FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

Document title

Resolutions from the Rockville, MD, USA Meeting, July 2004

Document number

f-out-00158

Document source

Board of Directors

Document status

Preliminary

Date of this status

Date as: 2004/8/16

Change history

2004/8/16

Initial draft, Mike Kerstetter

 

 

 

Resolutions of the 32nd FIPA meeting in Rockville, MD, USA
July 14-16, 2004.

 

1.      FIPA activities:

 

Meeting

Dates

Location

Country

Host

33

27 Sep.-1 Oct., 2004

Erfurt

Germany

In conjunction with MATES 2004 conference, Dr. Rainer Unland, Organizing Chair.  Jim Odell will coordinate on behalf of FIPA.

34

~ Feb-Apr 2005

???

???

If you would like to host the 34th meeting (or others), please contact the FIPA Board!!

2.      The Board has discussed the FAB request regarding the FIPA URN.  A contingent decision has been made pending receipt of some clarifying information from the FAB.  A final decision is expected within a month.

3.      FIPA requests that the Secretariat update Board-related mailing lists as appropriate and remind all committee chairs to update their relevant sections of the FIPA website with current information.

4.      The board will continue to work on the strategic positioning of FIPA and its activities with respect to other relevant standardization bodies.

5.      Resolutions and Statements of Technical Committees, Working Groups, and Special Interest Groups:

TC Methodology

TC Methodology proposes that FIPA adopts the following resolutions:

·        We recognize the importance of guidelines for composition of fragments in a new methodology and decomposition of an existing one in order to obtain useful fragments. They will be part of the guideline document that is the last deliverable of this TC

o       The different approaches for composing fragments we identified at this stage are:

§         Bottom up approaches (MAS meta-model/architecture driven)
§         Top down approaches (process driven)
§         Evaluation-driven approaches (methodology metrics/features)
§         Mixed approaches

o       We recognize that integration fragments could be necessary for assembling a methodology, but we propose that they not be part of a FIPA specification

·        We recognized that fragments can be located at the phase or activity level but not at the step level (too fine-grained). We recommend to our members of aligning their contributions according to this classification

·        We propose that fragment classification is used for navigation inside the repository, not for composition

·        We propose the introduction of methodology frameworks in the repository structure in order to facilitate the composition of a new methodology.

o       We recognize that each framework is related to a collection of methodologies with similar features and referring to similar meta-models

TC Methodologies gratefully thanks all people attending the meeting and the others contributing offline.

TC Modeling

TC Modeling proposes the following resolutions:

·        The Modeling TC participants agreed the current AUML Superstructure Metamodel is sufficiently stable and adequate to be used as a foundation to now incorporate further, more advanced extensions to agent/role/group. (9-yes, 1-abtain, 0-no votes)

·        The Modeling TC participants agreed that future work will continue in the areas of agent-based extensions to state machine diagrams, activity diagrams, use case diagrams, dynamic role diagram, class diagrams, component diagrams, interaction diagrams, composite structure diagrams, environment diagram, mobility diagram.

·        The Modeling TC participants agreed that initial drafts of the following diagrams will be delivered by 1 September 2004: state machine diagrams, activity diagrams, use case diagrams, dynamic role diagram, class diagrams, interaction diagrams.

·        The Modeling TC participants agreed that initial drafts of the following diagrams will be delivered by 1 December 2004: component diagrams, interaction diagrams, composite structure diagrams, environment diagram, mobility diagram.

·        The Modeling TC participants agreed that the FIPA Modeling TC would cooperate and work closely with the OMG Agent SIG‹who will also be working on the AUML drafts.

·        The Modeling TC would like to thank all the participants at the Modeling TC meetings.

TC Security

At this meeting, the following are the highlights:

·        There were discussions related to the FIPA f-in-00095 (secure message envelope) document for consideration by the FAB to be a preliminary spec.  This is close to being a completed preliminary specification proposal. The following are the issues related to complete this:

o       Currently, it is proposed that a new extension field to support security should itself be extensible that points to a set of extension headers, one of which is the new security header (another, in the future, could be a possible QoS header). A proposal has been drafted for submission to the FAB.

o       There is a HTTP grounding for the envelope but no IIOP grounding for it.

o       Consider if the current representation of the syntax in terms of a frame-based ontology should be a UML

·        There were discussions related to creating a more general specification of an agent security model

·        It was felt that this model should comprise a concept model, profile model, policy model and process model. We are still discussing how to define these models.

·        It is also felt that this model overlaps with work being done in the TC services, TC Modelling and TC semantics.

·        A paper is being presented by this TC on this model to the SASMAS-2004 work-shop at AAMAS

The FIPA Security TC proposes the following resolutions:

1.      To complete a preliminary specification of the security envelope specification in time for the FAB to consider for the next meeting. To propose the changes needed to the related standard envelope specifications.

2.      To interact with other TC’s before the next meeting such as TC Services, TC Modeling and TC Semantics in order to align the TC Security output with the work of these TCs.

3.      To circulate a draft of the abstract security architecture specification.

4.      That the following be thanked for their active input at this meeting: Sergi Robles (UAB), Pen Perry (Quantum Leap), Patrick Sodre (Intelligent Automation), Markus Dale (UMBC), Ed Sherwood (Motorola), Joan Ametller (UAB) , Jose Antonio Otega (UAB), Margaret Lyell (Intelligent Automation) and Stefan Poslad (QMUL). Apologies are offered to anyone whose name was omitted.

TC Semantics

TC Semantics had several excellent technical discussions.  During this meeting the following was accomplished:

·        Revised work plan approach

·        Identified More Use cases

·        Identified More Requirement Sources

o       Time, Location for continued effort between meetings.

·        Identified Potential Participants

·        Exposure of Semantics approach to other TCs

·        Presentations

o       Stefan

§         Old/New Relationships

o       Everett

§         Recap of Semantics

§         Preview of GMM Transform

Please contact Everett Sherwood for more detailed information.  The following continuing actions are resolved:

·        Begin a strawman “Agent Speak”

o       Use example message from ACL

o       Draft:

§         Definitions, word nets, sentences structures, ontologies, episodics

·        Establish a virtual collaboration

o       Wiki-Wiki

The chair thanks the many people who participated in the sessions.

TC Services

TC Services held two technical sessions, during which the following was accomplished:

·        Extended the work on the FIPA Abstract Service Architecture:

o       Explored requirements for Orchestrator Agent

o       Explored requirements for Service Agent

§         Restricted to ‘atomic’ services to simplify early discussion

o       Explored output of Composer Agent

o       Delineated different areas of context needed**

·        For the efforts listed above, the Services TC

o       Heavily utilized input on context from Semantics TC

o       Utilized input from Security TC re policy as (part of ) a context area

·        Reviewed the Services TC work plan for updates

·        Developed a list of next tasks and a timeline

TC Services resolves the following:

·        BY 8-31-04                      

o       Write up notes that capture the content of the Services TC work from this meeting                          

·        BY 8-31-04                      

o       Submit updated work plan

o       Submit paperwork for co-chair addition

·        BY Erfurt Germany Meeting                      

o       Finish first draft FIPA Services Abstract Architecture

·        AT Erfurt Germany Meeting           

o       Interact with Modeling TC over topic of  ROLE and SERVI          

o       Outline efforts for

§         Specification on FIPA Abstract Service Description

§         Groundings (may include some conceptual mappings) involving OWL-S and WSDL

·        Task execution will use the Services TC mailing list as a discussion venue

o       Multiple Service TC attendees have expressed commitment to participate

Thanks to all who contributed, including: Joan Ametller, Harry Chen, Marcus Dale, Shaw Feng, Srikanth Kallurkar, Brent Langley, Jose Ortega, Ben Perry, Marion Nodine, James Odell, Stefan Posland, Sergi Robles, and Ev Sherwood.

Image Committee                               

The Image committee reports the following:

·        AAMAS04

o       FIPA Inform! Newsletter, vol 5 issue 1 was distributed to all attendees.

·        Liaisons

o       Besides the usual established connections, strengthen FIPA liaisons with

§         Agentlink III

§         Global Grid Forum

§         Semantic Web

·        Inform! Vol 5, issue 2

o       Issued before next FIPA meeting

o       Content:

§         Meeting Report (M. Kerstetter)

§         News in brief (J. Kelly)

§         Rockville workshop report (Renato)

§         Corner of announcements

·        Action Points

o       Collect input about relevant events: (usual business)

§         Agents and non agents events

o       Collect input/feedback about main liaisons (usual business)

o       Collect requirements on the web-site image (usual business)

o       FIPA Inform! Newsletter Vol. 5 Issue 2

The Image Committee would like to thank Jacquie Kelly for her great work and all others contributing to the success of the FIPA Image.

FIPA Architecture Board

The FIPA Architecture Board did not meet.  However, the FAB reports the following activities since the last meeting:

·        Approved 3 new documents (to be put on the Web site by):

o       SC00023K, it extends SC00023J by including the subscription mechanism + a clarification that DF is optional + fixes some typos

o       The XC000XX document of Michael Berger. This is the current version of FIPA00023 (i.e. including all the ad-hoc specific fields) and has the intention of superseding, when standard, the current FIPA00023. This document will go through the normal life cycle of FIPA specs and, when it will become standard, it will make obsolete FIPA00023.

o       Specification 95, which is specific for ad-hoc.

·        A call has been issued for an infrastructure for exploiting the FIPA URN:

o       The FAB received 3 responses:

·        Ákos Hajnal and László Varga, MTA SZTAKI, System Development Department, Budapest (Hungary)

·        Stephen Cranefield, Department of Information Science, University of Otago, New Zealand

·        S. Rullo, P. Iritano, A. Garro, Exeura Knowledge Management Solutions & Univ. of Calabria, Rende (Italy)

o       The responses have been evaluated by a committee appointed in Barcelona composed of: Stefan Poslad, Fabio Bellifemine, Steven Willmott.

o       The committee evaluated the proposals based upon risk, cost and license restrictions on the produced software.

o       Based on these criteria, the committee proposes to the FIPA Board to accept the MSZTAKI proposal.

o       A document is available to the membership that describes all the work and the steps that have been done by the evaluation committee.

TC Ad-Hoc

TC Ad-Hoc did not meet.

5.      FIPA thanks Renato Levy, Wyndi Anderson, Margaret Lyell and Intelligent Automation, Inc. for their gracious and generous work in hosting the 32nd meeting of FIPA.

6.      FIPA thanks the FIPA Secretariat, Jacquie Kelly for her efforts in coordinating the 32st FIPA meeting.

7.      FIPA invites its membership and contributors to the FIPA process to its 33th meeting, in Erfurt, Germany.