Michael Winikoff – författare

Build your own intelligent agent system… Intelligent agent technology is a tool of modern computer science that can be used to engineer complex computer programmes that behave rationally in dynamic and changing environments. Applications range from small programmes that intelligently search the Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, to autonomous space probes. This powerful technology is not widely used, however, as developing intelligent agent software requires high levels of training and skill. The authors of this book have developed and tested a methodology and tools for developing intelligent agent systems. With this methodology (Prometheus) developers can start agent-oriented designs and implementations easily from scratch saving valuable time and resources.Developing Intelligent Agent Systems not only answers the questions “what are agents?” and “why are they useful?” but also the crucial question: “how do I design and build intelligent agent systems?” The book covers everything a practitioner needs to know to begin to effectively use this technology - including an introduction to the notion of agents, a description of the concepts involved, and a software engineering methodology.Read on for: a practical step-by-step introduction to designing and building intelligent agent systems.a full life-cycle methodology for developing intelligent agent systems covering specification, analysis, design and implementation of agents.PDT: Prometheus Design Tool – software support for the Prometheus design process.the example of an electronic bookstore to illustrate the design process throughout the book.Electronic resources including the Prometheus Design Tool (PDT), can be found at: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/prometheusThis book is aimed at industrial software developers, software engineers and at advanced undergraduate students.  It assumes knowledge of basic software engineering but does not require knowledge of Artificial Intelligence or of mathematics. Familiarity with Java will help in reading the examples in chapter 10.

Build your own intelligent agent system…

Intelligent agent technology is a tool of modern computer science that can be used to engineer complex computer programmes that behave rationally in dynamic and changing environments. Applications range from small programmes that intelligently search the Web buying and selling goods via electronic commerce, to autonomous space probes. 

This powerful technology is not widely used, however, as developing intelligent agent software requires high levels of training and skill. The authors of this book have developed and tested a methodology and tools for developing intelligent agent systems. With this methodology (Prometheus) developers can start agent-oriented designs and implementations easily from scratch saving valuable time and resources.

Developing Intelligent Agent Systems not only answers the questions “what are agents?” and “why are they useful?” but also the crucial question: “how do I design and build intelligent agent systems?” The book covers everything a practitioner needs to know to begin to effectively use this technology - including an introduction to the notion of agents, a description of the concepts involved, and a software engineering methodology.

Read on for:

a practical step-by-step introduction to designing and building intelligent agent systems. a full life-cycle methodology for developing intelligent agent systems covering specification, analysis, design and implementation of agents. PDT: Prometheus Design Tool – software support for the Prometheus design process. the example of an electronic bookstore to illustrate the design process throughout the book.

Electronic resources including the Prometheus Design Tool (PDT), can be found at: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/agents/prometheus

This book is aimed at industrial software developers, software engineers and at advanced undergraduate students.  It assumes knowledge of basic software engineering but does not require knowledge of Artificial Intelligence or of mathematics. Familiarity with Java will help in reading the examples in chapter 10.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Explainable, Transparent Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, EXTRAAMAS 2020, which was due to be held in Auckland, New Zealand, in May 2020. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The 8 revised and extended papers were carefully selected from 20 submissions and are presented here with one demo paper. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: explainable agents; cross disciplinary XAI; explainable machine learning; demos.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Explainable, Transparent Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, EXTRAAMAS 2020, which was due to be held in Auckland, New Zealand, in May 2020. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The 8 revised and extended papers were carefully selected from 20 submissions and are presented here with one demo paper. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: explainable agents; cross disciplinary XAI; explainable machine learning; demos.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, EMAS 2020, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in May 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 10 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 16 submissions. The papers cover a broad range of topics in the domains of agent-oriented software engineering, programming multi-agent systems, declarative agent languages and technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, EMAS 2020, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in May 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually.

The 10 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 16 submissions. The papers cover a broad range of topics in the domains of agent-oriented software engineering, programming multi-agent systems, declarative agent languages and technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Explainable, Transparent AI and Multi-Agent Systems, EXTRAAMAS 2021, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The 19 long revised papers and 1 short contribution were carefully selected from 32 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: XAI & machine learning; XAI vision, understanding, deployment and evaluation; XAI applications; XAI logic and argumentation; decentralized and heterogeneous XAI.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Explainable, Transparent AI and Multi-Agent Systems, EXTRAAMAS 2021, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The 19 long revised papers and 1 short contribution were carefully selected from 32 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: XAI & machine learning; XAI vision, understanding, deployment and evaluation; XAI applications; XAI logic and argumentation; decentralized and heterogeneous XAI.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Explainable and Transparent AI and Multi-Agent Systems, EXTRAAMAS 2022, held virtually during May 9–10, 2022. The 14 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: explainable machine learning; explainable neuro-symbolic AI; explainable agents; XAI measures and metrics; and AI & law.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Explainable and Transparent AI and Multi-Agent Systems, EXTRAAMAS 2022, held virtually during May 9–10, 2022. The 14 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: explainable machine learning; explainable neuro-symbolic AI; explainable agents; XAI measures and metrics; and AI & law. 

Thisproceedingsvolumeofthe5thAOISWorkshopisanopportunityforlooking back at ?ve years of organizing AOIS workshops. What did we achieve with the AOIS workshop series? Where were we ?ve years ago, where are we now? Did ourthemeimpactontheinformationsystems?eldinthewaythatwehadhoped for? AOIS workshops have taken place in Seattle, Heidelberg, Stockholm, Austin, Montr´ eal, Interlaken, Toronto, Bologna, Melbourne, and Chicago, always in c- junction with a major conference on either multiagent systems in arti?cial - telligence (AI/MAS) or information systems (IS). We have tried to innovate in holding these workshops as biconference events (each year AOIS held two wo- shop events, one at an AI/MAS conference and one at an IS conference), as well as using the AOIS web site as a medium for communication among researchers. So, certainly, we have reached a wide audience of researchers around the world from both the AI/MAS and IS communities. But did we also manage to build up a dedicated AOIS community? Five years ago, we wrote: “Agent concepts could fundamentally alter the nature of information systems of the future, and how we build them, much like structured analysis, ER modeling, and Object-Orientation has precipitated fundamental changes in IS practice. ” Of course, a period of ?ve years is too short for evaluating the success or failure of a new scienti?c paradigm. But still we may observe that while most IS conferences meanwhile list agents as one of their many preferred topics, agent-orientation is generally not considered to be a fundamental IS paradigm.

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations - day. In almost every sector – manufacturing, education, health care, government and businesses large and small – information systems are relied upon for - eryday work, communication, information gathering and decision-making. Yet, the in?exibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are ?exible, robust and responsive to rapid and unexpected change. Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of - formation systems. They o?er higher-level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, p- ception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc., all of which need conc- tual modelling. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive work ?ows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow for more faithful and ?- ible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more e?ective requirements analysis and architectural/detailed design.

Thisproceedingsvolumeofthe5thAOISWorkshopisanopportunityforlooking back at ?ve years of organizing AOIS workshops. What did we achieve with the AOIS workshop series? Where were we ?ve years ago, where are we now? Did ourthemeimpactontheinformationsystems?eldinthewaythatwehadhoped for? AOIS workshops have taken place in Seattle, Heidelberg, Stockholm, Austin, Montr´ eal, Interlaken, Toronto, Bologna, Melbourne, and Chicago, always in c- junction with a major conference on either multiagent systems in arti?cial - telligence (AI/MAS) or information systems (IS). We have tried to innovate in holding these workshops as biconference events (each year AOIS held two wo- shop events, one at an AI/MAS conference and one at an IS conference), as well as using the AOIS web site as a medium for communication among researchers. So, certainly, we have reached a wide audience of researchers around the world from both the AI/MAS and IS communities. But did we also manage to build up a dedicated AOIS community? Five years ago, we wrote: “Agent concepts could fundamentally alter the nature of information systems of the future, and how we build them, much like structured analysis, ER modeling, and Object-Orientation has precipitated fundamental changes in IS practice. ” Of course, a period of ?ve years is too short for evaluating the success or failure of a new scienti?c paradigm. But still we may observe that while most IS conferences meanwhile list agents as one of their many preferred topics, agent-orientation is generally not considered to be a fundamental IS paradigm.

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations - day. In almost every sector – manufacturing, education, health care, government and businesses large and small – information systems are relied upon for - eryday work, communication, information gathering and decision-making. Yet, the in?exibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are ?exible, robust and responsive to rapid and unexpected change. Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of - formation systems. They o?er higher-level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, p- ception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc., all of which need conc- tual modelling. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive work ?ows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow for more faithful and ?- ible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more e?ective requirements analysis and architectural/detailed design.

Information systems underpin today’s business and entertainment. The means by which these information systems have been developed has changed over the years. Although the current paradigm is to use object-oriented concepts, a new set of concepts, focussed on agent technology, is starting to be evaluated. Agents offer higher level abstractions (than objects) for the conceptualization, design and implementation of information systems. Agents have autonomy, can reason and can coordinate within societies of agents. The AOIS series of workshops explores the potential for facilitating the increased usage of agent technology in the creation of information systems in the widest sense. In 2005, two AOIS workshops were held internationally. The first was affiliated with the AAMAS 2005 meeting in July in Utrecht in The Netherlands and chaired by Henderson-Sellers and Winikoff and the second with ER 2005 in November in Klagenfurt in Austria and chaired by Kolp and Bresciani. The best papers from these meetings were identified and authors invited to revise and possibly extend their papers in the light of reviewers’ comments and feedback at the workshop. We have grouped these papers loosely under four headings: Agent behavior, communications and reasoning; Methodologies and ontologies; Agent-oriented software engineering; and Applications. These categories fairly represent the breadth of current AOIS research as well as encompassing the papers presented at the two AOIS workshops. We trust you will find the content of these selected and revised papers to be of interest and utility.

Information systems underpin today’s business and entertainment. The means by which these information systems have been developed has changed over the years. Although the current paradigm is to use object-oriented concepts, a new set of concepts, focussed on agent technology, is starting to be evaluated. Agents offer higher level abstractions (than objects) for the conceptualization, design and implementation of information systems. Agents have autonomy, can reason and can coordinate within societies of agents. The AOIS series of workshops explores the potential for facilitating the increased usage of agent technology in the creation of information systems in the widest sense. In 2005, two AOIS workshops were held internationally. The first was affiliated with the AAMAS 2005 meeting in July in Utrecht in The Netherlands and chaired by Henderson-Sellers and Winikoff and the second with ER 2005 in November in Klagenfurt in Austria and chaired by Kolp and Bresciani. The best papers from these meetings were identified and authors invited to revise and possibly extend their papers in the light of reviewers’ comments and feedback at the workshop. We have grouped these papers loosely under four headings: Agent behavior, communications and reasoning; Methodologies and ontologies; Agent-oriented software engineering; and Applications. These categories fairly represent the breadth of current AOIS research as well as encompassing the papers presented at the two AOIS workshops. We trust you will find the content of these selected and revised papers to be of interest and utility.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies, DALT 2007, held in Honolulu, USA, in 2007. It was an associated event of AAMAS 2007, the conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. The 11 full papers, together with 1 keynote lecture and 2 invited papers from the AAMAS main conference were carefully selected and substantially enhanced after the workshop.

These are the post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS 2007), the ?fth of a series of workshops that is attracting increasing attention from researchersand practitioners in multi-agent systems. Multi-agent systems (MAS) constitute a promising software development paradigm for complex and distributed applications. The aim of the ProMAS workshop series is to promote and contribute to the establishment of MAS as a mainstream approach to the development of industrial-strength software. In particular, ProMAS aims to address the technologies that are required for - plementing multi-agentsystems designs or speci?cations e?ectively. We promote the discussion and exchangeof ideas on principles, concepts, requirements, te- niques,andtoolsthatareessentialforprogrammingapproachesandtechnologies speci?cally devised for MAS. Theidea oforganizingthe ?rstworkshopofthe series was?rstdiscussedd- ing the Dagstuhl seminar "ProgrammingMulti-Agent Systems Based onLogic", where the focus was on logic-based approaches. It was felt that the scope should be broadened beyond logic-based approaches, thus giving the current scope and aims of ProMAS.After four very successful editions of the ProMAS workshop series, which took place at AAMAS 2003 (Melbourne, Australia), AAMAS 2004 (New York, USA), AAMAS 2005(Utrecht,The Netherlands), and AAMAS 2006(Hakodate, Japan), the ?fth edition took place on May 14 in Honolulu, Hawai'i, in c- junction with AAMAS 2007, the main international conference on autonomous agents and MAS. ProMAS 2007 received 17 submissions. These were reviewed by members of the Program Committee, and 11 papers were accepted.

This volume constitutes the revised selected papers of the 6th International Workshop, DALT 2008, held as satellite workshop of AAMAS 2008, the 7th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, in Estoril, Portugal, on May 12, 2008. The 12 papers, presented together with 3 invited papers, were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. The workshop provided a discussion forum to both (i) support the transfer of declarative paradigms and techniques to the broader community of agent researchers and practitioners, and (ii) to bring the issue of designing complex agent systems to the attention of researchers working on declarative languages and technologies.

This volume constitutes the revised selected papers of the 6th International Workshop, DALT 2008, held as satellite workshop of AAMAS 2008, the 7th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, in Estoril, Portugal, on May 12, 2008. The 12 papers, presented together with 3 invited papers, were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. The workshop provided a discussion forum to both (i) support the transfer of declarative paradigms and techniques to the broader community of agent researchers and practitioners, and (ii) to bring the issue of designing complex agent systems to the attention of researchers working on declarative languages and technologies.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2010, held in Kolkata, India, in November 2010. The 18 full papers presented together with 15 early innovation papers were carefully reviewed and selected from over 63 submissions. They focus on practical aspects of multiagent systems and cover topics such as agent communication, agent cooperation and negotiation, agent reasoning, agent-based simulation, mobile and semantic agents, agent technologies for service computing, agent-based system development, ServAgents workshop, IAHC workshop, and PRACSYS workshop.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2010, held in Kolkata, India, in November 2010. The 18 full papers presented together with 15 early innovation papers were carefully reviewed and selected from over 63 submissions. They focus on practical aspects of multiagent systems and cover topics such as agent communication, agent cooperation and negotiation, agent reasoning, agent-based simulation, mobile and semantic agents, agent technologies for service computing, agent-based system development, ServAgents workshop, IAHC workshop, and PRACSYS workshop.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies, DALT 2011, held in Taipei, Taiwan, in May 2011. The volume contains 6 revised selected presented at DALT 2011, 7 best papers from the DALT series over the years, explaining how the research developed and how it influenced and impacted the community, the state-of-the-art and subsequent work, and two invited papers from the DALT Spring School, which took place in April 2011.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies, DALT 2011, held in Taipei, Taiwan, in May 2011. The volume contains 6 revised selected presented at DALT 2011, 7 best papers from the DALT series over the years, explaining how the research developed and how it influenced and impacted the community, the state-of-the-art and subsequent work, and two invited papers from the DALT Spring School, which took place in April 2011.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, EMAS 2013, held in St. Paul, MN, USA, in May 2013. The 19 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. The focus of the papers is on following topics: agent-oriented software engineering, declarative agent languages and technologies, and programming multi-agent systems.