IST-2000: Agentcities.RTD - Testbed for a Worldwide Agent Network: Research and Development

Project Web-site no longer available (now taken over by estate agents). Here is the final public report.

Description

The Agentcities project constituted the first project of its kind for the purpose of setting up a world wide network of always running FIPA platforms, to be used as a testbed for standard validation as well as for standard-based agent services deployment. Each Agentcities platform supported services modelled for a single real-world city or place. Services deployed in the testbed centred on information and transaction services for real-world objects such as bars, restaurants, hotels, travel infrastructure, theatres etc. Agent-based applications were able to access these services
world wide using federated directory services (DFs) and FIPA communication services. The set of services deployed
in the network were then used as building blocks to construct new agent services.

Objectives

The Agentcities.RTD project has three key objectives:

1. Open Network Architecture: Achieve advances in technology / understanding of open systems
   supporting many heterogeneous, autonomous interacting entities to produce sustainable network
   architecture for on-line open systems.
2. Dynamic Value Creation: Achieve greater understanding of the type of mechanisms,
   methodologies and techniques required to achieve seamless, effective service composition in an
   open dynamic environment.
3. Service Level Interoperability: Perform validation and refinement of agent communication
   technologies (such as semantic models, ontology models, content expression techniques and
   interaction protocols) for use in open dynamic environment.

Participants

QMUL ( Stefan Poslad, Principal Investigator at QMUL). Other partners included Motorola, Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya, British Telecommunications Plc, Popnet Agentscape Ag, Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz Gmbh, Universita degli Studi di Parma, Communication Technologies, The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Aegis, Broadcom Eireann Research Ltd., Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Fujitsu, ADETTI

QMUL Contributions

QMUL was responsible for the security service as part of WP3 (Dynamic Value Creation). The Security Service provides authentication and encryption protocols for the Agentcities infrastructure.

Funding

European Union, EU FP5 Project (No. EU - IST 2000-28385), 2001-2003, for 24 months

Achievements

The key contributions made in achieving this are in developing a coherent set of technology frameworks covering the major concerns that affecting the development of such environments – and using them to both deploy a first cut network environment and a wide range of test applications:

• Framework for Autonomy/Network Infrastructure: describing the fundamental abstractions in the
  network (agents, services, interactions) and critical network infrastructure to support the online
  environment.
• Communication Framework: describing the technologies and models necessary for agents in the
  environment to communicate with one another.
• Coordination Framework: the coordination framework describes models and mechanisms necessary for
  agents to discover one another, identify each other’s capabilities, establish collaborative relationships
  and fulfil them.

Through the related take-up project Agentcities.NET, the network now involves well over 100 organisations
worldwide contributing to the construction of the testbed, developing applications and gathering experiences
from it. Since its launch in October 2001, the network has grown explosively to over 150 registered platforms –
between 50 and 100 of which are up and running at any one time.

Related QMUL Publications (see Stefan's publications)

• Tan J.J., Poslad S., Titkov L. (2006) A Semantic Approach to Harmonising Security Models for Open Services. Applied Artificial Intelligence J., Vol. 20, No.2-4, pp 353-379.
• Poslad, S., Tan, J.J., Huang, X. and Zuo, L. (2005) Middleware for semantic-based security and safety management of open services’, Int. J. Web and Grid Services, Vol. 1, No. 3/4, pp 305 – 327.
• Tan J.J., Poslad S. (2004) Dynamic Security Reconfiguration in Semantic Open Services Environment. Engineering. Applications. of Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 17, pp 783-797.
• Tan J J, Titkov L, Poslad S. (2003) Securing Agent-based e-Banking Services. In Trust, Reputation and Security: Theories and Practice, Eds., Falcone R., Barber S., Korba L., a et al., Lecture Notes Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2631, pp 148-162.

• Tan J.J., Poslad S.  (2004) A Profile based Security Model for the Semantic Web. Proc. European Conference on Web Services, ECOWS-04, Erfurt, Germany, September, pp 46-60.

• 2004 Conf.,  New York, July 2004, pp 102-109.

  30.            Tan J.J., Poslad S., Titkov L. (2004) An Ontological Approach to Harmonising Security Models for Open Services. Proc. 17th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research, Vienna, Austria, ISBN 3-85206-169-5, Vol 2, pp 594-599.

• Willmott S, Dale J,  Picault J, Somacher M, Poslad S, Tan J J, Constantinescu I and Bonnefoy D. (2002) The Agentcities Network Architecture. AAMAS 2002 workshop on Agentcities, Bologna, Italy.

  39.            Tan J J, Poslad S, Titkov L. (2002) Securing agent-based e-banking services. Proc. AAMAS 2002 Workshop on Deception, Fraud and Trust, Bologna, Italy, July 2002, pp 145-150.

  
  

Further work and ongoing work

• JADE Agent Platform.
• FIPA now a IEEE Agents platform