The April Agent Platform (AAP) is a FIPA-compliant multi-agent platform that provides services to facilitate the development and deployment of agents over the Internet. It is written in the April programming language and uses the InterAgent Communications Model. The AAP features include support for FIPA specifications, parsers, XML, ontologies, and platform services. It has a modular organization and supports various communication protocols. The AAP is being used in several research projects and can integrate different technologies and standards in a flexible way.

1. The April Agent Platform
Features and Summary
Dr Luigi Ceccaroni
Dr Jonathan Dale
Network Agent Research Group
Fujitsu Laboratories of America
John Knottenbelt
Department of Computing
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
February, 2002

2. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
Introduction
• What is the AAP?
• April and the InterAgent Communications Model
• Features
• Communication Model
• Platform Organization
• AAP in Use
• Downloading

3. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
What is the AAP?
• A FIPA-compliant agent platform
• Provides services to facilitate the development and
deployment of agents on the Internet
• Primary purpose is a platform for research and
experimentation in agent technology and deployment
• Intended to be used by anybody interested in
agents, not only researchers
• Written in the April programming language and using
the ICM communications infrastructure

4. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
April and the ICM
• April is designed for multi-agent systems:
– Distributed symbolic programming
– Extensible language (macro layer)
– Higher-order programming (can treat code as data and pass
it from one process to another over the Web)
– Pattern based language (patterns are an extension and a
simplification of Prolog unification)
– Process oriented language (loosely connected processes
which interact via message passing only)
• InterAgent Communications Model (ICM) is a
distributed message passing system:
– Message encoding
– Delivery and routing

5. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
Features of the AAP
FIPA Experimental Specifications (FIPA 2000)
Parsers
FIPA ACL Parser
FIPA SL Parser (SL0/1/2)
XML
XML Namespaces
RDF(S)
Platform Services
Transports
HTTP
ICM
Platform Services
AMS (white pages)
DF (yellow pages)
MTS (transport service)
Ontologies
Frame descriptors
General
Services
Ping Agent (AC Network)
Platform Query Agent (for
AMS and DF)
Sample Agents / Services
Weather Service
Weather Query Agent
Coming soon
DAML+OIL
DAML-S
ISO KIF

6. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
AAP Platform Organisation
FIPA ACL
Agent
DF
Registration
Database
DF Server
AMS
Registration
Database
AMS Server
Server Libraries
Client Libraries
AMS Agent
Non-FIPA
ACL Agent
DF Agent
Other Protocol
ICM

7. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
Communication Model in the AAP
InterAgent Communications Model
DF
Server
AMS
Server
AMS
Agent
DF
Agent
Non-FIPA
ACL Agent
SMTP
Module
HTTP
Module
XML
Protocol
Module
Other
Module
HTTP
Protocol
SMTP
Protocol
XML
Protocol
Other
Protocol
Other
Protocol
Other
Module

8. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
The AAP in Action
• Being used in the Agentcities.RTD network:
– To build various domain services such as:
 Weather
 Cinema
 Hotel
 Restaurant
 Taxi
– The Evening Organizer application for San Francisco
• Being used in by Imperial College London:
– The implementation for one of the London cities
– Basis for a personal profiling system for Personal Agents (ratings
and reviews services)
• Being used by Fujitsu:
– Basis for a pervasive computing infrastructure (location and
context-aware services)

9. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
Conclusions
• AAP built on a principle of modularity which gives
flexibility and extensibility
• Not built on one technology philosophy; can
integrate different standardization efforts and
technology support
• Services are abstracted through agent wrapping
which provides easier integration with legacy
systems
• April is an advanced programming language with is
expressly designed for building distributed systems

10. © 2002 Fujitsu Laboratories of America
Download Details
• Distribution contains:
– Core platform components and agents
– Documentation
– Sample agents and services
• Open source license (GNU Public License)
– Collaborative open source project
• Available on SourceForge.net:
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/networkagent