This article presents an approach for inter-agent communication and inter-platform agent migration based on IEEE FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) Agent Communication Language (ACL) messages. The promising features of IEEE FIPA standards that support open, flexible, and interoperable agent communication and migration are discussed in the paper. Messages for agent communication and migration, platform architecture that deliver and manage these messages, and the main procedure of processing a mobile agent message are also introduced. An application example, in which a mobile agent visits multiple hosts and travels via mobile agent messages, simulates a mobile agent for remote data processing. This example shows the feasibility, simplicity, and openness of the presented approach for mobile agent migration. Using FIPA ACL messages for agent migration in FIPA compliant agent systems simplifies agent platform, reduces development effort, and easily achieves inter-platform migration through well-designed communication mechanisms provided in the agent platform.
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