Issues in Agent Communication

1. Front Matter

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2. ACL Semantics and Practice

   1. Issues in Agent Communication: An Introduction

      • Frank Dignum, Mark Greaves

      Pages 1-16

   2. Semantic, Normative and Practical Aspects of Agent Communication

      • Marco Colombetti

      Pages 17-30

   3. A Social Semantics for Agent Communication Languages

      • Munindar P. Singh

      Pages 31-45

   4. Some Legal Aspects of Inter-agent Communication: From the Sincerity Condition to ‘Ethical’ Agents

      • Jeremy Pitt, Abe Mamdani

      Pages 46-62

   5. Semantics of Communicating Agents Based on Deduction and Abduction

      • Koen V. Hindriks, Frank S. de Boer, Wiebe van der Hoek, John-Jules C. Meyer

      Pages 63-79

   6. Operational Semantics for Agent Communication Languages

      • Rogier M. van Eijk, Frank S. de Boer, Wiebe van der Hoek, John-Jules C. Meyer

      Pages 80-95

   7. An Approach to Using XML and a Rule-Based Content Language with an Agent Communication Language

      • Benjamin N. Grosof, Yannis Labrou

      Pages 96-117

3. Conversation Policy Description

   1. What Is a Conversation Policy?

      • Mark Greaves, Heather Holmback, Jeffrey Bradshaw

      Pages 118-131

   2. The Role of Conversation Policy in Carrying Out Agent Conversations

      • Laurence R. Phillips, Hamilton E. Link

      Pages 132-143

   3. On Conversation Policies and the Need for Exceptions

      • Scott A. Moore

      Pages 144-159

   4. Communication Protocols in Multi-agent Systems: A Development Method and Reference Architecture

      • Jeremy Pitt, Abe Mamdani

      Pages 160-177

4. Conversation Speci cation

   1. Using Colored Petri Nets for Conversation Modeling

      • R. Scott Cost, Ye Chen, Tim Finin, Yannis Labrou, Yun Peng

      Pages 178-192

   2. A Schema-Based Approach to Specifying Conversation Policies

      • Fuhua Lin, Douglas H. Norrie, Weiming Shen, Rob Kremer

      Pages 193-204

   3. Constructing Robust Conversation Policies in Dynamic Agent Communities

      • Marian H. Nodine, Amy Unruh

      Pages 205-219

   4. Conversation Oriented Programming for Agent Interaction

      • Mihai Barbuceanu, Wai-Kau Lo

      Pages 220-234

   5. ACL as a Joint Project between Participants: A Preliminary Report

      • Laurent Vongkasem, Brahim Chaib-draa

      Pages 235-248

   6. Conversation Protocols: Modeling and Implementing Conversations in Agent-Based Systems

      • Francisco J. Martin, Enric Plaza, Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar

      Pages 249-263

5. Conversations and Tasks

   1. Dialogue in Team Formation

      • Frank Dignum, Barbara Dunin-Kȩplicz, Rineke Verbrugge

      Pages 264-280

   2. Uncertain Knowledge Representation and Communicative Behavior in Coordinated Defense

      • Sanguk Noh, Piotr J. Gmytrasiewicz

      Pages 281-300

A first attempt to develop a standardized agent communication language (ACL) resulted in KQML, probably the most widely used such language. However, a lot of technical work remains to be done. Even worse, so far, there seems to be little consensus on the basics of agent communication and there is no clear understanding of the semantics of individual speech acts or even of the basic concepts that should be used to define the semantics.
This book documents two workshops on communication in MAS held in 1999, one on Specifying and Implementing Conversation Policies (SICP) and the other in Agent Communication Languages and presents the current state of the art of research in the field. A detailed introductory overview by the volume editors highlights a number of issues that play an important role in agent communication.

• ACL Semantics
• Agent Collaboration
• Agent Communication
• Agent Communication Languages
• Agent Conversation
• Agent Coordination
• Agent Systems
• Distributed Artificial Intelligence
• Distributed Systems
• agents
• knowledge representation
• modeling
• multi-agent system
• programming
• semantics

• Dept. Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

  Frank Dignum

• Vulcan,  

  Mark Greaves

Policies and ethics