FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

 

FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol Specification

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 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

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Contents

1     FIPA Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol3

1.1      Exceptions to Interaction Protocol Flow. 3

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/