Bücher der Reihe Springer Series on Agent Technology

¿Anything happens must have its own reason ¿. Although I cannot really recall exactly when I heard of this statement for the first time, it is always in my mind and in fact it has been one of the motivations for me to carry out research and study. When I asked myself again about the purpose of writing this book at the time of writing this preface, several ¿add on¿ rea sons that had never occurred to me at the start of writing this book in the spring of 2003 surprisingly came up. Back then, when I was preparing the progress report for the iJADE (2. 0) project, a ¿fuzzy¿ idea of whether it was feasible to write a book on intelli gent agents came to my mind. This book not only would discuss and deal with the theory but also the ¿spin off¿ applications from the iJADE pro ject, including: the iJADE WeatherMan, the iJADE Stock Advisor, the iJADE Surveillant and the latest works on iJADE Negotiator. The fact that I had to launch the iJADE development kit officially over the Web in the summer of 2003 (http://www. ijadk. org) and to arrange courses and semi nars to teach and train our undergraduate students to make use of this tool kit further supported the idea and the future use of this book. Hence, the ¿archetype¿ of this book emerged.

More and more, software systems involve autonomous and distributed software components that have to execute and interact in open and dynamic environments, such as in pervasive, autonomous, and mobile applications.

Mark d'Inverno and Michael Luck present a formal approach to dealing with agents and agent systems in this second edition of Understanding Agent Systems.

Presents a methodology developed by DaimlerChrysler. Illustrates the methodology through detailed case studies.

Distributed Constraint Satisfaction gives an overview of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs), adapts related search algorithms and consistency algorithms for applications to multi-agent systems, and consolidates recent research devoted to cooperation in such systems.

Provides a course on Intelligent Agent or AI with focus on contemporary and latest AI technologies and development. This title includes companion technical reference for agent developers/researchers who would like to adopt the iJADK toolkit to develop their own agent-based applications and projects.