FIPA Jade Proxy

This component has been initially developed to server as proxy to connect the two frameworks Rock and framework JADE.

The software was initiated at at the Robotics Innovation Center of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Bremen.

Installation

1. Run 'mvn install' in this directory. a. If the dependency to tilab cannot be resolved check the version and update the pom.xml accordingly

   • http://jade.tilab.com/maven/com/tilab/jade/jade/ will list a folder of the correct version

2. Create a new Java Maven project.

   • New Project -> Maven -> Java application b) Console::
   • Run 'mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=[your project's group id] -DartifactId=[your project's artifact id]'
   • groupId should be your highlevel 'package' description under which you place the project
   • artifactId will be your project name

3. Add this dependency to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>multiagent</groupId>
    <artifactId>fipa_services</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1</version>
</dependency>

4. To be able to create an executable, standalone jar file, add the following to your pom.xml:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <descriptorRefs>
                    <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                </descriptorRefs>
                <archive>
                    <manifest>
                        <mainClass>jade.Boot</mainClass>
                    </manifest>
                </archive>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

If you have your own main class (that calls Jade's main class), change that accordingly.

5. Running your application: a) Netbeans:
   • Add a new Run configuration with Main Class: jade.Boot Arguments: -gui -agents tcpMtpAgent:multiagent.fipa_services.TcpMtpAgent (you can leave '-gui' out, if you don't need the jade GUI)
   • Run the new configuration b) Console:
   • Run 'mvn assembly:assembly' in your project's directory (where your pom.xml is).
   • Run: bash startProxy.sh or 'java -jar ./target/-jar-with-dependencies.jar -gui -agents tcpMtpAgent:multiagent.fipa_services.TcpMtpAgent'

Alter the command to include your agents as necessary. Alternatively, create your own main class, that calls the Jade main class with these arguments.

Testing

Ruby test for usage with multiagent/orogen/fipa_services can be found in this project in:

    src/main/ruby

Development

The extensively documented class multiagent.fipa_services.example.EchoAgent should give a good start. For main concepts of Jade development, check http://jade.tilab.com/

Technical details

Jade can forward FIPA envelopes to foreign platforms with 'Message Transports'. The standard transports defined in the FIPA standard which Jade implements are HTTP and IIOS. Rock used to support only UDT, but TCP has been added as well. The class multiagent.fipa_services.mtp.TcpMtp implements the tcp Message Transport in Jade. It's task is to send outgoing messages whereas TcpServer (same package) receives incoming messages. The best encoding combination which seems to be the least error-prone, is XML encoding for the envelopes and String encoding for the ACL-Messages. The multiagent.fipa_services.TcpMtpAgent starts and registers the Mtp and starts other central behaviours.

To be able to find the tcp addresses of other agents, Rock uses DNS-SD, also known as zeroconf/bonjour/avahi. Using the Java library JMDNS, this behaviour is also implemented in multiagent.fipa_services.JMDNSManager. All Jade agent are registered with it and spawning non-Jade agents (in the same service directory) are propagated using the AMS agent.

See http://fipa.org/ and http://jade.tilab.com/ for more information.

Details

JMDNS cannot handle services containing a dot ('.') in their service name. It can neither publish nor resolve such services. As the global name of Jade agents contains the IP address, e.g. '[email protected]:1099/JADE', this is a problem. To be able to differentiate between Jade agents with the same name in different systems, the local name does not suffice. Therefore, the Jade agents are published replacing all dots with '?'.

However, there is not need to adapt the address of the agent address since conversion is done transparently for users.

Troubleshooting

mvn assembly::assembly fails

Check that the groupId is correct: http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-naming-conventions.html For example: org.rock-robotics is an invalid groupId name

Use a different java version

Change the source/target specification to the desired java version in the following block in the pom.xml

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
          <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>3.1</version>
          <configuration>
            <source>1.6</source>
            <target>1.6</target>
          </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Bug Report

To search for bugs or report them, pleas use GitHubs issue tracker at:

• https://github.com/rock-multiagent/multiagent-fipa_jade_proxy/issues

License

FIPA Jade Proxy is distributed under the LGPL license v2 or higher (http://www.gnu.de/documents/gpl-2.0.en.html)

Maintainer / Authors / Contributors

• current maintainer: [email protected]

Copyright 2014-2017, DFKI GmbH / Robotics Innovation Center