Evaluating the FIPA Standards and Its Role in Achieving Cooperation in Multi-Agent Systems

The paper focuses on the analysis and evaluation of certain aspects of the current specification standards provided by FIPA (Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents). The work reported here is based on the development of a multi-agent application, an audio video entertainment broadcasting (AVEB) system. This has resulted in determining advantages and limitations of using the FIPA standards to build complex Multi-agent Software Systems. The development and testing of the AVEB application are part of an EU project called FACTS (acts AC317). A main result of using FIPA has been the identification of the usefulness and power of its protocols. The reason for the importance of the protocols in developing multi-agent systems (MAS) is it provides a degree of expressing cooperation within MAS architecture. As the protocols stand currently they are not sufficient to capture a complete explicit model of the cooperative requirements in multi-agent systems. However, they provide a basis from which to start. We examine this feature of FIPA further in order to evaluate its role as a bridge between the mental agency and social agency requirements in the development of cooperation in mult-agent systems.