Combining FIPA ACL With DAML OIL - A Case Study

The Collaboration and Coordination Infrastructure for personal Agents (CIA) is a Java-based multi-agent framework for personal assistance. Until now, inter-agent communication in CIA is done via topic-based communication chan- nels with Java-based event classes. Information within these events is represented in proprietary classes, which are serialized for transfer. As a result, agent communication is lim- ited to an a priori defined domain of information chunks to which collaborating agents have to be tailored. In order to achieve wider inter-operability we are currently evaluating the combination of two techniques. For standardized communication between heterogeneous agents we will use the FIPA Agent Communication Language (ACL). The DARPA Agent Communication Language / Ontology Inference Layer (DAML+OIL) will serve as content language for the ACL. This architecture seems to be a promising combination because of two reasons. First, agents of this kind are able to collaborate with other heterogenous agents in an ad hoc manner because of the standardized FIPA communication interface. Second, they do not have to be tailored to proprietary content vocabularies in advance, because they can use ontology-based Semantic Web techniques as a mechanism for identification of the meaning of the terms they communicate. However, it has to be figured out if these two techniques fit seamlessly into a given agent architecture like CIA. Potential problems include the semantic compatibility of DAML and ACL for example. These and other questions have to be considered with respect to the highly dynamic infrastructure of a CIA system.

Available as PDF (53 KB)
 

BibTeX Entry

@inProceedings{liebig:02,
   crossref = {OAS:02},
   author =   {Schalk, Michael and Liebig, Thorsten and Illmann, Torsten and Kargl, Frank},
   title =    {Combining FIPA ACL With DAML OIL - A Case Study},
   year =     2002,
}

@proceedings{OAS:02,
   editors =   {Cranefield, Stephen and Finin, Tim and Willmott, Steve},
   title =     {Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on
                Ontologies in Agent Systems (OAS'02)},
   year =      2002,
}