Deploying FIPA-Compliant Systems on Handheld Devices

The market for portable devices is stimulating the migration of technologies originally developed for PCs to the realm of handhelds and wireless networks. Agent technology is following this downsizing trend, and many projects are under way to enable multiagent systems on handheld devices. The possibility of enabling agent technology in the telecommunications world, with its base of several hundred million users, calls for particular attention to an infrastructure that can readily interoperate with third-party software. At the moment, only the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, or FIPA, is producing industrial-strength specifications for developing such an infrastructure (see the sidebar, “FIPA: Open Standards for Agent Systems”). FIPA specifications address not only communication issues, but also general-purpose services like naming and a standard way to manage agent life cycles. The Lightweight Extensive Agent Platform project is the first attempt to implement a FIPA agent platform that runs seamlessly on both mobile and fixed devices over both wireless and wired networks. It is funded by the European Commission and involves research centers in France (Motorola), Germany (Siemens and Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club), Ireland (Broadcom), England (British Telecom), and Italy (Telecom Italia LAB and University of Parma). A Phase 1 version of LEAP has been released to the technical community and is available to registered users for testing purposes from the Web site at http:// leap.crm-paris. com/; a Phase 2 version is planned for release in open source by the end of this year.In this article, we begin by clarifying the agent technology underlying the LEAP project, followed by a description of the platform itself and plans for future work.