SRI’s Open Agent Architecture (OAA), a research framework for constructing agent-based systems, makes it possible for software services to be provided through the cooperative efforts of distributed collections of autonomous agents. Communication and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators, which are responsible for matching requests, from users and agents, with descriptions of the capabilities of other agents. Thus, it is not generally required that a requester (user or agent) know the identities, locations, or number of other agents involved in satisfying a request. Facilitators are not viewed as centralized controllers, however, but rather as coordinators, as they draw upon knowledge and advice from several different, potentially distributed, sources to guide their delegation choices. OAA is structured so as to minimize the effort involved in creating new agents and “wrapping” legacy applications, written in various languages and operating on various platforms; to encourage the reuse of existing agents; and to allow for dynamism and flexibility in the makeup of agent communities. Distinguishing features of OAA as compared with related work include extreme flexibility in using facilitator-based delegation of complex goals, triggers, and data management requests; agent-based provision of multimodal user interfaces; and built-in support for including the user as a privileged member of the agent community.
