AGENT COMMUNICATION LANGUAGES

Tim Finin and Yannis Labrou Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland Baltimore County

This tutorial will focus on software agents as autonomous, cooperating processes which use rich agent communication languages to exchange information and knowledge and to coordinate their activities. We will present the general requirements of agent communication languages, their theoretical underpinnings, some current languages, their realizations in software implementations and ongoing standardization efforts (such as FIPA). The approach developed by the Knowledge Sharing Effort (KSE), including the languages KIF, KQML and Ontolingua, will be described in some detail. The tutorial will conclude with a review of several agent-based projects which are using some of the agent communication language components discussed.

This tutorial should be of interest to anyone working with static or mobile agents which need to communicate with other agents. The material will provide the basic underlying theory, describe languages being used today, and discuss how there languages are being realized using current software technology. Thus it should be of interest to researchers with both a theoretical and an applied focus. The tutorial will assume that the audience has a basic understanding of agent concepts.

Dr. Timothy W. Finin is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He has had over 25 years of experience in the applications of Artificial Intelligence to problems in database and knowledge base systems, intelligent information systems, natural language processing, intelligent interfaces and robotics. Prior to joining the UMBC, he was a Technical Director at the Unisys Center for Advanced Information Technology, a member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, and on research staff of the MIT AI Lab. He holds an SB degree in EE from MIT and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. Finin is the author of over one hundred publications and has received research grants and contracts from a variety of sources. He has been the past program chair and general chair of the IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications, the general chair of the first two ACM Conferences on Information and Knowledge Management and the program co-chair of the Second ACM Autonomous Agents conference. Finin is a former AAAI councillor and AAAI's representative on the CRA board of directors.

Dr. Yannis K. Labrou is a Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He holds a BSc degree in Physics from the University of Athens, and he received his PhD in Computer science at UMBC in 1996. His dissertation addressed the issue of semantics for an agent communication language and in particular, the specification and semantics of KQML. Dr. Labrou is a founding member of the FIPA academy and has been an active participant in the development of the FIPA specification. Prior to joining UMBC, Dr. Labrou worked as an intern at the Intelligent Network Technology group of the I.B.M. T.J. Watson Research Center.
Last modified: Mon Mar 30 17:09:21 EST 1998