FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

FIPA Agree Communicative Act Specification

Document title	FIPA Agree Communicative Act Specification
Document number	DC00040A	Document source	FIPA TC C
Document status	Deprecated	Date of this status	2000/10/16
Supersedes	None
Contact	fab@fipa.org
Change history
2000/10/16	Deprecated by FIPA00037

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.

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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 Scope. 1

2 Agree. 2

3 References. 3

1 Scope

This document specifies the Agree communicative act which is compliant to [FIPA00037] requirements.

2 Agree

Summary	The action of agreeing to perform some action, possibly in the future.
Content	A tuple, consisting of an action expression denoting the action to be done, and a proposition giving the conditions of the agreement.
Description	Agree is a general purpose agreement to a previously submitted request act (see [FIPA00056]) to perform some action. The agent sending the agreement informs the receiver that it does intend to perform the action, but not until the given precondition is true. The proposition given as part of the agree act indicates the qualifiers, if any, that the agent is attaching to the agreement. This might be used, for example, to inform the receiver when the agent will execute the action which it is agreeing to perform. Pragmatic note: the precondition on the action being agreed to can include the perlocutionary effect of some other CA, such as an inform act (see [FIPA00046]). When the recipient of the agreement (e.g. a contract manager) wants the agreed action to be performed, it should then bring about the precondition by performing the necessary CA. This mechanism can be used to ensure that the contractor defers performing the action until the manager is ready for the action to be done.
Formal Model	<i, agree(j, <i, act>, f))>º <i, inform(j, I_i Done(<i, act>, f))> FP: B_i a Ù ØB_i (Bif_j a Ú Uif_j a) RE: B_j a Where: a = I_i Done(<i, act>, f) Note that the formal difference between the semantics of agree and accept-proposal (see [FIPA00039]) rests on which agent is performing the action.
Example	Agent i (a job-shop scheduler) requests j (a robot) to deliver a box to a certain location. J answers that it agrees to the request but it has low priority. (request :sender i :receiver j :content (action j (deliver box017 (location 12 19))) :protocol FIPA-Request :reply-with order567) (agree :sender j :receiver i :content ((action j (deliver box017 (location 12 19)) (priority order567 low))) :in-reply-to order567 :protocol FIPA-Request)

3 References

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

[FIPA00039] FIPA Accept Proposal Communicative Act Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00039/

[FIPA00046] FIPA Inform Communicative Act Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00046/

[FIPA00056] FIPA Reject Communicative Act Specification. Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/specs/fipa00056/