AgentGateway: A communication tool for multi-agent systems

Abstract

With the rapid growth of multi-agent systems (MAS), there is a pressing need to communicate between different MAS. Various MAS communication standards have been proposed. However, MAS is usually designed to meet special need, thus making it difficult to follow a standard. This paper presents a tool called AgentGateway trying to solve this problem using a simple, effective approach. The tool translates messages from one MAS to intermediate XML-based messages, which then are translated to messages for another MAS. AgentGateway is scalable, meaning that new MAS can easily join it. Furthermore, it provides transparent and reliable communication. A prototype is developed that shows communication between two MAS, namely, Java Agent Template Lite (JATLite) and OAA, can be done using this approach. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.