The Open Floor Protocol (OFP) is an open, vendor-neutral standard developed under the Open Voice Interoperability Initiative (Linux Foundation AI & Data) to enable heterogeneous conversational agents to collaborate seamlessly, much like how web browsers communicate via standardized protocols. OFP defines a universal JSON message format—Conversation Envelopes—that allows any voice or conversational agent, regardless of its underlying technology, to interoperate in multi-party conversations involving both human and autonomous agents.
In this talk, I will introduce the core components of OFP: Conversation Envelopes (the message format), Dialog Events (standardized linguistic event representations), and Assistant Manifests (agent capability descriptions). I will illustrate advanced use cases such as delegation, mediation, orchestration, and discovery among agents. The presentation includes a live demonstration of Beaconforge—an open-source Python framework that simplifies creating OFP-compliant interoperable assistants—and practical examples of multi-agent collaboration on complex tasks.
What You Will Learn
- How OFP addresses siloed voice assistant ecosystems by enabling open interoperability.
- The architecture of Conversation Envelopes and management of conversational floor control in multi-agent systems.
- Practical use of Beaconforge to develop interoperable voice agents in Python.
References to Related Research
This work builds on and integrates concepts from recent research on multi-agent interoperability within conversational AI, including:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.05828
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19438
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.13946
