Tutorials

All of the documents below are provided in PDF format.

Tutorials and Source Code

Tutorial documentation is available individually (see below), and the source code/binaries related to these tutorials can be found from the FIPA-OS SourceForge file area (simply extract over the top of you FIPA-OS installation, and the tutorial Agents will be available from the AgentLoader).

FIPA and FIPA-OS - describes a mindset for how (FIPA) MAS type agents operate, how to develop a simple (FIPA) agent service and how FIPA-OS can be used to develop such agent services.

Tutorial 1 - Generic Agent - This first step of this tutorial is the Generic Agent (GA). This document describes how to use and extend the Generic Agent for learning how agents are written for FIPA-OS and also for developing new agents using the GA as an agent template.

Tutorial 2 - Search Agent - This tutorial aims to show you the following techniques for agent development:

• Creating a Task to deal with interactions with other Agents
• Utilising the DF to locate other Agents

Tutorial 3 - Ping Agent - This continues from the Search Agent tutorial, describing how to produce reactive behaviour within an Agent, and decompose a problem into multiple Tasks that can interact together.

Tutorial 4 - JESS Agent - The JessAgent provides an interface to the Java Expert System Shell (JESS) so that an agent can use a knowledge base to reason. In this way it is hoped that the developers can write their own FIPA-OS Intelligent Agents. This document will explain how the JessAgent works, and to build agents that use the JESS engine. JESS is an expert system shell that uses a RETE algorithm for its reasoning engine.

Tutorial 5 - eMarkets - The eMarkets tutorial is an agent-based simulation of an electronic marketplace where agents represent buyers or sellers that wish to make purchases or sales.

Available Guides

FIPA-OS Developers' Guide (279K) - Provides a technical overview of the FIPA-OS architecture and its component parts. FIPA-OS Inter-platform Communication Configuration Guide (Updated) (640K) - Provides examples of various configurations of FIPA-OS which can be used in order to allow inter-platform messaging.