Bücher der Reihe Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations

An Application Science For Multi-Agent Systems addresses the complexity of choosing which multi-agent control technologies are appropriate for a given problem domain or a given application.

Socially situated planning provides one mechanism for improving the social awareness ofagents. Obviously this work isin the preliminary stages and many of the limitation and the relationship to other work could not be addressed in such a short chapter. The chief limitation, of course, is the strong commitment to de?ning social reasoning solely atthe meta-level, which restricts the subtlety of social behavior. Nonetheless, our experience in some real-world military simulation applications suggest that the approach, even in its preliminary state, is adequate to model some social interactions, and certainly extends the sta- of-the art found in traditional training simulation systems. Acknowledgments This research was funded by the Army Research Institute under contract TAPC-ARI-BR References [1] J. Gratch. Emile: Marshalling passions in training and education. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pages 325-332, New York, 2000. ACM Press. [2] J. Gratch and R. Hill. Continous planning and collaboration for command and control in joint synthetic battlespaces. In Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Computer Generated Forces and Behavioral Representation, Orlando, FL, 1999. [3] B. Grosz and S. Kraus. Collaborative plans for complex group action. Arti?cial Intelli gence, 86(2):269-357, 1996. [4] A. Ortony, G. L. Clore, and A. Collins. The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge University Press, 1988. [5] R.W.PewandA.S.Mavor,editors. Modeling Human and Organizational Behavior. National Academy Press, Washington D.C., 1998.

Conflicts between agents acting in a multi-agent environment arise for different reasons, involve different concepts, and are dealt with in different ways, depending on the kind of agents and on the domain where they are considered. Agents may have conflicting beliefs, conflicting goals, or may have to share limited resources. Consequently, conflicts may be expressed as mere differences, or as contradictions, or even as social conflicts. They may be avoided, solved, kept, or even created deliberately. Conflicting Agents studies conflicts in the context of multi-agent systems, i.e. artificial societies modeled on the basis of autonomous, interacting agents. This book addresses questions about types of conflicts, conflict definitions and the use of conflicts as trigger functions for activities in multi-agent systems. The book is also dedicated to questions of conflict management, resolution and avoidance, i.e. the question of how agents cope with conflicts and conflicting situations.

Game Theory And Decision Theory In Agent-Based Systems is a collection of papers from international leading researchers, that offers a broad view of the many ways game theory and decision theory can be applied in agent-based systems, from standard applications of the core elements of the theory to more cutting edge developments. The range of topics discussed in this book provide the reader with the first comprehensive volume that reflects both the depth and breadth of work in applying techniques from game theory and decision theory to design agent-based systems. Chapters include: Selecting Partners; Evolution of Agents with Moral Sentiments in an IPD Exercise; Dynamic Desires; Emotions and Personality; Decision-Theoretic Approach to Game Theory; Shopbot Economics; Finding the Best Way to Join in; Shopbots and Pricebots in Electronic Service Markets; Polynomial Time Mechanisms; Multi-Agent Q-learning and Regression Trees; Satisficing Equilibria; Investigating Commitment Flexibility in Multi-agent Contracts; Pricing in Agent Economies using Multi-agent Q-learning; Using Hypergames to Increase Planned Payoff and Reduce Risk; Bilateral Negotiation with Incomplete and Uncertain Information; Robust Combinatorial Auction Protocol against False-name Bids.

Autonomy is a characterizing notion of agents, and intuitively it is rather unambiguous. The quality of autonomy is recognized when it is perceived or experienced, yet it is difficult to limit autonomy in a definition. The desire to build agents that exhibit a satisfactory quality of autonomy includes agents that have a long life, are highly independent, can harmonize their goals and actions with humans and other agents, and are generally socially adept. Agent Autonomy is a collection of papers from leading international researchers that approximate human intuition, dispel false attributions, and point the way to scholarly thinking about autonomy. A wide array of issues about sharing control and initiative between humans and machines, as well as issues about peer level agent interaction, are addressed.

Reputation In Artificial Societies discusses the role of reputation in the achievement of social order. The book proposes that reputation is an agent property that results from transmission of beliefs about how the agents are evaluated with regard to a socially desirable conduct. This desirable conduct represents one or another of the solutions to the problem of social order and may consist of cooperation or altruism, reciprocity, or norm obedience. Reputation In Artificial Societies distinguishes between image (direct evaluation of others) and reputation (propagating meta­belief, indirectly acquired) and investigates their effects with regard to both natural and electronic societies. The interplay between image and reputation, the processes leading to them and the set of decisions that agents make on their basis are demonstrated with supporting data from agent­based simulations.

Conceptual Modelling of Multi-Agent Systems proposes the methodology and engineering environment CoMoMAS for the development of multi-agent systems. CoMoMAS is among the most elaborated and most often cited multi-agent development approaches available in the field. Its originality is to address the issue of the development of multi-agent systems (MAS) from a knowledge engineering perspective, which means that agents are seen as interacting entities having different kinds of knowledge, which is to be identified during development. Knowledge has played an important role for MAS development in the past, but CoMoMAS makes a step further in proposing a complete set of conceptual models and a solid methodology to guide the overall development process of a MAS-from design to validation. Conceptual Modelling of Multi-Agent Systems is an excellent reference for both researchers and practitioners in the broad area of distributed systems development. This book is of particular value from the point of view of computer science, including knowledge engineering, artificial intelligence, agent and multi-agent technology, and software engineering.

Extending Web Services Technologies addresses the rapidly growing impact of Multi-Agent Systems on web services tools and techniques. Topics include semantic web services and associated standards, architectures integrating agents and services, transactions, authorization, and service composition.

Distributed Sensor Networks is the first book of its kind to examine solutions to this problem using ideas taken from the field of multiagent systems. The book focuses on both practical systems and their theoretical analysis, and is divided into three parts: the first part describes the common sensor network challenge problem;

Research into Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) investigates design methods and technologies for the support of collaboration, communication and coordination of distributed group work, both within and among organizations.

This book addresses the use of data mining for smarter, more efficient agents, as well as the challenge of generating intelligence from data while transferring it to a separate, possibly autonomous, software entity.

Part One describes the basic concepts and characteristics of an AOC system and enumerates the critical design and engineering issues faced in AOC system development.

Intended for those interested in the developments in MAS programming. This book focuses on the development of programming languages and tools, which not only support MAS programming, but also implement key concepts of MAS in a unified framework. It describes approaches that rely on computational logic or process algebra.

With acceptance of agent-based computing, research related to the identification and definition of suitable models, and techniques to support the development of complex Multiagent Systems (MAS) has emerged. This book is separated into six parts, providing the reader with introductory material, concepts and techniques.

Distributed Sensor Networks is the first book of its kind to examine solutions to this problem using ideas taken from the field of multiagent systems. The book focuses on both practical systems and their theoretical analysis, and is divided into three parts: the first part describes the common sensor network challenge problem;

Research into Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) investigates design methods and technologies for the support of collaboration, communication and coordination of distributed group work, both within and among organizations.

Conceptual Modelling of Multi-Agent Systems proposes the methodology and engineering environment CoMoMAS for the development of multi-agent systems.