Towards a standard for an Agent Communication Language

We discuss the problems of providing semantics for an Agent Communication Language standard and we briefly introduce an approach we have used to describe the semantics of the Agent Communication Language KQML. We argue that our approach adequately addresses or circumvents the aforementioned problems. Introduction The building of software agents suggests a new way of viewing existing technologies as tools to build software applications that dynamically interact and communicate with their immediate environment (user, local resources and computer system) and/or the world, in an autonomous (or semi-autonomous), task-oriented fashion. In this paradigm, the agent communication language (ACL) emerges as an indispensable component. The ACL is the medium through which the attitudes regarding the content of an exchange between software agents are communicated; the communication language suggests whether the content of the communication is an assertion, a request, some form of query etc. The pri..