An Application Science For Multi Agent Systems

An Application Science For Multi-Agent Systems addresses the complexity of choosing which multi-agent control technologies are appropriate for a given problem domain or a given application. Without such knowledge, when faced with a new application domain, agent developers must rely on past experience and intuition to determine whether a multi-agent system is the right approach, and if so, how to structure the agents, how to decompose the problem, and how to coordinate the activities of the agents, and so forth. This unique collection of contributions, written by leading international researchers in the agent community, provides valuable insight into the issues of deciding which technique to apply and when it is appropriate to use them. The contributions also discuss potential trade-offs or caveats involved with each decision. An Application Science For Multi-Agent Systems is an excellent reference for anyone involved in developing multi-agent systems.

Research on multi-agent systems is enlarging our future technical capabilities as humans and as an intelligent society. During recent years many effective applications have been implemented and are part of our daily life. These applications have agent-based models and methods as an important ingredient. Markets, finance world, robotics, medical technology, social negotiation, video games, big-data science, etc. are some of the branches where the knowledge gained through multi-agent simulations is necessary and where new software engineering tools are continuously created and tested in order to reach an effective technology transfer to impact our lives. This book brings together researchers working in several fields that cover the techniques, the challenges and the applications of multi-agent systems in a wide variety of aspects related to learning algorithms for different devices such as vehicles, robots and drones, computational optimization to reach a more efficient energy distribution in power grids and the use of social networks and decision strategies applied to the smart learning and education environments in emergent countries. We hope that this book can be useful and become a guide or reference to an audience interested in the developments and applications of multi-agent systems.

This book presents a coherent, well-balanced survey of recent advances in software engineering approaches to the design and analysis of realistic large-scale multi-agent systems (MAS). The chapters included are devoted to various techniques and methods used to cope with the complexity of real-world MAS. Reflecting the importance of agent properties in today's software systems, the power of agent-based software engineering is illustrated using examples that are representative of successful applications.

The book presents latest multi-agent technologies in human-centered computing (HCC) to provide a new research direction to enrich the human socio computations. Nowadays, the research in the field of multi-agent system (MAS) has gained a wide spread recognition due to its interdisciplinary nature and a vast versatile application domain including engineering, social science, economics, mathematics, operational research, etc. It has been proved that agents in MAS are the most appropriate technological paradigm for providing the most optimal solution for different kinds of complex real world problems that may be industrial or it might be specifically related to social problems. Keeping these features in mind, we planned to tune the research of latest multi-agent technologies and tried to compose its effect on HCC corridor. The primary audience of this book are research students of computer science, information technology and it will be also very helpful for software professionals to get developmental ideas to boost their computing activities.

Multi-Agent Systems are a promising technology to develop the next generation open distributed complex software systems. The main focus of the research community has been on the development of concepts (concerning both mental and social attitudes), architectures, techniques, and general approaches to the analysis and specification of multi-agent systems. This contribution has been fragmented, without any clear way of “putting it all together”, rendering it inaccessible to students and young researchers, non-experts, and practitioners. Successful multi-agent systems development is guaranteed only if we can bridge the gap from analysis and design to effective implementation. Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Tools and Applications presents a number of mature and influential multi-agent programming languages, platforms, development tools and methodologies, and realistic applications, summarizing the state of the art in an accessible manner for professionals and computer science students at all levels.

The focus of the book is on completed implementations of agent-based software systems. Here, agent technology is considered broadly, starting from development of agent platforms, all the way through systems actually implemented. The covered topics also include lessons learned during implementation of agent platforms and the reflection on the process of development and application of agent-based systems. The book includes 10 chapters where interested reader can find discussion of important issues encountered during development of well-known agent platforms such as JADE and Jadex as well as some interesting experiences in developing a new platform that combines software agent and Web Services. Furthermore, the book shows readers several valuable examples of applications based on multi-agent systems including simulations, agents in autonomous negotiations and agents in public administration modelling. We believe that the book will prove useful to the researchers, professors and the practitioners in all disciplines including science and technology.

This book presents a coherent and well-balanced survey of recent advances in software engineering approaches to the development of realistic multi-agent systems (MAS). In it, the concept of agent-based software engineering is demonstrated through examples that are relevant to and representative of real-world applications. The 15 thoroughly reviewed and revised full papers are organized in topical sections on requirements engineering, software architecture and design, modeling, dependability, and MAS frameworks. Most of the papers were initially presented at the Second International Workshop on Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems, SELMAS 2003, held in Portland, Oregon, USA, in May 2003; three papers were added in order to complete the coverage of the relevant topics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Central and European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, CEEMAS 2003, held in Prague, Czech Republic in June 2003. The 58 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 109 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on formal methods, social knowledge and meta-reasoning, negotiation, and policies, ontologies and languages, planning, coalitions, evolution and emergent behaviour, platforms, protocols, security, real-time and synchronization, industrial applications, e-business and virtual enterprises, and Web and mobile agents.