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Ontologies for Interaction Protocols

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Ontologies for Agents: Theory and Experiences

Part of the book series: Whitestein Series in Software Agent Technologies ((WSSAT))

Abstract

In this paper we propose reducing the degree of human interpretation currently necessary to understand an interaction protocol by describing at an abstract level the required agent actions that must be ‘plugged into’ the protocol for it to be executed. In particular, this can be done by designing and publishing ontologies describing the input and output data that are processed during the protocol’s execution together with the actions and decisions that the agents must perform. An agent (or agent developer) that has previously defined mappings between the internal agent code and the actions and decisions in an ontology would then be able to interpret any interaction protocol that is defined with reference to that ontology. The discussion is based on the use of Coloured Petri Nets to represent interaction protocols and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for ontology modelling. An alternative approach using Agent UML (AUML) is also outlined.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Stephen Cranefield, Martin Purvis & Mariusz Nowostawski

  2. Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute, AUT Technology Park, 581-585 Great South Road Penrose, Auckland, New Zealand

    Peter Hwang

Authors
  1. Stephen Cranefield
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  2. Martin Purvis
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  3. Mariusz Nowostawski
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  4. Peter Hwang
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Agent Applications, Research and Technology Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Chadwick Building, Liverpool, L69 7ZF, Great Britain

    Valentina Tamma

  2. Department of Information Science, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Stephen Cranefield

  3. 329 Information Technology and Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD, 21250, USA

    Timothy W. Finin

  4. Dept. Llenguatges i Sistemes Informatics, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Modul C5, 211b Campus Nord, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Steven Willmott

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© 2005 Birkhäuser Verlag

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Cranefield, S., Purvis, M., Nowostawski, M., Hwang, P. (2005). Ontologies for Interaction Protocols. In: Tamma, V., Cranefield, S., Finin, T.W., Willmott, S. (eds) Ontologies for Agents: Theory and Experiences. Whitestein Series in Software Agent Technologies. Birkhäuser Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7643-7361-X_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7643-7361-X_1

  • Publisher Name: Birkhäuser Basel

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-7643-7237-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7643-7361-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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