
• For the 3 days meeting no workshop will take place any more. Alternatively, it may be interesting to have an invited speaker within specific TCs’ discussions (Jonathan).
• Strong need of putting in place a mechanism for enabling people to share experience in agents applications (Frank).
• To build a map of existing business models and/or companies/groups or organizations making use of agent technology (notice that this does not mean to have a library of business cases, which would not be really feasible, but rather a list of pointers and examples of application areas) (Thierry Bouron).
• Ensuiring the FIPA presence in relevant contexts:
• FIPA award for AAMAS 2003
• Encourage membership to organize workshops within AAMAS 2003
• FIPA award for a competition within the Agentcities network context (Monique asks Steve)
• Make sure the FIPA presence in the next EU 6^th framework discussions and meetings.
• Collect input about which Expressions of Interest have been supported by FIPA members (mail chat)
• Keep in mind: statistics about FIPA references.
• FIPA Inform! newsletter:
• Collecting INPUT for the FIPA Inform! Newsletter Vol. 3, Issue 3 in coordination with the FIPA secretariat (Monique, Jacquie)

     (due to image@fipa.org by 15 August, 2002)

o        Meeting Report (Frank)

o        News in brief (J. Kelly)

o        Helsinki workshop report (Heimo)

o        TC Ad hoc report (Michael)

o        Technology overview: Service Description (Miriam, Patricia)

o        Member profiles:

o        Un. Of West Florida (Jeff Bradshaw), Comtec (Suguri)

o        Announcement corner (Jacquie/Monique): the FIPA Abstract Architecture will be translated in Japanese, the FIPA membership will have to vote for two directors of the board next October during the 27^th FIPA meeting

 

• Call for the next Newsletter: circulate around the list of selected input – deadline post Helsinki (Monique)

     (due to image@fipa.org by 15 November, 2002)

• Meeting Report (President)
• News in brief (J. Kelly)
• Pensacola workshop report (Jeff Bradshaw)
• FIPA specs go STANDARD: tutorial (Fabio)
• Technology overview: Currents in web semantic (Jonathan Dale)
• Member profiles:
• TILAB (Fabio), Un. Of Otago (Stephen Cranfield)
• Announcement corner (Jacquie/Monique): FIPA specs publication, new president, new directors

 

• Publication in a Japanese journal: Suguri will write a paper about FIPA (October 2002). Ask Suguri to upload the paper on the FIPA Web site when it will be available.

 

• Web Image:
• To improve the session HOW TO CONTRIBUTE
• To complete the Image Committee description page
• Solicit people to upload their recent FIPA related publications (especially after AAMAS02).

 

• Circulate a list of relevant initiatives (FIPA secretariat, Monique)
• 27th FIPA meeting, 14-18 October, Pensacola (Florida, US)
• PRIMA Japan, August 2002: distribution of the FIPA Inform!
• Agentcities public days, 9 -10 September in Lisboa (Portugal)
• How to ensure official FIPA presence? (Monique contacts Steve)
• CIA 2002, Cooperative Information Agents - Intelligent Agents for the Internet and Web, 18-20 September, Madrid (Spain)
• First International workshop on Multiagent Interoperability, 17th September 2002, Aachen (Germany) (FIPA paper and presentation, M. Berger, M. Calisti) (for more info: http://www.tzi.de/mai02/)
• To encourage publishing papers (including a “Vision paper”) about FIPA to related (technical) journals, conferences. Target journals:

o        IEEE Intelligent Systems, IEEE Computing, Communications ACM

o        Software Focus, Wired, IEEE Spectrum

o        Business 2.0, Red Herring

o        AgentLink newsletter

 

Thanks to: Jonathan Dale, Bernard Burg, Thierry Bouron, Stefan Poslad, Michael Berger, Hiroki Suguri, Shaw Feng, Makoto Okada, Frank McCabe, Monique Calisti. Many thanks also to Jacquie Kelly for her remote and precious contribution.

 

 

5.        FIPA thanks the following individuals for participating in and making valuable contributions to the FIPA Workshop:

 

Name	Affiliation
Professor Rune Gustavsson	Blekinge Institute of Technology (BIT), Ronneby, SWEDEN
Pekka Ala-siuru	VTT
Steven Willmott	EPFL, Lausanne
Kari Koivuniemi, Juha Ström	Minutor Oy, Tampere, Finland
Francis McCabe	Fujitsu Laboratories

 

 

6.        FIPA thanks Sonera Corporation for offering FIPA excellent meeting facilities and friendly support in Helsinki, Finland and for hosting its 26^th meeting, in particular: Heikki Helin, Mikko Laukkanen, Olli Aalto, Marketta Milen, Riitta Koski, and Heimo Laamanen and the FIPA secretariat Jacquie Kelly

 

7.        FIPA invites its membership and contributors to the FIPA process to its 27^th meeting, October 14^th-18th, 2002 in Pensacola, Florida, to be hosted by IHMC.