Agent Based Systems and Applications

Abstract

Agents (adaptive or intelligent agents and multi-agent systems) constitute one of the most prominent and attractive technologies in Computer Science at the beginning of this new century. Agent and multi-agent system technologies, methods, and theories are currently contributing to many diverse domains. These include information retrieval, user interface design, robotics, electronic commerce, computer mediated collaboration, computer games, education and training, smart environments, ubiquitous computers, and social simulation.

An agent is a computer system that is situated in some environment, and that is capable of autonomous action in this environment in order to meet its design objectives. Multi-agent systems are systems composed of multiple interacting agents.

Some application domains where agent technologies will play a crucial role include:

    * Ambient Intelligence, the seamless delivery of ubiquitous computing, continuous communications and intelligent user interfaces to consumer and industrial devices;
    * Grid Computing, where multi-agent system approaches will enable efficient use of the resources of high-performance computing infrastructure in science, engineering, medical and commercial applications;
    * Electronic Business, where agent-based approaches are already supporting the automation and semi-automation of information-gathering activities and purchase transactions over the Internet;
    * Semantic Web, where agents are needed both to provide services, and to make best use of the resources available, often in cooperation with others;
    * Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, where intelligent agents may support the coherent exploration of data revolution occurring in biology;

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