DAML and Agents Breakout Session

1
DAML and AgentsBreakout Session

• DAML PI Meeting
• 17 October 2002

Tim Finin
2
Goals

• Find out who is doing what
• Enumerate issues and open problems
• Suggest potential new infrastructure, e.g.,
  ontologies, software components, tools,
• Identify how agentsDAML can help in DOD
  applications
• Recommend next steps

3
Starting points

• Current experience How has DAML been used in
  what agent frameworks and what is the outcome.
• Future How should DAML fit into existing agent
  infrastructures (DARPA Grid, FIPA, Cougaar, OAA,
  ...)
• Agent varieties How is/can DAML be used with
  mobile agents, interface agents, learning agents,
  etc.
• Ontologies what common ontologies are available
  or needed for agent-based systems (e.g., agents
  their properties, speech acts, user models,
  trust, policy, )
• DAML-S How well does DAML-S fulfill needs for
  service description discovery in MAS (e.g.,
  FIPA DF, Retsina, OAA).
• Tools What tools, software components,
  techniques are available or needed (e.g., DAML to
  KIF/SL translators)
• DOD How can agentsDAML support DOD
  applications, e.g., by providing needed
  ontologies (temporal, spatial, geospatial, ...)
  or aiding semantic integration with DOD legacy
  systems.

4
Sharp definition of an agent?

• in contrast to traditional web services?
• Nope.
• But there are some characteristics
• Agents do things and can be autonomous focus on
  decisions and actions (describing and
  constraining)
• Agents are (often) part of a community of peers
  focus on communicating knowledge
• Agents represent people and organizations focus
  on modeling their clients

5
Paradigm shift

• Most agent concepts and technology came from the
  client server and message passing
• The web offers new paradigms
• Shared memory vs. messaging

6
No dominant agent framework

• There is, as yet, no dominant, general agent
  framework
• Some standards are
• FIPA (http//fipa.org/) standards for agnet
  languages, protocols and services
• Major DOD RD frameworks DARPA Grid, Cougaar
• Smaller communities OAA, Retsina,
• Vaguely agent like frameworks Jini,

7
DAMLs impact on agent systems

• There is considerable interest and much
  preliminary in using DAML in existing agent
  frameworks, such as FIPA.
• Its being used as a KR language, as an
  interlingua, for ontologies, to describe
  policies, for service description and matching,
  etc.
• None of this has been codified as part of any
  standard.

8
FIPA Agent Platform
Agents belong to one or more agent platforms
which provide basic services.
DAML-S used in DF in some versions
9
FIPA Standards Overview
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IIOPHTTP
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ACLEncodingScheme
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isExpressedIn
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ACL
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contains
CLEncodingScheme
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isExpressedIn
ContentLanguage
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Content
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request, query, request-whencontract-net,
iterated-contract-netbrokering,
recruitingsubscribe, propose
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Symbol
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10
Things to do
11
Ontologies for core agent services

• We should develop common ontologies to support
  core services which facilitate multi-agent
  systems, such as
• Service registries
• Authentication, security policy checker
• Trust and reputation server
• Etc.

12
More ontologies important for agent

• Speech acts (inform, request, query-if, )
• Conversational policies and interactions
  protocols
• Policies for behavior norms
• Security and trust concepts
• User models/profiles for people, roles,
  stereotypes, and organizations

13
Protocols for agent interactions

• In developing things like DQL we should use or at
  least be informed by protocols designed by agent
  systems
• These have been explored in several contexts and
  some reasonably mature protocols have been
  developed and specified, e.g.
• FIPA IP library

14
Tools

• Some ideas for tools that would be useful in a
  MAS context were discussed, e.g.
• FIPA DF -gt DAML-S translator could enable access
  to Agentcities services
• Well defined and documented reasoning module (in
  Java) for DAML and RDF to use with an agent.

15
Ending point

• The envisioned grand convergence of Web, Agents
  and legacy applications
• Additional possible actions
• Evangelize in agent communities (DARPA Grid,
  Cougaar, FIPA, OAA, etc) to get DAML used for
  content language, ontologies, service
  descriptions, etc.
• Evangelize in W3C community to consider
  incorporating agent concepts and languages