The FIPA-OS agent platform: Open Source for Open Standards

Stefan Poslad, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Phil Buckle, Nortel Networks, and Rob Hadingham, Nortel Networks

3/28/2008
(Original Publish Date: 3/1/2000)

FIPA-OS (FIPA Open Source) is an open agent platform originating from Nortel Networks. The platform supports communication between multiple agents using an agent communication language which conforms to the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) agent standards. A key focus of the platform is that it supports openness. This is naturally supported by the agent paradigm itself and by the design of the platform itself whose parts have loose coupling such that extensions and innovations to support agent communication can occur in several key areas. The openness is further emphasized in that the platform software is distributed and managed under an open-source licensing scheme. FIPA-OS is being deployed in several domains including virtual private network provisioning, distributed meeting scheduling and a virtual home environment. It has been demonstrated to interoperate with other heterogeneous FIPA compliant platforms and is in use in numerous institutions around the world.