And Tech

2019

Agent technology is a new emerging paradigm for software systems. In order to fully utilize the capability of this technology, multiple agents operate in software environment by cooperating, coordinating or negotiating with each other. However, these interactions require these agents to communicate with each other through a common language or protocol. Agent communication language (ACL) is a vital component in multiagent system (MAS) to enable the agents to communicate and exchange messages and knowledge. However, there are no universally agreed agent communication language that is widely adopted. Different agent communication languages and different semantic models have been developed to ease the communication between agents in MAS. The purpose of this paper is to review and highlight advances in the development of ACL.

Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

This special issue of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems sought research articles that discuss relevant topics for the current trends in research on software agents and agentbased software systems. Topics of interest included techniques and technologies to engineer agent-based software systems, as well as languages, frameworks, and infrastructures broadly related to software agents and agent-based software systems. After more than 20 years from the very first attempts at using software agents as building blocks of real-world software systems (e.g., [5]), we witness today high-profile applications of software agents (e.g., [7]), even if agent-based software development cannot be considered common practice (e.g., [2]). This special issue is intended to represent a milestone in the research on software agents and agent-based software development by clearly identifying current trends and relevant topics, and by providing an informed outlook on the future of discussed themes.

2000

This article presents informal and formal specifications of some basic concepts (terms) and properties of agent theory, the design and imperative and recursive implementations of intelligent agents and supports agent approach in computer science.

2003

This paper presents a new software agent platform that is able to manipulate knowledge and execute actions based on requests made on restricted natural language. A new model for representing knowledge and actions, based on extended ontologies, is presented and a prototype that implements the ideas is discussed as well.

Our main objective is to demonstrate that agent techniques can be used successfully in web applications. Developing systems using agents covers a wide range of issues that might be overwhelming, particularly in a teaching environment. After describing essential qualities of software agents we present the Software Agent Architecture Pattern, used for teaching agent concepts and for reuse by undergraduate students in the development of course projects. Future plans include a working example based on this approach and a framework to develop web applications using agents.

Component-based software engineering, 2001

The increasing volume of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) Internet traffic provides great opportunity to delegate information search, analysis, and negotiation to automated assistants. These new classes of applications demand flexible, ...

IDIMS Report, February, 2003

Software agents represent an important and fast growing area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and more generally of Computer Science [Nwana 1996; Bradshow 1997; Green, Hurst et al. 1997; Jennings 2000]. The starting point for software agents was created by Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) which form one of the three research areas (see Figure 1) of a relatively youthful branch of AI–Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). Therefore, agents inherit potential benefits from both DAI eg modularity, speed, reliability and AI eg operation at ...

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.

electronic Journal of …, 2011

In this paper, we review the research findings in agent communication language (ACL). We then propose our model to develop an agent communication language based on the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) Standards. The use of communicative acts enables agents to recognize the intent of the requesting agents for a specific service. The ACL handles the semantics of information exchanged between agents by the use of ontologies defined for the domain as specified by FIPA. We test the communication language in a collaborative process involving three agents.

1998

Jackal is a Java-based tool for communicating with the KQML agent communication language. Some features which make it extremely valuable to agent development are its conversation management facilities, flexible, blackboard style interface and ease of integration. Jackal has been developed in support of an investigation of the use of agents in shop oor information ow. This paper describes Jackal at a surface and design level, and presents an example of its use in agent construction.