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"...for the word is the sole sign and the
only certain mark of the presence of thought
hidden and wrapt up in the body..."
-- Descartes
THIS ISSUE

Volume 2,Number 5
May 5, 1997
Baltimore, MD

 http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/1997/05/
Modified Tuesday, 06-May-1997 15:28:14 EDT
AGENT NEWS

Positions available

 New agent-related positions were posted by The Open Group Research Institute , Information Extraction & Transport, Intelligent Investments and IntelliNet, Philips Research Palo Alto , and BT labs .

Bindings

 Danny Lange has left his position as a Visiting Scientist at IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory to take a permanent position at General Magic. Lange is widely known for his invention of the Java Aglet, a lightweight mobile agent for the Java programming environment. He was the chief architect of IBM's Aglets Workbench and the technical leader of the "Aglets Team" at IBM's Tokyo Research Lab.
AGENT TECHNOLOGY

Odyssey is Telescript in Java

 General Magic has reimplemented much of their Telescript language for mobile agents in Java and released a freely downloadable version as Odyssey, -- "an agent system implemented as a set of Java class libraries that provide support for developing distributed, mobile applications." Odyssey runs on any platform that supports JDK 1.1 and used its Remote Method Invocation (RMI), reflection mechanisms and the Java 1.1 AWT and I/O routines.

KQML software

 The original source of the KQML KAPI system at hitchhiker.space.lockheed.com has been AWL for a while now. Charles Petrie (petrie@cdr.stanford.edu) reports that version 2.6 of KAPI can be ftp'ed from CDR.STANFORD.EDU in the pub/JATLite directory as kapi.2.6.d.tar.Z. An update patch is also available as kapi-update.tar.gz . See the KQML software page for pointers to other KQML tools.
AGENTS STANDARDS

Revised FIPA specifications

45 people attended the fifth meeting of FIPA (the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) in Reston, Virginia in mid-April and produced revised version of the seven parts of the technical specification: Comments are sought from both members and non-members and should be emailed to leonardo.chiariglione@cselt.it in word or html format by 16 June 1997. The next two meeting will be held in Cheju, Korea on 23-27 June and in Munich on 6-10 October, 1997.

5th FIPA meeting

 The Fifth FIPA meeting will be held on 14-18 April 1997 in Reston, VA, USA at the Sheraton Reston Hotel. Information on the meeting agenda, the structure, and a description of tasks for the Reston meeting are available. See http://drogo.cselt.stet.it/fipa/reston/vamtgntc.htm for more information.

OMG Mobile Agent Facility

 In response to the OMG's Common Facility Task Force RFP3, a group of six companies (Crystaliz, GMD FOKUS, General Magic, IBM and The Open Group) are developing a Mobile Agent Facility (MAF) specification which focuses on interoperability between different agent systems. The MAF creates a uniform means for an agent to travel from one system to another, for a system operator to manage agents of different systems, and for clients to locate agents. The goal of the Mobile Agent Facility is to accelerate the use of mobile agents by maximizing interoperability between mobile agent systems while minimizing the impact of the standardized elements on any particular system. The fifth draft of the MAF specification was released on April 21 and is available in PDF (293K), PostScript (2MB), and FrameMaker (455K).
AGENT GROUPS

UC's Agent-based manufacturing lab

 The University of Cincinnati has an Agent-Based Manufacturing Laboratory headed by Professor Albert D. Baker. The group is participating in a number of ongoing projects which use an agent-oriented approach for manufacturing planning, scheduling, simulation and design. See A.D. Baker, H.V.D. Parunak, and K. Erol, "Manufacturing over the Internet and into Your Living Room: Perspectives from the AARIA Project" , Working Paper, Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science, University of Cincinnati, January, 1997 for a recent overview.
AGENT EVENTS

BISFAI'97

BISFAI'97 -- The Fifth Bar-Ilan Symposium on Foundations of Artificial Intelligence Focusing on Intelligent Agents will be held June 16-18, 1997 at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. The scientific program includes six invited speakers and 21 contributed papers.

Digital Libraries

 Digital libraries provide an active area for the application of many agent technologies. D-Lib Magazine is "a single site with monthly stories, commentary, and briefings and a collection of resources for digital library research." and is coordinated by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives for the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative. It's objectives are to "stimulate the development of a common infrastructure for digital libraries and to coordinate research in those aspects that require consensus; To provide information exchange about all research and advanced development in digital libraries, particularly federally funded research within the High Performance Computing and Communications program; and To encourage and assist the transfer of these research efforts into the creation of the national digital library system." The next few months will see a number of conferences and workshops on digital libraries and related technology. They include:

CIKM'97

 ACM CIKM'97, the Sixth ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management will be held November 10-14, 1997 at the Monte Carlo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The primary focus of the conference is on next generation information systems including their theoretical foundations, infrastructure and enabling technologies. Papers should be submitted by May 1, 1997.

FOMAS'97

FOMAS'97, the Second UK Workshop on Foundations of Multi-Agent Systems, will be held at the University of Warwick, 15-16 December 1997. Those interested in participating should submit by September 1st either an extended abstract describing relevant work to be presented at the workshop or a one-page description of research interests and current work.

Logical Approaches To Agent Modeling And Design

A symposium on Logical Approaches To Agent Modeling And Design will be held as part of ESSLLI'97, the Ninth European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information in Aix-en-Provence, France, August 18-22, 1997. Extended abstract are due by June 2, 1997.
AGENTS IN PRINT

JavaWorld articles on mobile agents

JavaWorld had a two part article on mobile agents and aglets in their April and May issues:
  • Under the Hood: The architecture of aglets. "Find out about the inner workings of aglets, IBM Japan's Java-based autonomous software agent technology. Mobile agents have been around for many years, but they haven't yet entered the mainstream. This article takes a look at aglets, a mobile-agent technology built on top of Java. (3,400 words)
  • Solve real problems with aglets, a type of mobile agent. Part two of this series explains the significance of mobile agents, such as aglets -- IBM Japan's Java-based, autonomous software agent technology. Mobile agents have been around for many years, but they haven't yet entered the mainstream. Last month's "Under The Hood" described the inner workings of aglets, a mobile-agent technology built on top of Java. This article answers the question: Why would developers choose mobile agents over other software technologies, such as client/server, applets, and servlets, for solving real-world problems? (2,900 words)

Software Agents book

Software Agents, Edited by Jeffrey Bradshaw, Published by the AAAI Press/The MIT Press, 500 pp., $40.00 paper, ISBN 0-262-52234-9. "The book contains the most comprehensive and accessible collection of papers to date addressing these issues, authored by the leading researchers and developers of agent-based systems. Chapters by researchers from major universities (MIT, Stanford, University of Maryland, USC, University of Toronto), computing companies (Apple, Microsoft, and General Magic), and industrial research centers (AT&T Bell Labs, Boeing, EURISCO, Interval) not only summarize the state-of-the-art, but point the way in which standards and products incorporating agent technology are likely to evolve over the next few years. The wide variety of issues and approaches addressed make it an ideal resource for classroom use, as well as a reference for computing professionals. Because the book describes basic concepts and implementations without resorting to mathematical or overly technical terms, it will also be suitable for many non-computing professionals who are interested in a survey of this rapidly growing field."

Creating Personalities for Synthetic Actors Personality Agents

 R.Trappl, P.Petta, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Vienna, Austria (Eds.), Creating Personalities for Synthetic Actors, Towards Autonomous Personality Agents. Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1997 . VII, 251 pp., Softcover ISBN 3-540-62735-9. "Progress in computer animation has gained such a speed that, before long, computer-generated human faces and figures on screen will be indistinguishable from those of real humans. The potential both for scripted films and real-time interaction with users is enormous. However, in order to cope with this potential, these faces and figures must be guided by autonomous personality agents. This carefully arranged volume presents the state of the art in research and development in making synthetic actors more autonomous. The papers describe the different approaches and solutions developed by computer animation specialists, computer scientists, experts in AI, psychologists and philosophers, from leading laboratories world-wide. Finally, a bibliography comprising more than 200 entries enable further study."

On team formation

Cohen, P. R., Levesque, H. R., & Smith, I. On team formation. To appear in Hintikka, J. and Tuomela, R. (Eds.) Contemporary Action Theory. Synthese.
AGENT PRODUCTS

Tamagotchi hits US market

Tamagotchi ("cute little egg") has been a very popular Japanese "believable-agent" toy created by Bandai Co. It has finally been released in the US market where it is retailing in the $15 to $20 range. It's packaging instructs:
"Tamagotchi is a tiny pet from cyberspace who needs your love to survive and grow. If you take care of your Tamagotchi pet, it will slowly grow bigger and healthier, and more beautiful every day. But if you neglect your little cyber creature, your Tamagotchi may grow up to be mean or ugly. How old will your Tamagotchi be when it returns to its home planet? What kind of virtual caretaker will you be?"
The New York Times has been running a series of articles on the toy and what it is like to raise one.
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