High communication efforts and poor problem solving results due to restricted overview are two central issues in collaborative problem solving. This work addresses these issues by introducing the processes of agent melting and agent splitting that enable individual problem solving agents to continually and autonomously reconfigure and adapt themselves to the particular problem to be solved. The author provides a sound theoretical foundation of collaborative problem solving itself and introduces various new design concepts and techniques to improve its quality and efficiency, such as the multi-phase agreement finding protocol for external problem solving, the composable belief-desire-intention agent architecture, and the distribution-aware constraint specification architecture for internal problem solving. The practical relevance and applicability of the concepts and techniques provided are demonstrated by using medical appointment scheduling as a case study.

"This book provide a comprehensive view of current developments in agent organizations as a paradigm for both the modeling of human organizations, and for designing effective artificial organizations"--Provided by publisher.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Agents, Norms and Institutions for Regulated Multiagent Systems, ANIREM 2005, and the International Workshop on Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems, OOOP 2005, held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2005. This is the first volume in a new series on issues in Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms (COIN) in multi-agent systems. Topics include modeling, analyzing and programming organizations and more.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second German Conference on Multiagent Systems Technologies, MATES 2004, held in Erfurt, Germany, in September 2004. The 22 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on learning and social agents, analysis and security, negotiation and control, agents and software engineering, simulation and agents, and policies and testing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2011, held in Toulouse, France, August 29-31, 2011. The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on industrial agents, simulation and modelling, planning and scheduling, smart technical systems, and MAS for unmanned aerial vehicles.

The only book to present the synergy between modeling and simulation, systems engineering, and agent technologies expands the notion of agent-based simulation to also deal with agent simulation and agent-supported simulation. Accessible to both practitioners and managers, it systematically addresses designing and building agent systems from a systems engineering perspective.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation, MABS 2005, held in Utrecht, The Netherlands in July 2005 as an associated event of AAMAS 2005, the main international conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. The 12 revised full papers presented together with 1 invited talk were carefully reviewed. The papers are organized in topical sections on coalition emergence, theories and models, applications, and environments.