Object Services and Consulting, Inc.

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Executive Summary

• the first follows and summarizes our main accomplishments
• the second is in the form of a final review presentation and provides a .ppt description of our objectives and accomplishments.
• the third is our public web page (http://www.objs.com/agility/index.html), maintained throughout the project
• the fourth is our Government-only web page (password protected site, available upon request to qualified Government personnel) containing monthly, quarterly, and annual progress and financial reports and URLs of all technical presentations and reports.

Quad Chart Overview

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Problem

Objective

Approach

Specific objectives are to develop:

• a light-weight agent system that uses email for message transport (eGents),
• a constrained natural language interface system that can wrap agents and other Internet resources and operate over the web (AgentGram),
• a yellow pages service that uses Internet search engines to locate XML ads for agents and other Internet resources (WebTrader).

Accomplishments

Architecture

In 1999, our paper Characterizing the Agent Grid was submitted to and accepted for Jeff Bradshaw's book Handbook of Agent Systems.  Sections of the paper appear in the architectural sections of the CoABS Grid Vision document (available on the GITI CoABS website, password protected).

Prototypes

• eGents are agents that communicate via email.  We focused the bulk of our effort on eGents because of the widespread potential impact to DoD and industry. The potential impact of eGents is, anyone with email can create an agent service that anyone else can use. Imagine eGents attached to sensors, actuators, people, equipment, weapons, and locations as pervasive observers and actors.  In the first years, we developed the basic eGent prototype which included the idea of encoding agent communication language in XML and demonstrated email used as an agent transport.  We submitted both ideas to FIPA and they adopted both.  More recently, we extended eGents to operate wirelessly on Palms and to support time-constrained publish-and-subscribe messaging consistent with the Joint Battlespace Infosphere (JBI) architecture.  eGents should run on any Java platform; it was tested on NT/2000 machines; it connects to garden variety SMTP/POP3 email servers. A ported eGents runs on KVM (J2ME CLDC 1.0 FCS) on the Palm Vx.
• AgentGram wraps Internet resources including agents with menu-based natural language interfaces. It can operate over the web so the interface is remote from parser and resource. We designed a way to annotate web pages with grammars, a step towards the semantic web. We demonstrated AgentGram in the CoAX TIE where it was used for wildlife location queries at the last minute before a planned UN firestorm, forcing replanning. Potential impact: Humans can task and query agents using complex but understandable commands in constrained natural language that the system is guaranteed to understand. This technology can mix pervasively into all applications, both on the desktop and the Web. The user interface client was implemented as a Java applet and also in Javascript, and tested with IE and Netscape browsers. The backend parser server is in C.
• WebTrader is a scalable robust trader component architected for the global grid. WebTrader locates advertisements, represented in XML stored on web pages, that have been indexed by industrial strength search engines. Advertisement types include agents, components, data sources, search engines, MBNLI grammars, other traders, channels, and other types of resources. Potential impact: In the spirit of the semantic web, anyone on the Web can advertise a resource (e.g., agent, service, data source) that anyone else can discover.  WebTrader's user interface is a Java applet that runs in IE and Netscape; its server uses Apache web server and Thunderstone's Webinator 2.5 search engine, and can interface to other search engines.

Technology Transition

Papers and Workshops

Agents for the Masses (.doc), Thompson, Bannon, Pazandak, and Vasudevan, invited paper, Agent 99 Workshop on Agent-Based High Performance Computing: Problem Solving Applications And Practical Deployment, Seattle, May 1 1999.

• OMG Grid Workshop, July 2001
• Agent based Cluster and Grid Computing, Berlin, May 21-24 2002
• Infrastructure for Scalable MultiAgent Systems, workshop at Autonomous Agents June 3-4 2000 Barcelona

Software and the Grid

TIEs

• In the non-combatant evacuation order domain (NEO TIE), AgentGram was used to request the location of evacuees.  WebTrader was used to locate various agent services. This was demoed at several CoABS meetings and as part of the NEO TIE demonstration now running at AFRL.  Developed later, eGents was used to monitor and observe health and location status of non-combatant evacuees in a NEO-like scenario.
• In the disaster recovery domain (MIATA TIE), eGents sent field reports (e.g., bridge out, typhoid outbreak). This was demoed at CoABS Workshop in Miami using a wireless Palm.
• In the coalition domain (CoAX TIE), eGents sent biosurveillance reports (e.g., location of elephants threatened by a planned UN firestorm in Safari Park Binni Wildlife vignette). AgentGram was used to query for the location of elephants near a UN firestorm.  This was demoed at the CoABS Workshops in Miami and Nashua.  See CoAX TIE avi (.exe includes TechSmith TSCC Codec and viewer - 4.2MB).
• In the small unit operations domain (Y-JBI TIE), commanders drill down via a map to subscribe to and monitor troop and platoon status during an attack and fuselets notice patterns (e.g., chemical attack, soldier wounded). This was demoed at CoABS Workshop in Nashua.  See JBI TIE avi (.exe includes TechSmith TSCC Codec and viewer - 2.9MB - 2:14 min).

Patents

• Network Query and Matching System and Method - U.S. Patent App. No. 09/407,555
• Guided Natural Language Interface System and Method - U.S. Patent App. No. 09/634,108

Related DARPA Programs and Other Contracts

Work begun on eGents under CoABS has led to two additional contracts:

• the DARPA UltraLog MsgLog contract (in progress) - the idea is to provide the ALP-Cougaar agent based system with multiple communication transports (email and NNTP in addition to RMI) and then use policy management to select among them to insure survivable, robust message delivery in chaotic environments. David Wells described our Msg*Log project, including its origins in the CoABS Agility project, in Msg*Log: Email-based Agent Messaging to Improve Robustness in a Distributed Logistics Planner, a paper for the Software Technology Conference (STC 2001), Salt Lake City, Apr 29-May 4, 2001.
• an SBIR II with ScenPro as prime (to begin FY02) - the idea is to extend eGents in several ways to support small unit operations

Standards

• FIPA
• We submitted eGents:  Agents over Computational E-mail to FIPA CFP-99.  The document described two candidate standards:  a method of encoding FIPA ACL in XML and an API for transporting FIPA ACL via email.  FIPA subsequently adopted standards in both areas.
• We submitted Strawman Agent Reference Architecture in response to FIPA CFP-99 at the request of the Sun Agent Research Team.
• OMG Agent SIG
• We organized and co-chair OMG Agent Working Group, maintain its web page including agendas and minutes of most meetings, and have used this forum to showcase DARPA work on agents, grid, ontology, and mobility to mutual benefit.
• OMG Document:  Mission Statement, Craig Thompson, March 23, 1999
• OMG Document:  OMG-FIPA Liaison, Craig Thompson, March 24, 1999 - passed by vote in OMG, passed by vote at FIPA Nice
• OMG Document:  Agent Technology RFI, Craig Thompson, March 23, 1999 - issued to industry, responses are here.
• OMG Document:  Agent Grid Presentation, Craig Thompson, August 23, 1999
• OMG Document:  Agent Glossary, Craig Thompson, September 10, 1999
• Tech Note:  Requirements for an Agent Discovery Service, January 2000
• OMG Document:  Agent Technology Green Paper, August 2000 - added sections on agent architectures, grid and ilities, and on the Relationship of Agents and Objects, pp 41-45.
• OMG Document:  White Paper and Roadmap for Agent Technology Standards (rev .04), March 2000

Commercialization

Future Directions

Some of the more important future directions are:

• Extend eGents for automated deployment to new platforms, download eGent apps to the field as situations change, and improve eGents security - currently eGents requires manual installation limiting fast fanout of new eGent applications.
• Extend the CoABS grid to support survivable multi-transport messaging - leverages our ongoing Cougaar Ultralog survivable, policy-driven messaging work, which got its start with eGents! This is a step towards demonstrating how to control system-wide properties (QoS ilities) in agent/grid architectures.
• Extend Agility components to support FY02 CoAX and JBI TIEs as required. Update to latest grid release. Package eGents for public release. Rendezvous selected components with DAML.

Conclusion