FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

FIPA Propose Communicative Act Specification

Document title	FIPA Propose Communicative Act Specification
Document number	DC00051A	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.

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Contents

1 Scope. 1

2 Propose. 2

3 References. 3

1 Scope

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

2 Propose

Summary	The action of submitting a proposal to perform a certain action, given certain preconditions.
Content	A tuple containing an action description, representing the action that the sender is proposing to perform and a proposition representing the preconditions on the performance of the action.
Description	Propose is a general-purpose action to make a proposal or respond to an existing proposal during a negotiation process by proposing to perform a given action subject to certain conditions being true. The actual protocol under which the negotiation process is being conducted is known either by prior agreement, or is explicitly stated in the :protocol parameter of the message. The proposer (the sender of the propose) informs the receiver that the proposer will adopt the intention to perform the action once the given precondition is met and the receiver notifies the proposer of the receiver's intention that the proposer performs the action. A typical use of the condition attached to the proposal is to specify the price of a bid in an auctioning or negotiation protocol.
Formal Model	<i, propose(j, <i, act>, f)>º <i, inform(j, I_j Done(<i, act>, f) Þ 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_j Done(<i, act>, f) Þ I_i Done(<i, act>, f) Agent i informs j that, once j informs i that j has adopted the intention for i to perform action act, and the preconditions for i performing act have been established, i will adopt the intention to perform act.
Example	Agent j informs i that it will sell 50 boxes of plums for $200. (propose :sender j :receiver i :content ((action j (sell plum 50)) (cost 200)) :ontology fruit-market :in-reply-to proposal2 :language FIPA-SL …)

3 References

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