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Comments on the specification for
FIPA '97 AGENT COMMUNICATION LANGUAGE

Yannis Labrou and Tim Finin
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Baltimore Maryland USA
jklabrou@cs.umbc.edu -- finin@cs.umbc.edu

February 28, 1997

The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents ( FIPA) is an international non-profit association developing specifications of generic agent technologies to provide a high level of interoperability across applications. The target of FIPA-specified agent technologies are "Intelligent Physical Agents" -- devices intended for the mass market, capable of executing actions to accomplish goals imparted by or in collaboration with human beings or other IPAs, with a high degree of intelligence.

A first draft of the FIPA'97 specification covers three technology parts (Agent Management, Agent Communication and Agent/Software Interaction) and one application part (Personal Travel Assistance). Three more application parts (Personal Assistant, Audio-Visual Entertainment and Broadcasting, and Network Provisioning and Management) will be generated at the Fifth FIPA meeting to be held in Reston, Virginia on 14-18 April. 2/2/97

This note is a collection of comments, observations and questions regarding the FIPA proposal for a standard language for agent-to-agent communication [FIPA 97]. Our main points can be summarized as: