Enhancing Communication inside Multi-Agent Systems - An Approach based on Alignment via Upper Ontologies
Viviana Mascardi, Paolo Rosso, Valentina Cordì · 2007
Abstract. This paper deals with a theoretical issue related to multi-agent system development and deployment, namely the need of a mechanism for aligning ontologies owned by agents, in order to allow them to communicate in a profitable way. Our approach exploits upper ontologies, i.e., ontologies which describe very general concepts that are the same across all domains, as a “lingua franca ” among agents. This approach may overcome some problems that arise in various real scenarios, such as the impossibility for (or the lack of will of) an agent to disclose its own entire ontology to another agent, despite the need to communicate with it. In this paper we propose a comparison of seven existing upper ontologies, and an algorithm for aligning any two (or more) ontologies by exploiting an upper ontology as a bridge. 1