This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Environments for Multiagent Systems, E4MAS 2005, held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in July 2005, as an associated event of AAMAS 2005.
The 16 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from the lectures given at the workshop completed by a number of invited papers of prominent researchers active in the domain. The papers are organized in topical sections on models, architecture, and design, mediated coordination, as well as applications.
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence Edited by J. G. Carbonell and J. Siekmann
Subseries of Lecture Notes in Computer Science
3830
Danny Weyns H. Van Dyke Parunak Fabien Michel (Eds.)
Environments for Multi-Agent Systems II Second International Workshop, E4MAS 2005 Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 25, 2005 Selected Revised and Invited Papers
13
Series Editors Jaime G. Carbonell, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Jörg Siekmann, University of Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany Volume Editors Danny Weyns Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Department of Computer Science AgentWise, DistriNet, 3001 Leuven, Belgium E-mail:
[email protected] H. Van Dyke Parunak Altarum Institute 3520 Green Court, Suite 300, Ann Arbor, MI 48105-1579, USA E-mail:
[email protected] Fabien Michel Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches Informatiques Rue des Crayeres, BP 1035, 51687 Reims Cedex 2, France E-mail:
[email protected]
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006921545
CR Subject Classification (1998): I.2.11, I.2, C.2.4 LNCS Sublibrary: SL 7 – Artificial Intelligence ISSN ISBN-10 ISBN-13
0302-9743 3-540-32614-6 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York 978-3-540-32614-4 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York
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Preface
In the past two years the environment in multiagent systems has become increasingly important and is now becoming a focus of research in its own right. Yet, the environment in multiagent systems has been studied before. So the obvious question then is: Why does the environment attract the attention of a broader community of researchers right now? The answer to this question is manifold. First, current research on environments is built on the receptive ground of early work. Pioneers such as Demazeau, Parunak, Ferber, Odell, Omicini and Zambonelli have been stressing the importance of the environment in multiagent systems for almost a decade. Second, current research on environments is well organized