This book deals with an important topic in distributed AI:the coordination of autonomous agents' activities. Itprovides a framework for modelling agents with planning andcommunicative competence.Important issues in the book are:- How to recognize and reconcile conflicting intentionsamong a collection of agents.- How to recognize and take advantage of favorableinteractions.- How to enable individual agents to represent and reasonabout the actions, plans, and knowledge of other agents inorder to coordinate with them.- When to call a set of plans coordinated and whatoperations are possible to transform uncoordinated plansinto coordinated ones.- How to enable agents to communicate and interact: whatcommunication languages or protocols to use, and what andwhen to communicate.The book is clearly written with many examples andbackground material.

This book deals with an important topic in distributed AI:the coordination of autonomous agents' activities. Itprovides a framework for modelling agents with planning andcommunicative competence.Important issues in the book are:- How to recognize and reconcile conflicting intentionsamong a collection of agents.- How to recognize and take advantage of favorableinteractions.- How to enable individual agents to represent and reasonabout the actions, plans, and knowledge of other agents inorder to coordinate with them.- When to call a set of plans coordinated and whatoperations are possible to transform uncoordinated plansinto coordinated ones.- How to enable agents to communicate and interact: whatcommunication languages or protocols to use, and what andwhen to communicate.The book is clearly written with many examples andbackground material.