Multi-agent systems can be viewed as agent execution environments that host independently developed agents, enabling them to interact with each other. In accordance with this hypothesis, we seek a framework for representing agent interaction protocols, and propose an XML schema. Although existing XML schema activities focus on only strong data formats, our schema also takes account of messages so that agents can communicate with each other by expressing intentions such as requests and responses. In addition, our schema incorporates with a concept of sessions so as to define the order of messages, taking account of finite state machine formalism of Knowledge Query Manipulation Language (KQML). Accordingly, an interaction protocol defined by our schema can be combined with KQML in a natural way.
By: Yuhichi Nakamura and Gaku Yamamoto
Published in: RT0271 in 2002
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