Javier Vazquez-Salceda – författare

"It is not the consciousness of men that defines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness." Karl Marx In recent years, several researchers have argued that the design of multi-agent sys­ tems (MAS) in complex, open environments can benefit from social abstractions in order to cope with problems in coordination, cooperation and trust among agents, problems which are also present in human societies. The agent-mediated electronic institutions (e-institutions for short) is a new and promising field which focuses in the concepts of norms and institutions in order to pro­ vide normative frameworks to restrict or guide the behaviour of (software) agents. The main idea is that the interactions among a group of (software) agents are ruled by a set of explicit norms expressed in a computational language representation that agents can interpret. Such norms should not be considered as a negative constraining factor but as an aid that guides the agents'' choices and reduces the complexity ofthe environment making the behaviour of other agents more predictable.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Agents, Norms and Institutions for Regulated Multiagent Systems, ANIREM 2005, and the International Workshop on Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems, OOOP 2005, held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2005. This is the first volume in a new series on issues in Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms (COIN) in multi-agent systems. Topics include modeling, analyzing and programming organizations and more.

In recent years, social and organizational aspects of agency have become major research topics in MAS. Recent applications of MAS on Web services, grid c- puting and ubiquitous computing highlight the need for using these aspects in order to ensure social order within such environments. Openness, heterogeneity, and scalability of MAS, in turn, pose new demands on traditional MAS int- action models and bring forward the need to look into the environment where agents interact and at di?erent ways of constraining or regulating interactions. Consequently, the view of coordination and governance has been expanding to entertain not only an agent-centric perspective but societal and organizati- centric views as well. The overall problem of analyzing the social, legal, economic, and technolo- caldimensionsofagentorganizations,andthe co-evolutionofagentinteractions, provide theoretically demanding and interdisciplinary research questions at d- ferent levels of abstraction. The MAS research community has addressed these issues from di?erent perspectives that have gradually become more cohesive around the four notions in the title to the workshop: coordination, organization, institutions, and norms. The COIN workshops are thus designed to consolidate the subject by providing focus events that reach researchers from diverse c- munities working in related topics and facilitate more systematic discussion of themes that have been treated from various perspectives. This year, the COIN workshops were hosted during AAMAS 2006, (on June 9,in Hakodate,Japan)and ECAI2006(on August28,in Rivadel Garda,Italy). The papers contained in this volume are the revised versions of a selection of thosethatwerepresented in these workshops.

In recent years, social and organizational aspects of agency have become major research topics in MAS. Recent applications of MAS on Web services, grid c- puting and ubiquitous computing highlight the need for using these aspects in order to ensure social order within such environments. Openness, heterogeneity, and scalability of MAS, in turn, pose new demands on traditional MAS int- action models and bring forward the need to look into the environment where agents interact and at di?erent ways of constraining or regulating interactions. Consequently, the view of coordination and governance has been expanding to entertain not only an agent-centric perspective but societal and organizati- centric views as well. The overall problem of analyzing the social, legal, economic, and technolo- caldimensionsofagentorganizations,andthe co-evolutionofagentinteractions, provide theoretically demanding and interdisciplinary research questions at d- ferent levels of abstraction. The MAS research community has addressed these issues from di?erent perspectives that have gradually become more cohesive around the four notions in the title to the workshop: coordination, organization, institutions, and norms. The COIN workshops are thus designed to consolidate the subject by providing focus events that reach researchers from diverse c- munities working in related topics and facilitate more systematic discussion of themes that have been treated from various perspectives. This year, the COIN workshops were hosted during AAMAS 2006, (on June 9,in Hakodate,Japan)and ECAI2006(on August28,in Rivadel Garda,Italy). The papers contained in this volume are the revised versions of a selection of thosethatwerepresented in these workshops.

This book constitutes the thoroughly reviewed joint post-conference proceedings of two international workshops on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN@AAMAS 2011, held in Taipei, Taiwan in May 2011 and COIN@WI-IAT 2011, held in Lyon, France in August 2011.The 12 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for presentations. The papers are organized in topical sections on agent coordination, norm-aware agent reasoning, as well as norm creation and enforcement.

This book constitutes the thoroughly reviewed joint post-conference proceedings of two international workshops on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN@AAMAS 2011, held in Taipei, Taiwan in May 2011 and COIN@WI-IAT 2011, held in Lyon, France in August 2011.The 12 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for presentations. The papers are organized in topical sections on agent coordination, norm-aware agent reasoning, as well as norm creation and enforcement.