1. FACTS - Validating the FIPA Standards
FIPA Agent Communication Technologies and Services
ACTS Programme AC317
Presenter:
Tianning Zhang
GMD FOKUS

2. General Information Duration: March 1998 until February 2000
Budget: 418 Man-Months
Web Site:
Project Manager:
Alan Steventon
BT Labs

3. Project Partners Alcatel Bell Belgium
BT Laboratories (Prime) United Kingdom
Alcatel Bell Belgium
Broadcom Eireann Research Ltd Ireland
France Telecom Branche Development CNET France
ONERA CERT France
CSELT Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecommunicayioni S.p.A Italy
Instituto Trentino di Cultura Italy
GMD FOKUS Germany
Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine United Kingdom
KPN Research (Royal PTT Netherlands NV) Netherlands (KPN)
Nortel plc United Kingdom
NHK Japan

4. Objective
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.

5. Technical Approach 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

6. Work Packages 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Work Package A1- Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. Service Reservation

14. Requirements Intelligent behaviour (adaptive, proactive, reactive)
Negotiation capability at the service and network levels
Support for heterogeneous environments (platform, protocols etc.)

15. 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

16. 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

17. Personal Travel Market
Agent
(BROADCOM)
Agent Platform 1
Travel Broker
(BT)
Travel Service
(CNET/ONERA)
Agent Platform 2
Travel
WEB
Site
Proprietary
System

18. Architecture K n o w l e d g b a s Planner Scheduler Reasoning engine
Context collector
User profile manager
Context manager
Context parser
Content handler
Context dB
Message generator
ACL parser
Communications

19. 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

20. 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