FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

 

FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification

 

Document title

FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification

Document number

XC00030E

Document source

FIPA TC C

Document status

Experimental

Date of this status

2001/01/29

Supersedes

None

Contact

fab@fipa.org

Change history

2001/01/29

Approved for Experimental

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2000 Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents - http://www.fipa.org/

Geneva, Switzerland

Notice

Use of the technologies described in this specification may infringe patents, copyrights or other intellectual property rights of FIPA Members and non-members. Nothing in this specification should be construed as granting permission to use any of the technologies described. Anyone planning to make use of technology covered by the intellectual property rights of others should first obtain permission from the holder(s) of the rights. FIPA strongly encourages anyone implementing  any part of this specification to determine first whether part(s) sought to be implemented are covered by the intellectual property of others, and, if so, to obtain appropriate licenses or other permission from the holder(s) of such intellectual property prior to implementation. This specification is subject to change without notice. Neither FIPA nor any of its Members accept any responsibility whatsoever for damages or liability, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of this specification.

Foreword

The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is an international organization that is dedicated to promoting the industry of intelligent agents by openly developing specifications supporting interoperability among agents and agent-based applications. This occurs through open collaboration among its member organizations, which are companies and universities that are active in the field of agents. FIPA makes the results of its activities available to all interested parties and intends to contribute its results to the appropriate formal standards bodies.

The members of FIPA are individually and collectively committed to open competition in the development of agent-based applications, services and equipment. Membership in FIPA is open to any corporation and individual firm, partnership, governmental body or international organization without restriction. In particular, members are not bound to implement or use specific agent-based standards, recommendations and FIPA specifications by virtue of their participation in FIPA.

The FIPA specifications are developed through direct involvement of the FIPA membership. The status of a specification can be either Preliminary, Experimental, Standard, Deprecated or Obsolete. More detail about the process of specification may be found in the FIPA Procedures for Technical Work. A complete overview of the FIPA specifications and their current status may be found in the FIPA List of Specifications. A list of terms and abbreviations used in the FIPA specifications may be found in the FIPA Glossary.

FIPA is a non-profit association registered in Geneva, Switzerland. As of January 2000, the 56 members of FIPA represented 17 countries worldwide. Further information about FIPA as an organization, membership information, FIPA specifications and upcoming meetings may be found at http://www.fipa.org/.

Contents

1     FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol 1

1.1      Exceptions to Interaction Protocol Flow. 1

2     References. 3

1         FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol

The FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol (IP) is an extension of the basic FIPA Contract Net IP (see [FIPA00029]), but it differs by allowing multi-round iterative bidding. As with the FIPA Contract Net IP, the manager issues the initial call for proposals with the cfp act (see [FIPA00037]). The contractors then answer with their bids as propose acts (see [FIPA00037]) and the manager may then accept one or more of the bids, rejecting the others, or may iterate the process by issuing a revised cfp. The intent is that the manager seeks to get better bids from the contractors by modifying the call and requesting new (equivalently, revised) bids. The process terminates when the manager refuses all proposals and does not issue a new cfp, accepts one or more of the bids or the contractors all refuse to bid.

 

The representation of this IP is given in Figure 1.

 

 

Figure 1: FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol

 

1.1        Exceptions to Interaction Protocol Flow

This IP is a pattern for a simple interaction type. Elaboration on this pattern will almost certainly be necessary in order to specify all cases that might occur in an actual agent interaction. Real world issues of cancelling actions, asynchrony, abnormal or unexpected IP termination, nested IPs, and the like, are explicitly not addressed here.

 

2         References

[FIPA00029]      FIPA Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000.
http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00029/

[FIPA00037]      FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00037/