Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 1 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agents for the Masses Agents’99 Workshop on Agent-based High Performance Computing: Problem Solving Applications and Practical Deployment Craig Thompson Object Services and Consulting, Inc. (OBJS) DARPA CoABS Program

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 2 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Target operational requirements: Humans and agents connect to the agent grid anytime from anywhere and get the information and capability they need. Enable teams led by humans and staffed by agents. Intelligent automation -- easier application connectivity where networks of agents self- organized at run-time. Reduce the 60% of time in command and control systems spent manipulating stovepipes; incrementally replace stovepipes. Connect the $40B worth of DoD equipment that currently only interoperates with one or two other components, permitting better knowledge sharing. Another example is a process improvement in factory 1 is broadcast immediately to factories 2..N. Agent-enable object and web applications to reconfigure as new data and function is added to the system. Add capability modularly. Stable, scaleable, evolvable, reliable, secure, survivable,... Scale to millions of agents so agents are pervasive and information and computation is not restricted to machine or organization boundaries. Survivable so if one agent goes down, another takes its place; Requirements View

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 3 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Summary Agent Reference Architecture presented to OMG Agent WG, DARPA ISO Architecture WG, ALP Workshop, submitted in response to FIPA RFI’99 Grid tech reports, collaborating with ISX and GITI on vision/architecture document, paper in progress for Bradshaw’s forthcoming agent handbook Agent (eGent) Prototype addresses scaling via XML and transport, submission to FIPA RFI’99 Web Trader Prototype addresses scaling to Web, considering hosting at Restricted Languages (MBNLI) Prototype addresses limited language communication, tie to WebTrader and eGent Tech Transfer co-chair OMG Agent WG, drafted OMG Agent Technology RFI and OMG-FIPA Liaison statement CoABS-ALP architecture mapping in progress prototyping architecture

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 4 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Object  Component  Agent  ? state behavior encapsulation inheritance reflection packaging serialization repository TBD What is an Agent? deconstructionist view: agents augment objects with additional capabilities ACL process inside agent framework planning mobility rules … goal/task-oriented autonomous ontologies collaborative/teams

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 5 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. agent properties & kinds communication capability computation capability by role in system information agent data sources interface agent NLI, multimodal coop response task agent web/ agent middleware agent mobile agent, itinerary social, personality, motivation, forgetting intelligent agent distribution messaging svcs* agent life cycle* - start, stop, checkpoint, name service** event monitoring leasing, compensation catalog services*, registry/repository* register*, offer/accept/decline publish*, subscribe* trading*, matchmaking, advertising*, negotiating*, brokering*, yellow pages* security** authenticate* encrypt access control lists* firewall* CIA model agent suspects transactions persistence* query, profile (of metadata)* data fusion replication* groups multicast (scarce) resource mgmt*, allocate*, deallocate*, monitor*, local, global optimization, load balancing*, negotiation for resources* scheduling time, geo-location rules, constraints planning* property list versioning, config Agent Reference Architecture speech acts*: ACL* - KQML, FIPA ACL, OAA ICL planning* reactive* goal interactions* discrete vs. continuous* constraints iterative, revision workflow systemic grid features common services AGENT SYSTEM single Vs. multi-agent AGENT SYSTEM single Vs. multi-agent ensembles # of agents* teams, peers, contracting, org. responsibility roles, capabilities, mutual beliefs hierarchy* conversational policies* scalability* policy*, management resource dial survivability evolvability reliable* licensing & cost QoS* accuracy priorities GRID time-constrained* control*, coordination*, multi-agent synchronization cooperation, competition adaptation, evolution* via market model,... federates infrastructure primitives reflection serialization threads interceptors proxies filters multicast wrappers legacy sys data sources ONTOLOGY** Ontolingua, OKBC metadata representations interests, locations, availability, capability, price/cost XML and web object models I*3 BADD AICE IA EDCS Quorum OMG JTF Jini ALP, HLA, IA Architecture Principle: separation of concerns deconstructionist view - what can you take away and still have an agent system secure*, trust societies closed vs.. open, communities of interest learning by example... mobility** heterogeneous* computing environ. agent systems ACLs content languages ontologies policies services open world assumption autonomous decentralized* xxx = Agility addresses these * = Architecture WG in Pittsburg * = Control WG in Pittsburg * = Interoperability WG in Pittsburg red = Sun Jini green = other DARPA programs content languages KIF, FOL, IDL, RDF missing views MOP More common services instrumenting, logging caching queuing routing, rerouting pedigree, drill down translation*... DDB

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 6 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agents + the Global Grid Agent Grid - System Concept View Server Component Service Server Data Service A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A Server Data Service Server Component Service

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 7 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agent Grid Our paper “Characterizing the Agent Grid” documents examples of grids describes views of the Agent Grid as a set of agent mechanisms a global registry/system management backplane environment for agents and agent systems that provides resource, services, and system wide properties a collection of interacting semantic grids representing various kinds of collections: organizations, teams, … ensembles (including ALP) all acting like mini-grids to control local resources all of the above lists grid architecture issues Is the agent grid itself a kind of agent system? Is the agent grid logically centralized? hierarchical? How can we use existing object services? Must they be wrapped as agent services? Is there a minimal set of services? will be published in Bradshaw’s agent book forthcoming

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 8 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Pervasive Agents Prototype Lightweight agents that maximally reuse Web-ORB- backplanes a route to making agent technology pervasive. eGent Prototype ACL performative = XML document no ACL parser needed based ACL transport inherits support for disconnected operation, firewalls, security JATLite-like functionality with simpler infrastructure can invoke eGents from applets supports KQML, FIPA-ACL (but not interoperability) AgentBeans - ACL wrappers for Java Beans ACL plug-in architecture under investigation) eGent specs submitted to FIPA in response to FIPA-99 CFP

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 9 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Pervasive Agents Prototype In Progress AgBot - Use reflection to automatically extract Java agent capability description (a la search bots) WebScribe - record user surfing actions, use as an information agent AgBot and WebScribe can advertise via WebTrader Embed lightweight web servers within agents

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 10 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agent Communication in Restricted Languages Agents communicate with people and other agents using restricted languages for stating complex queries and commands Support restricted natural sub-languages to ACL, SQL/OQL, and other specialized languages Use OBJS WebTrader to advertise and discover MBNLI-aware agents NEO TIE: connecting OBJS MBNLI, WebTrader, SRI OAA/MultiModal Map, and ISI Ariadne Explore user interface agent and information access agent frameworks (e.g., add-ins for speech and cooperative response) ACL Natural Language Agent1 Human Agent Natural Language or restricted language ACL, etc. Agent2 Menus Keyboard Voice Gesture Etc.

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 11 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. NEO TIE using Menu-based NLI Kuwait Residents Conference Attendees Name Address Phone Name Address Phone geocoder $Address Latitude Longitude Location People Ariadne TIE Schema

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 12 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. WebTrader WebTrader is a scalable trader (matchmaker) that indexes XML- based client and service advertisements embedded in Web pages. Query results allow clients to connect to the most suitable service. Leverages Web search engines, which index the advertisements - scalable, liteweight, portable, robust. Demo shows service binding, rebinding, and trader federation (recursively searching other traders). The current focus is ad type spcialization and ad synthesis. Advertisement types include components, agents, data sources, search engines, MBNLI grammars, EC objects. Could be used as a scalable “blackboard” for advertising intermediate results. NEO TIE combines WebTrader with SRI OAA and ISI Ariadne Paper: Venu Vasudevan and Tom Bannon, WebTrader: Discovery and Programmed Access to Web-Based Services, poster at: The Eighth International World Wide Web Conference, Toronto, Canada, on May 11-14, Planned trial on web site (tbd)

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 13 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. WebTrader Application: Discovery, Rebinding, Federation

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 14 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. WebTrader Application: DeepSearch

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 15 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agility Project Homepage - Strawman Agent Architecture Characterizing the Agent Grid Characterizing Grid Concepts Systemic Properties CoABS-ALP Common Architectural Challenges Agility Las Vegas FIPA E-Gents: Agents over Computational MBNLI sample screens WebTrader: Discovery and Programmed Access to Web-Based Services OMG Agent WG Homepage - includes OMG Agent Technology Green Paper, just released RFI, liaison w FIPA, and minutes References

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 16 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Backups

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 17 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Agent/Grid Architecture Issues What are agents? - code and data packets that are autonomous, adaptive, cooperative, mobile, interoperable … We want all these properties in future agent-based systems. We need experience building systems with these properties. Pervasiveness - How do we insure that the architecture stays lite-weight for wide-spread adoption. Embracing heterogeneity - We must piggyback agent systems on already pervasive infrastructure like ORBs, the Web, , and DBMS systems. We must identify the specific kinds of heterogeneity we want agent system architectures to support. Separation of concerns agent-agent separation - can agents access each other’s state directly agent-service separation - do agents implement the long list of services that the grid provides or is that done via underlying component-based middleware? grid-agent separation - agents are autonomous but they cooperate and compete for resources within the software grid. The grid provides some global systemic properties and some basic shared services. Is there an explicit grid or is it implicit in the way agents interact with each other? Are some “services” (like planning) optionally distributed into agents or are they available from the grid’s planing service? Can new services be autoloaded into a grid that does not have them? Semantic interoperability, ontology - do ontologies scale? How do they extend class libraries? Licensing - Agents, data sources, and component software need an economic model so broad communities can get value from them. A model of licensing might be critical to success in the large. Agent communication language (ACL) - Is the ACL compositional and extensible so one can define new speech acts from existing ones? How many speech acts is enough? 20 or 5000? Control points - where are the control points where different control algorithms might be substituted into the architecture Grid federation issues - How are software grids federated - flat versus hierarchical models? If different grids contain different policy choices or different services, how does that affect agents communicating across grid boundaries? Can we add new services and -ilities to a grid once it is deployed? how transparent is addition or subtraction of services and ilities Coordination - Insure Agent Reference Architecture augments DARPA ISO ATAIS architecture. Provide template for next generation unified OMG, FIPA, and W3C agent standards. Insure that reference implementations (toolkits) exist and are widely available.

Object Services and Consulting, Inc. 18 © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Craig Thompson May 1, © Copyright 1999 Object Services and Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. Comments the ALP architecture is not logistics-specific the current ALP implementation is (nearly) 100% Java for portability. Interoperability interfaces to non-Java environments (RDBMS, CORBA, C++,...) are established by lower level interoperability mechanisms. Similarities an individual cluster is like an agent with plug-in components for expanding tasks, allocating resources, assessing status, and information access a society (federation) of clusters is like a multi-agent system (or possibly a grid?). Most "conventional” agent architectures impose somewhat more organization on the participants (e.g., in their use of Matchmaking components and rich ACLs) than the cluster architecture does. cluster relationships tend to mirror organizational and other dependency relationships - decentralized control possible but tends to be top down mirroring DoD command structures agents are wrappers of existing legacy functionality. (More correctly, clusters are containers. It's the plugins that wrap legacy functionality (and most of the other functionality as well; the clusters provide generic organization capabilities for the plugins, which actually do the work). Differences (at the present time) * clusters/agents are not currently mobile ALP clusters do not communicate via ACL. They communicate via directives and the log plan they are all contributing too; extending the directive vocabulary is a known issue in ALP, and one to which some kind of ACL could contribute a solution (this is noted in the design document). ALP does not currently use Traders ALP does not currently use agent frameworks (it uses Java, and Voyager now but is moving toward using Jini) there is no "list of services" that are available as in the OMG services architecture (naming, transactions, perisistence, query,...) there is no particular provision for insertion of systemic properties into the architecture (so called iQos/ilities like security, survivability, scalability, evolvability, reliability,...) but the architecture evidences several -ility related patterns (e.g., scalability via federation). no global grid optimization but cost functions and penalty functions provide some decentralized global control business rules are inside of plugins (when they exist at all) and not visible at the cluster level * the ALP architecture does not preclude these. It just has not addressed them yet. ALP as a Grid? Compare and contrast the ALP architecture and the CoABS grid