A standardization effort for agent technologies: The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents and its activities

The purpose of this paper is to advertise the activities of The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA). FIPA is established to promote the development of standard specifications of generic agent technologies that maximize the interoperability within and across agent-based applications. First, the paper touches the need of standardization for intelligent agents and introduces the framework of FIPA. Secondly, current technical outcome of FIPA's standardization efforts, the FIPA 97 specifications, is discussed. Thirdly, relationship to other bodies and activities such as Agent Society, ARPA KSE and OMG is presented. Lastly, the paper outlines future plans and open issues which are currently (as of September, 1998) discussed to produce the next version of specifications: FIPA 97 version 2 and FIPA 98.