DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS FACTS - Validating the FIPA Standards FIPA Agent Communication Technologies and Services ACTS Programme AC317 Presenter: Tianning Zhang GMD FOKUS

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Duration: March 1998 until February 2000 Budget: 418 Man-Months Web Site: Project Manager: Alan Steventon BT Labs General Information

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS BT Laboratories(Prime)United Kingdom Alcatel BellBelgium Broadcom Eireann Research LtdIreland France Telecom Branche Development CNETFrance ONERA CERTFrance CSELT Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecommunicayioni S.p.AItaly Instituto Trentino di CulturaItaly GMD FOKUSGermany Imperial College of Science, Technology & MedicineUnited Kingdom KPN Research (Royal PTT Netherlands NV) Netherlands (KPN) Nortel plcUnited Kingdom NHKJapan Project Partners

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Validate the work of FIPA by constructing a number of demonstrator systems. Prove the overall technical approach adopted by FIPA, and other bodies, identify their strengths and weaknesses and generate proven suggestions for changes and enhancements. Objective

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Phase 1 (year 1) –focusing on the FIPA 97 normative specifications –driving the development of FIPA 98 Phase 2 (year 2) –validating the FIPA 98 normative specifications –driving ongoing standardisation activity Technical Approach

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS T1 - Technology and Standardisation Co-ordination A1 - Audio-visual Broadcasting and Entertainment A2 - Service Reservation A3 - Electronic Commerce – A1 - A3 Correspond to the FIPA’97 application informative specifications Work Packages

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Work Package T1- Technology and Standardisation Co-ordination Beside the internal technical co-ordination of the FACTS project, T1 will –Provide external interface and contributions to FIPA and other standardisation bodies (e.g. OMG, W3C) –Contributions to the ACTS Agent Cluster –Provide technical dissemination of the FACTS output –Co-ordinate assessment of the compliance of FACTS agent technology with the emerging standards

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Work Package A1- Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting Validating FIPA Agent technology for –information profiling, filtering, retrieving and interfacing, –negotiation of Quality of Service, –brokering and trading of user-preferred programmes in digital broadcasting networks

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Work Package A1- Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting user agents – learn the user profile and use it to filter incoming streams, autonomously retrieve AV, control hardware (e.g. tuner / DSM) – discover users with similar profiles and share recommendations – negotiate with provider agents provider agents – partition the offer based on user stereotypes – schedule program transmission according to requests – negotiate cost, urgency, quality – advertise and collaborate to answer queries broker agents – offer a unified view of heterogeneous sources – facilitate discovering providers / users

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS A1 Current Status Analysis and Specifications is still ongoing –definition of interaction protocols vs. usage of single communicative acts Implementation activity just started –ACL Message Parser and Streamer donated to FIPA (fipa8707.zip) –Number of issues raised ACL Grammar fixed Some clarifications/modifications expected for the Agent Management Grammar and role of the ACC

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Work Package A2- Service Reservation Co-ordinate and provision a multimedia application across a dynamic VPN between distributed and potentially mobile Users – user mobility – security – fault tolerance/avoidance – resource provisioning and scheduling

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Service Reservation

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Requirements Intelligent behaviour (adaptive, proactive, reactive) Negotiation capability at the service and network levels Support for heterogeneous environments (platform, protocols etc.)

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS A2 Current Status FACTS is currently working on –platform Interoperability –PCA/SPA/NPA development –ontology for dynamic VPN service An XML-based agent communication content language is likely to be selected for (among others) the following purposes: – format agent knowledge and information in a human and agent-readable form – interoperating and integrating easily other Web/Internet- based legacy applications

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Work Package A3- Electronic Trading Validating FIPA Agent technology via developing a Personal Travel Market (PTM) using FIPA compliant technology and the Internet: – service composition – information management – negotiation – software wrapping – protocols – scalability

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Personal Travel Market Personal Travel Agent (BROADCOM) Agent Platform 1 (BROADCOM) Travel Broker Agent (BT) Travel Service Agent (CNET/ONERA) Agent Platform 2 (BT) Travel WEB Site Proprietary Travel System

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS Architecture KnowledgebaseKnowledgebase Planner Scheduler Reasoning engine Context collector User profile manager Context manager Context dB Content handler Context parser ACL parser Communications Message generator

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS A3 Current Status Two different platforms (CSELT and BROADCOM), three agents running on three different sites. Trials to start soon. An initial protocol has been defined identifying possible extensions to FIPA protocols Ontology for the Personal Travel Market near completion Software wrapping to be inter-mediated by agents, not directly FIPA wrappers JESS is being used to build a reasoning engine for the Personal Travel Assistant and Travel Broker Agent

DOT’98 Workshop Heidelberg, 1-2 September 1998 ACTS FACTS A3 Current Status (Continue) A number of platform services have been identified: planning, reasoning, negotiation, etc. Alterations and extensions to some FIPA communicative acts have been raised to FIPA Payments and security will not be considered in first prototype as it is being addressed in FIPA 98