Introduction to Agentcities
& Related work in Aberdeen
Gunnar Aastrand Grimnes
MTP Seminar, 7/11/2002
What is an Agent?
 Useless
definition:
 Autonomous
Adaptive Mobile Software
Entity.
 More
definitions that there are
researchers in the area.
 More about this CS5820.
 “Black Box” of the Semantic Web.
My view of an Agent
“Web-Service”
Agents
Bank Agent
Other
Personal Agents
Personal Agent
Personal Info
Calendar
Preferences
What is Agentcities?
2
projects, .RTD and .NET
 EU Funded, 5th framework
 Started 1. July and 1. November, 2001
 Both finish July 2003, but
 Agentcities
Taskforce
 6th Framework
Agentcities.RTD
 14
Partners
 Develop models, methodology and
prototype solutions.
 Reference benchmarks for .NET
Agentcities.NET

Project open to anyone.
 Aberdeen is member no. 20!
 67 Agent Platforms.
 Provides services to support project
members:

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Information Days
Deployment Support
Working groups
Competition!
What do people do in Agentcities?
 Build Agents
:)
 Deploy services within the Agentcities
network.
 Services: Restaurant finder/review, theatre/cinema finder,
hotel finder, GIS, transport service, auction service, banking,
ontology service
 Ping Agent
on each node.
http://www.agentcities.net/globalapd.jsp
Technology support
 FIPA Specifications
 Jade,
FIPA OS, April Agent Platform,
Zeus, Java Agent Services, LEAP
 Ontologies, DAML+OIL, RDF, KIF/SL
Agent Platform
 Provides
base-services such as
message passing, directory lookups,
agent life-cycle support, debug facilities.
Work within Agentcities
 Agentcities
is 1 year old.
 Only lately has real services appeared.
 .RTD partners HAD to deliver services
by August ‘02.
 Most services are at the demo stage.
The Evening Scenario
DEMO
Agentcities in Aberdeen
 We
became a member in January 2002.
 WeatherAgent deployed same time.
 First
 We
real service on the network !
use:
 JADE
as our platform.
 RDF as content language.
 Jena as RDF toolkit.
 RDF Query by example
Step 1 : The Weather Agent

Interesting case-study:


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Uses existing ontology based on METAR.
Wraps the MetOffice webpage for data.
Ontology mapping issues.
Content / Query language.
Active for 9 months now, 1 query :)
MetOffice
MetOffice 2 DAML mapping
Example Forecast in DAML+OIL
Example Query
Eating our own dogfood:
The IDAgent
 Serves
information about people in the
department.
 Static contact-details at the moment.
 Future improvements:
 Research
interest
 Research projects
 Publications
 Learned user preferences ??
The AKT Bus @ Agentcities
 AKT:
 Huge
EPSRC project.
 Lots of activity in Aberdeen.
 Develop “whole life-cycle knowledge
management tools & techniques”.
 Deployment
support from .NET
 AKT Bus is the service invocation layer.
 AKT Bus  Agentcities.
Conoise
 Funded
by BT Exact, follows from
KRAFT.
 Supporting Virtual Organisations.
 Agentcities EO like scenario.
 Agents and BDI used to solve constraint
problems.
 Agent interface to P/FDM and Prolog
Agents.
Agentcities
competition
Compo Demo
Scoot
 Single
evening planner for Aberdeen:
 Pubs,
restaurants and cinemas.
 Separate
constraint solver and learner.
 Deadline 15th November.
Aberdeen vs. World
 Content
language: RDF vs. SL
 FIPA compatibility requires SL, so most
tools etc. are SL based.
<ns3:FreeHouse rdf:ID="bobbin">
<ns3:pubName>The Bobbin</ns3:pubName>
<ns3:pubWebSite>
http://www.screampubs.com/
</ns3:pubWebSite>
<ns3:servesBeer
rdf:resource="beertypes#guinness"/>
<ns3:servesBeer
rdf:resource="beertypes#tennentslager"/>
<ns3:servesFood>true</ns3:servesFood>
<ns3:telNumber>01224 497867</ns3:telNumber>
</ns3:FreeHouse>
SL Example
(vehicle
:colour red
:max-speed 100
:owner (Person
:name Luis
:nationality Portuguese))
Aberdeen Query By Example
 RDQL too
complicated to write by hand.
 Query by example is very intuitive.
 Internal conversion to RDQL.
 Could be “smarter” than RDQL.
<q:Query>
<q:template>
<akt:Academic>
<akt:family-name>
Brown
</akt:family-name>
</akt:Academic>
</q:template>
</q:Query>
SELECT ?x WHERE (?x, ?y, ?z),
( ?x, <rdf # type>, <akt # Academic> ),
( ?x, <akt # family-name>, "Brown" )
QbEx with Constraints
<q:Query>
<q:template>
<r:restaurant>
<r:type rdf:resource=“r#Tandoori" />
<r:open-time>
<cif:variable rdf:ID="x"><cif:varname>x</cif:varname></cif:variable>
</r:open-time>
</r:restaurant>
</q:template>
<q:constraints>
<cif:comparison>
<cif:comparison_operator>&gt;</cif:comparison_operator>
<cif:comparison_op1>
<cif:variable rdf:about="#x"/>
</cif:comparison_op1>
<cif:comparison_op2>
<cif:integerconst>
<cif:constant_value>1900</cif:constant_value>
</cif:integerconst>
…..
Constrained QbEx to RDQL
SELECT ?x WHERE (?x, ?y, ?z),
( ?x, <r # open-time>, ?v_x ),
( ?x, <rdf # type>, <r # restaurant> ),
( ?x, <r # type>, <r # Tandoori> ) AND ( ?v_x > 1900 )
Aberdeen, Agentcities & The Future

Several Honours Projects running now:

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Research work on:
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Organising a Conference.
Semantic Web Calendar.
Delivering E-Science services.
Learning privacy rules.
Dealing with false service descriptors.
We shall not rest until the whole world
uses RDF.


Better RDF support for Jade.
Improve QbEx
Questions?
 Slides
and relevant links available from
course webpage.