This paper considers the semantics of the agent communication language KQML. By using this language for communication, agents will be able to request and provide services. Indeed, numerous projects have shown how the language can profitably support interoperation among distributed agents. However, before becoming a widely-accepted standard, it would be worthwhile to examine the language in detail, especially the semantical issues it raises. This paper identifies numerous difficulties with the language, and an attempt is made to point to their resolution. The paper illustrates the kind of semantics we believe to be necessary to characterize agent communication languages, identifies an important adequacy condition "compositionality" and shows how to compose a question from a request and an inform. Finally, the paper discusses possible impacts to be felt on various KQML decisions from the semantical issues raised here.

The growing interest in multimodal interface design is inspired in large part by the goals of supporting more transparent, flexible, efficient, and powerfully expressive means of humancomputer interaction than in the past. Multimodal interfaces are expected to support a wider range of diverse applications, to be usable by a broader spectrum of the average population, and to function more reliably under realistic and challenging usage conditions. In this paper, we summarize the emerging architectural approaches for interpreting speech and pen-based gestural input in a robust manner--- including early and late fusion approaches, and the new hybrid symbolic/statistical approach. We also describe a diverse collection of state-of-the-art multimodal systems that process users' spoken and gestural input. These applications range from map-based and virtual reality systems for engaging in simulations and training, to field medic systems for mobile use in noisy environments, to web-based transactions and standard text-editing applications that will reshape daily computing and have a significant commercial impact. To realize successful multimodal systems of the future, many key research challenges remain to be addressed. Among these challenges are the development of cognitive theories to guide multimodal system design, and the development of effective natural language processing, dialogue processing, and error handling techniques. In addition, new multimodal systems will be needed that can function more robustly and adaptively, and with support for collaborative multi-person use. Before this new class of systems can proliferate, toolkits also will be needed to promote software development for both simulated and functioning systems. Multimodal Speech and Gesture Interfaces 3 CONT...

this paper is inspired by philosophical work, it is squarely motivated by the concerns of building intelligent systems that are capable of collaborative behavior, either with a user, or with other such systems. Still, we hope that the paper sheds light on philosophical issues, and treats the subject of joint action at a sufficiently precise level to be illuminating of problems that any philosophical account needs to confront. An important consequence of focusing on joint actions, rather than solely on individual actions, is the opportunity to rethink related theories. In particular, we claim that speech act theory will need to be recast in light of joint action theory since many of the basic illocutionary acts (e.g., requests, promises) are intimately involved in eatablishing, monitoring, and discharging joint activities. However, despite this tight relationship, no existing speech act theory provides guidance on this connection. This paper takes a first step in the direction of linking speech act theory and joint action theory by showing how various speech acts can be used to form and disband teams. It is by now commonplace to observe that joint action is different from a collection of individual actions, even if they are coordinated. Agents can be acting in a coordinated fashion, as in ordinary automobile traffic, but not be acting together. Conversely, agents can be acting together, but not be coordinated except at the start and end of their joint action (e.g, see [36]) The key property distinguishing joint or collaborative action from mere coordinated action is the joint mental state of the participants. The best way to explore what this mental state must be is to imagine a joint action going astray. Our favorite example is driving in a convoy, versus ordinary traff...

This paper describes an implementation of some key aspects of a theory of dialogue processing whose main concerns are to provide models of GROUNDING and of the role of DISCOURSE OBLIGATIONS in an agent's deliberation processes. Our system uses the TrindiKit dialogue move engine toolkit, which assumes a model of dialogue in which a participant's knowledge is characterised in terms of INFORMATION STATES which are subject to various kinds of updating mechanisms.

This document contains specifications for structuring the FIPA Communicative Act Library (FIPA CAL) including: status of a FIPA-compliant communicative act, maintenance of the library and inclusion criteria. This document is primarily concerned with defining the structure of the FIPA CAL and the requirements for a proposed communicative act to be included in the library. The elements of the library are listed in this document. This document also contains the formal basis of FIPA ACL semantics in the annex for the semantic characterization of each FIPA communicative act. 2000 Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents FIPA Communicative Act Library 2 2 Overview This document focuses on the organization, structure and status of the FIPA Communicative Act Library, FIPA CALand discusses the main requirements that a communicative act must satisfy in order to be FIPA-compliant. The objectives of standardizing and defining a library of FIPA compliant communicative acts are: . To help ensure interoperability by providing a standard set of composite and macro communicative acts, derived from the FIPA primitive communicative acts, . To facilitate the reuse of composite and macro communicative acts, and, . To provide a well-defined process for maintaining a set of communicative acts and act labels for use in the FIPA ACL. In the following, we present the basic principles of the FIPA CAL. These princ iples help to guarantee that the CAL is stable, that there are public rules for the inclusion and maintenance of the CAL and that developers seeking communicative acts for their applications can use the CAL. 2.1 Status of a FIPA-Compliant Communicative Act The definition of a communicative act belonging to the FIPA CAL is normative. That is, if a given agent implements one of ...

We present an effective generic communicating rational agent, ARTIMIS, and its application to cooperative spoken dialogue. ARTIMIS ' kernel is the implementation of a formal theory of interaction. This theory involves a set of generic axioms which models, in a homogeneous logical framework, principles of rational behaviour, communication, and cooperation. The theory is interpreted by a specifically designed reasoning engine. When applied to the context of natural dialogue, ARTIMIS includes specialised components for speech and natural language processing. 1

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Conversation protocols are used to achieve certain goals or to bring about certain states in the world. Therefore, one may identify the landmarks or the states that must be brought about during the goal-directed execution of a protocol. Accordingly, the landmarks, characterized by propositions that are true in the state represented by that landmark, are the most important aspect of a protocol. Families of conversation protocols can be expressed formally as partially ordered landmarks after the landmarks necessary to achieve a goal have been identified. Concrete protocols represented as joint action expressions can, then, be derived from the partially ordered landmarks and executed directly by joint intention interpreters. This approach of applying Joint Intention theory to protocols also supports flexibility in the actions used to get to landmarks, shortcutting protocol execution, automatic exception handling, and correctness criterion for protocols and protocol compositions. 1.

There is currently a broad interest in dialogue acts and dialogue act taxonomies, and new uses, taxonomies, and standardization efforts continue to be proposed. This paper presents a discussion of issues that must be addressed in order to facilitate the shared understanding and use of taxonomies. The discussion is framed in terms of 20 questions, the answers to which will help make the meanings of taxonomy elements more clear to different communities of users.

We investigate how belief change in cooperative dialogues can be handled within a modal logic of action, belief, and intention. We first review the main approaches of the literature, and point out some of their shortcomings. We then propose a new framework for belief change. Our basic notion is that of a contextual topic: we suppose that we can associate a set of topics with every agent, speech act, and formula. This allows us to talk about an agent's competence, belief adoption, and belief preservation. Based on these principles we analyse the agents ' belief states after a speech act. We illustrate our theory by a running example. 1