A. Omicini, A. Ricci, M. Viroli, M. Cioffi, G. Rimassa
Multi-agent Infrastructures for Objective and Subjective Coordination
Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence 18(9/10). Taylor & Francis, October/December 2004.

Abstract:
Coordination in MAS can be conceived as either an agent activity (the subjective viewpoint) or an activity over agents (the objective viewpoint). The two viewpoints have generated two diverging and often contrasting lines of research, as well as different and non-compatible technologies: however, their integration is mandatory for modelling and engineering complex MAS. In this paper, we explore the issue of integration at both the model and the technology levels.
First, by taking FIPA agents and coordination artifacts as reference notions for subjective and objective approaches, respectively, we sketch a framework where agent interactions with coordination artifacts are modelled as physical acts, deliberated and executed by agents analogously to communicative actions. Then, we show how the JADE infrastructure for FIPA-compliant agents, and the TuCSoN infrastructure providing agents with coordination artifacts can be integrated at the technology level, allowing JADE agents to access TuCSoN tuple centres through JADE services.

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M. Cioffi
Kernel-Service Ontology in JADE
JADE Board Representative @ Whitestein.

This document defines an ontology for kernel-services. The aim is to enable agents to obtain information about services without using direct API. ACL-Messages can be used for this aim therefore a consistent ontology is needed. This foundation is particularly important under the management point of view: a possible application can involve an extention of RMA agent for querying information/activate/deactivate services in a defined container.

The primarily aim of this project is to study the integration between the Tuple Centre ("a Tuple Space whose behaviour can be defined by means of reactions to communication events” [1]) and JADE ("a software framework that simplifies the implementation of multiagent systems through a middle-ware that complies with the FIPA specifications” [2]).

[1] Tucson Website

[2] JADE Website
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