Agent technology has recently become one of the most vibrant and fastest growing areas in information technology. This is the first systematic introduction to software agents with the goal of exploiting them in future communication systems. The coherently written chapters provide complementary coverage of the relevant issues. Multi-agent systems and mobile agent approaches are presented and applied to important topics in future communication systems.

This volume contains the papers selected for presentation at the 14th International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, ISMIS 2003, held in Maebashi City, Japan, 28–31 October, 2003. The symposium was organized by the Maebashi Institute of Technology in co-operation with the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence. It was sponsored by the Maebashi Institute of Technology, Maebashi Convention Bureau, Maebashi City Government, Gunma Prefecture Government, US AFOSR/AOARD, the Web Intelligence Consortium (Japan), Gunma Information Service Industry Association, and Ryomo Systems Co., Ltd. ISMIS is a conference series that was started in 1986 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Since then it has been held in Charlotte (North Carolina), Knoxville (Tennessee), Turin (Italy), Trondheim (Norway), Warsaw (Poland), Zakopane (Poland), and Lyon (France). The program committee selected the following major areas for ISMIS 2003: active media human-computer interaction, autonomic and evolutionary computation, intelligent agent technology, intelligent information retrieval, intelligent information systems, knowledge representation and integration, knowledge discovery and data mining, logic for artificial intelligence, soft computing, and Web intelligence.

The 2004 IFIP International Conference on Intelligence in Communication S- tems(INTELLCOMM2004),heldinBangkok,Thailand,23–26November2004, was the successor and an expansion of SMARTNET, a series of annual conf- ences on intelligence in networks held during 1995–2003 under the auspices of IFIP TC6’s Working Group 6. 7. The Internet and Web provide more connection facilities, hence the man-man, man-machine and machine-machine interactions will increase and communication will have an important role in modern s- tems. Inordertoobtaine?ectiveande?cientcommunication,artistic,socialand technical issues have to be tackled in a holistic and integrated manner. However, communicationtechniques,conceptsandsolutionswhichhavebeendevelopedso far treat these issues separately, so that there arises a need for communication researchers and practitioners in di?erent ?elds (engineering, science and arts) to meet, share their experience and explore all possibilities of developing in- grated and advanced solutions which incorporate ideas from such disciplines as communication arts, art design, linguistics, Web technologies, computer system architecture and protocols, computer science and arti?cial intelligence. INTELLCOMM 2004 was jointly sponsored by IFIP WG 6. 7: Smart N- works and WG 6. 4: Internet Applications Engineering and aimed to provide an international forum which brings academia, researchers, practitioners and s- vice providers together. The discussion areas covered the latest research topics andadvancedtechnologicalsolutionsintheareaofintelligenceincommunication systems, ranging from architectures for adaptable networks/services and Sem- ticWeb/Webservicestechnologiestointelligentserviceapplicationinterfaceand intelligent human interaction. INTELLCOMM 2004 received 112 paper submissions from 28 countries. From these, 24 were accepted, and are included in this proceedings. There were also 3 papers accepted for poster presentation, published separately.

The challenges in implementing intelligent and autonomous software systems remain the development of self-adapting systems, self-healing applications, corporate global creation, and collaborated robotic teams. With software agent technology widely recognized as a key approach in implementing such global infrastructure, the importance of the role of

"This book addresses the complex issues associated with software engineering environment capabilities for designing real-time embedded software systems"--Provided by publisher.

Agent Technology is a fast growing area of research in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. Agents are autonomousproblem-solving entities residing in an environment able to solveproblems, roam network infrastructures, adapt to changes in theirenvironment an interact with other agents. Offering a useful snapshot of the current status of the field, thistext focuses sharply on the upcoming convergence of intelligentsoftware and communications systems. Contributions from leading authorities in the field covering awide range of issues, Demonstrates the increased capabilites of agents that are notcurrently achievable using traditional standards-based network signalling. This valuable reference resource is essential reading forresearchers or practitioners interested in applying agenttechnology or in business to develop next generation distributedapplications, as well as scientists and engineers in R & Ddepartments and lecturers and researchers in telecommunications andcomputer science.