This book highlights new trends and challenges in research on agents and the new digital and knowledge economy. It includes papers on business process management, agent-based modeling and simulation, and anthropic-oriented computing that were originally presented at the 15th International KES Conference on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2021), being held as a Virtual Conference in June 14–16, 2021. The respective papers cover topics such as software agents, multi-agent systems, agent modeling, mobile and cloud computing, big data analysis, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, social systems, computer embedded systems, and nature-inspired manufacturing, all of which contribute to the modern digital economy.

The field of agent and multi-agent systems is concerned with the development and evaluation of sophisticated, AI-based, problem solving and control architectures for both single and multi-agent systems. This book presents the proceedings of the 7th KES Conference on Agent and Multi-agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2013), held in Hue City, Vietnam, in May 2013. The KES-AMSTA 2013 conference provides an internationally respected forum for scientific research in the technologies and applications of agent and multi-agent systems. In all, 44 papers were selected for oral presentation and publication in this volume. Special attention is paid to the feature topics of intelligent technologies and applications in the area of e-health, social networking, self-organizing systems, economics and trust management. Other topics covered include: agent oriented software engineering; beliefs engineering; desires and intentions representation; agent cooperation, coordination, negotiation, organization and communication; distributed problem-solving; specification of agent communication languages; formalization of ontologies; and conversational agents. The book highlights new trends and challenges in agent and multi-agent research, and will be of interest to the research community working in the fields of artificial intelligence, collective computational intelligence, robotics, dialogue systems and, in particular, agent and multi-agent systems, technologies and applications.

The first book to provide an integrative presentation of the issues, challenges and success of designing, building and using agent applications. The chapters presented are written by internationally leading authorities in the field, with a general audience in mind. The result is a unique overview of agent technology applications, ranging from an introduction to the technical foundations to reports on dealing with specific agent systems in practice.

"This book is a compilation of advanced research results in architecture and modeling issues of multi-agent systems. It serves as a reference for research on system models, architectural design languages, methods and reasoning, module interface design, and design issues"--Provided by publisher.

The study of multi-agent systems (MAS) focuses on systems in which many intelligent agents interact with each other. These agents are considered to be autonomous entities such as software programs or robots. Their interactions can either be cooperative (for example as in an ant colony) or selfish (as in a free market economy). This book assumes only basic knowledge of algorithms and discrete maths, both of which are taught as standard in the first or second year of computer science degree programmes. A basic knowledge of artificial intelligence would useful to help understand some of the issues, but is not essential. The book’s main aims are: To introduce the student to the concept of agents and multi-agent systems, and the main applications for which they are appropriate To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of intelligent agents To introduce the main issues surrounding the design of a multi-agent society To introduce a number of typical applications for agent technology After reading the book the student should understand: The notion of an agent, how agents are distinct from other software paradigms (e.g. objects) and the characteristics of applications that lend themselves to agent-oriented software The key issues associated with constructing agents capable of intelligent autonomous action and the main approaches taken to developing such agents The key issues in designing societies of agents that can effectively cooperate in order to solve problems, including an understanding of the key types of multi-agent interactions possible in such systems The main application areas of agent-based systems

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.

Methodological Guidelines for Modeling and Developing MAS-Based Simulations The intersection of agents, modeling, simulation, and application domains has been the subject of active research for over two decades. Although agents and simulation have been used effectively in a variety of application domains, much of the supporting research remains scattered in the literature, too often leaving scientists to develop multi-agent system (MAS) models and simulations from scratch. Multi-Agent Systems: Simulation and Applications provides an overdue review of the wide ranging facets of MAS simulation, including methodological and application-oriented guidelines. This comprehensive resource reviews two decades of research in the intersection of MAS, simulation, and different application domains. It provides scientists and developers with disciplined engineering approaches to modeling and developing MAS-based simulations. After providing an overview of the field’s history and its basic principles, as well as cataloging the various simulation engines for MAS, the book devotes three sections to current and emerging approaches and applications. Simulation for MAS — explains simulation support for agent decision making, the use of simulation for the design of self-organizing systems, the role of software architecture in simulating MAS, and the use of simulation for studying learning and stigmergic interaction. MAS for Simulation — discusses an agent-based framework for symbiotic simulation, the use of country databases and expert systems for agent-based modeling of social systems, crowd-behavior modeling, agent-based modeling and simulation of adult stem cells, and agents for traffic simulation. Tools — presents a number of representative platforms and tools for MAS and simulation, including Jason, James II, SeSAm, and RoboCup Rescue. Complete with over 200 figures and formulas, this reference book provides the necessary overview of experiences with MAS simulation and the tools needed to exploit simulation in MAS for future research in a vast array of applications including home security, computational systems biology, and traffic management.