This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the First Pacific Rim International Conference on Multiagents, PRIMA '98, held in Singapore in November 1998 during PRICAI '98. The 13 revised full papers presented have been carefully reviewed for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on multiagent systems design, coordination platforms, and network application platforms; they address various current issues ranging from theorectical foundations to advanced applications in several areas.

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 main concepts and techniques of multi-agent oriented programming, which supports the multi-agent systems paradigm at the programming level. A multi-agent system is an organized ensemble of autonomous, intelligent, goal-oriented entities called agents, communicating with each other and interacting within an environment. This book introduces the main concepts and techniques of multi-agent oriented programming, (MAOP) which supports the multi-agent systems paradigm at the programming level. MAOP provides a structured approach based on three integrated dimensions, which the book examines in detail: the agent dimension, used to design the individual (interacting) entities; the environment dimension, which allows the development of shared resources and connections to the real world; and the organization dimension, which structures the interactions among the autonomous agents and the shared environment.

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

Research on Agents and Multi-agent Systems has matured during the last decade and many effective applications of this technology are now deployed. PAAMS provides an international forum to presents and discuss the latest scientific developments and their effective applications, to assess the impact of the approach, and to facilitate technology transfer. PAAMS started as a local initiative, but since grown to become the international yearly platform to present, to discuss, and to disseminate the latest developments and the most important outcomes related to real-world applications. It provides a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to Exchange their experience in the development and deployment of Agents and Multi-agents systems. PAAMS intends to bring together researchers and developers from industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances on the application of multi-agent systems, to discuss and debate the major issues, and to showcase the latest systems using agent based technology. It will promote a forum for discussion on how agent based techniques, methods and tools help system designers to accomplish the mapping between available agent technology and application needs. Other stakeholders should be rewarded with a better understanding of the potential and challenges of the agent-oriented approach. This edition of PAAMS special sessions is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition was held in Salamanca, Spain, from 22nd to 24th May 2013.

Multiagent systems (MAS) are one of the most exciting and the fastest growing domains in the intelligent resource management and agent-oriented technology, which deals with modeling of autonomous decisions making entities. Recent developments have produced very encouraging results in the novel approach of handling multiplayer interactive systems. In particular, the multiagent system approach is adapted to model, control, manage or test the operations and management of several system applications including multi-vehicles, microgrids, multi-robots, where agents represent individual entities in the network. Each participant is modeled as an autonomous participant with independent strategies and responses to outcomes. They are able to operate autonomously and interact pro-actively with their environment. In recent works, the problem of information consensus is addressed, where a team of vehicles communicate with each other to agree on key pieces of information that enable them to work together in a coordinated fashion. The problem is challenging because communication channels have limited range and there are possibilities of fading and dropout. The book comprises chapters on synchronization and consensus in multiagent systems. It shows that the joint presentation of synchronization and consensus enables readers to learn about similarities and differences of both concepts. It reviews the cooperative control of multi-agent dynamical systems interconnected by a communication network topology. Using the terminology of cooperative control, each system is endowed with its own state variable and dynamics. A fundamental problem in multi-agent dynamical systems on networks is the design of distributed protocols that guarantee consensus or synchronization in the sense that the states of all the systems reach the same value. It is evident from the results that research in multiagent systems offer opportunities for further developments in theoretical, simulation and implementations. This book attempts to fill this gap and aims at presenting a comprehensive volume that documents theoretical aspects and practical applications.

Jason is an Open Source interpreter for an extended version of AgentSpeak – a logic-based agent-oriented programming language – written in JavaTM. It enables users to build complex multi-agent systems that are capable of operating in environments previously considered too unpredictable for computers to handle. Jason is easily customisable and is suitable for the implementation of reactive planning systems according to the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture. Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason provides a brief introduction to multi-agent systems and the BDI agent architecture on which AgentSpeak is based. The authors explain Jason’s AgentSpeak variant and provide a comprehensive, practical guide to using Jason to program multi-agent systems. Some of the examples include diagrams generated using an agent-oriented software engineering methodology particularly suited for implementation using BDI-based programming languages. The authors also give guidance on good programming style with AgentSpeak. Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason Describes and explains in detail the AgentSpeak extension interpreted by Jason and shows how to create multi-agent systems using the Jason platform. Reinforces learning with examples, problems, and illustrations. Includes two case studies which demonstrate the use of Jason in practice. Features an accompanying website that provides further learning resources including sample code, exercises, and slides This essential guide to AgentSpeak and Jason will be invaluable to senior undergraduate and postgraduate students studying multi-agent systems. The book will also be of interest to software engineers, designers, developers, and programmers interested in multi-agent systems.