A Semantic Web-based Architecture for Collaborative Multi-Agent Functional Modeling in Design

This paper presents a novel architecture for collaborative multi-agent functional modeling in design on the semantic Web. The proposed architecture is composed of two visiting levels, i.e., local level and global level. The local level is an ontology-based functional modeling framework, which uses Web ontology language (OWL) to build a domain-specific local functional design ontology repository. Using this local ontology repository, the requests coming from the functional design agent can be parsed and performed effectively. The global level is a distributed multi-agent collaborative virtual environment, in which, OWL is used as a content language within the standard FIPA agent communication language (FIPA ACL) messages for describing ontologies, enabling diverse functional design ontologies between different agents to be communicated freely. The proposed architecture facilitates the exchange between diverse knowledge representation schemes in different functional modeling environments, and supports computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) between multiple functional design agents