A detailed account of real-time systems, including program structures for real-time, phases development analysis, and formal specification and verification methods of reactive systems. The book brings together the 3 key fields of current and future data-processing: distributed systems and applications, parallel scientific computing, and real-time and manufacturing systems. It covers the basic concepts and theories, methods, techniques and tools currently used in the specification and implementation of applications and contains many examples plus complete case studies.

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.

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.

Discover the latest developments and issues in multi-agent systems by exploring their applications in various domains such as electronic markets, e-tourism, ambience intelligence, and complex system analysis. The book is written by two researchers with hands-on experience in technology transfer. With their practical focus, they help you see how agent technology can be applied in many new services and environments.

An introduction to multiagent systems and contemporary distributed artificial intelligence, this text provides coverage of basic topics as well as closely-related ones. It emphasizes aspects of both theory and application and includes exercises of varying degrees of difficulty.