团队是动态不可预测性环境下协作问题求解的有效方式,联合意图是团队联合求解的关键.因此,主体在团队活动中如何采用言语动作形成、维护、解除联合意图,是一个值得研究的重要问题.旨在设计一种基于主体通信语言FIPA(foundation forintelligent physical Agent)ACL(Agent communication language)的多主体团队交互协议.首先,分析了现有FIPA ACL支持团队联合求解的充分性问题.在概念上明确区分了联合请求与委托请求,指出委托请求言语动作不能充分支持团队协作.并扩展定义了联合请求,讨论了相关定理.然后,基于联合请求动作,提出一种主体团队交互协议,并给出了协议的形式化语义,最后讨论了协议的实际应用.区别于现有的基本动作请求协议、合同网协议以及拍卖协议,团队交互协议描述了另一类主体交互模式,对主体交互模块的设计具有指导意义.

Teamwork is an effective way of cooperative problem solving in dynamic and unpredictable application contexts. The concept of joint intention is the key of teamwork. How various speech actions can be used by software Agents to form, maintain and dissolve joint intention is a significant problem needed to be investigated. This paper aims to design a teamwork protocol based on FIPA (foundation for intelligent physical Agent) ACL (Agent communication language) which is a promising Agent communication language. To this aim, the sufficiency of the FIPA ACL in supporting Agents to form the required joint intention in teamwork is analyzed first. Specifically, the notions of the joint-request and delegation-request are distinguished and the insufficiency of the delegation-request in supporting teamwork is pointed out. Thus a new joint-request action is defined to extend the FIPA ACL. Some properties of the joint-request are also discussed. Based on the defined action, a teamwork protocol with a formal semantic description is proposed and its application is demonstrated finally. The teamwork protocol describes a new interaction pattern, which differs from those of the existing elementary request protocol, contract-net protocol and auction protocols within the FIPA Interaction Protocol Specifications. The proposed protocol can facilitate the design of interaction modules in multi-Agent teamwork.

Supported by the National High-Tech Research and Develop Plan of China under Grant No.2001AA11312(国家高技术研究发展计划(863))