2. Agent Communication Transfer Protocol (ACTP) Alexander Artikis, Jeremy Pitt and Christos Stergiou Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Intelligent and Interactive Systems Group. http://www.iis.ee.ic.ac.uk/actp

3. Project Goals - Motivation To build a middleware that will provide: Reference by Agent Name (no physical address required) Logical Abstraction of the Communication Process Support for Multiple Interaction Styles (synch./asynch., one way/bi-directional) Improved Reliability and Robustness in Agent Interactions A Degree of Intelligence Support for Multi-Party Agent Conversations

4. The General Framework TCP, UDP, RTP, RSVP IP, IPv6, ICMP ACL Messages INTERACTION PROTOCOLS APPLICATION LAYER AGENT COMMUNICATION TRANSFER PROTOCOL FTP IIOP SMTPPOP3 Synchronous H TTP Asynchronous HTTP HOST-TO-HOST TRANSPORT LAYER INTERNET LAYER NETWORK ACCESS LAYER HARDWARE DEVICE DRIVERS AND MEDIA ACCESS PROTOCOLS

5. The Basic Architecture of the ACTP

6. The ACTP in the Context of Agent Interactions Asynchronous HTTP Synchronous HTTP FTPSMTPPOP3 NameServer AGENT StateTransition AgentInt Agent Communication Transfer Protocol write (1) write (2) consult (3) answer (4) handle write (5)

7. Basic Features of the ACTP Support for Indirect or Direct Communication NAMESERVER AGENT ACTP 1 23 5 4 AGENT ACTP 13 2

8. Basic Features of the ACTP Improved Reliability due to the Use of Alternative Protocols in the case of Failures

9. Basic Features of the ACTP Improved Reliability due to the Use of Alternative Protocols in the case of Failures 3 5 2 1 4

10. Basic Features of the ACTP Use of Various Communication Protocols and Mechanisms Extensible and Maintainable Object-Oriented Design Platform-Independence Imposing few Constraints on the Agents that can Use the ACTP Support for Mobile Agents

11. Basic Features of the ACTP A GUI for Agent Developers

12. Conclusions The Current Version of the ACTP provides Integration of Heterogeneous Agents Multiple Ways of Communication A State Transition Mechanism that Improves the Reliability of Agent Interactions An Abstraction of the Communication Process Shielding the Agents from the Networking Details A Robust Error-Handling Mechanism

13. Current and Future Work Integration of OO Technology with Network Protocols Specification and Implementation of a Learning Algorithm in the State Transition Module Support for Programming Language Independence Application of Security Measures on the Communications Resource Handling Integration with FIPA-OS Support for Multi-Party Agent Conversations