Issues in Agent Communication

A first attempt to develop a standardized agent communication language (ACL) resulted in KQML, probably the most widely used such language. However, a lot of technical work remains to be done. Even worse, so far, there seems to be little consensus on the basics of agent communication and there is no clear understanding of the semantics of individual speech acts or even of the basic concepts that should be used to define the semantics.
This book documents two workshops on communication in MAS held in 1999, one on Specifying and Implementing Conversation Policies (SICP) and the other in Agent Communication Languages and presents the current state of the art of research in the field. A detailed introductory overview by the volume editors highlights a number of issues that play an important role in agent communication.

ACL Semantics and Practice.- Issues in Agent Communication: An Introduction.- Semantic, Normative and Practical Aspects of Agent Communication.- A Social Semantics for Agent Communication Languages.- Some Legal Aspects of Inter-agent Communication: From the Sincerity Condition to ‘Ethical’ Agents.- Semantics of Communicating Agents Based on Deduction and Abduction.- Operational Semantics for Agent Communication Languages.- An Approach to Using XML and a Rule-Based Content Language with an Agent Communication Language.- Conversation Policy Description.- What Is a Conversation Policy?.- The Role of Conversation Policy in Carrying Out Agent Conversations.- On Conversation Policies and the Need for Exceptions.- Communication Protocols in Multi-agent Systems: A Development Method and Reference Architecture.- Conversation Speci cation.- Using Colored Petri Nets for Conversation Modeling.- A Schema-Based Approach to Specifying Conversation Policies.- Constructing Robust Conversation Policies in Dynamic Agent Communities.- Conversation Oriented Programming for Agent Interaction.- ACL as a Joint Project between Participants: A Preliminary Report.- Conversation Protocols: Modeling and Implementing Conversations in Agent-Based Systems.- Conversations and Tasks.- Dialogue in Team Formation.- Uncertain Knowledge Representation and Communicative Behavior in Coordinated Defense.- On Abstract Models and Conversation Policies.- Investigating Interactions between Agent Conversations and Agent Control Components.- An Executable Model of the Interaction between Verbal and Non-verbal Communication.