Pragmatics of Agent Communications

The process of agent communication modeling has not yet received much attention in the knowledge systems area. Conventional knowledge systems are rather simple with respect to their communication structure: often it is a straightforward question-and-answer sequence between system and end user. However, this is different in recent intelligent multi-agent systems. Therefore, agent communication aspects are now in need of a much more advanced treatment in knowledge management, acquisition and modeling. In general, a much better integration between the respective achievements of multi-agent and knowledge-based systems modeling is an important research goal. In this paper, we describe how agent communications can be specified as an extension of well-known knowledge modeling techniques. The emphasis is on showing how a structured process of communication requirements analysis proceeds, based on existing results from agent communication languages. The guidelines proposed are illustrated by and based on a large-scale industrial multi-agent application for distributed energy load management in industries and households, called Homebots. Homebots enable cost savings in energy consumption by coordinating their actions through an auction mechanism.