Otthein Herzog – författare

1 Multiagent Engineering: A New Software Construction Paradigm Multiagent systems have a long academic tradition. They have their roots in distributed problem solving in Artificial Intelligence (AI) from where they emerged in the mid-eighties as a distinctive discipline. Research in multiagent systems owes much to the work of Rosenschein on rationality and autonomy of intelligent agents, the European MAAMAW workshop series, and last but not least the famous readings of Bond & Gasser (1988) and Jacques Ferber´s book on multiagent systems (1991). It gained further by a public discussion via the Distributed AI mailing list in summer 1991, when the pioneers of the field compared in much detail the concepts of distributed problem solvers to multiagent systems. Within only five years, a new exciting field of research had been established. Now, 15 years later, the field has matured to a degree that allows the - sults of academic research to be passed on to practical use and commercial exploitation. This potential coincides with a need for much larger flexib- ity of our IT infrastructure in light of its highly distributed character and extreme complexity, but also the global character of the business processes and the large number of business partners due to outsourcing and specia- zation. Many experts claim that multiagent systems are the right software technology for the needed IT infrastructure at the right time. The appeal has much to do with the broad perspectives of multiagent systems research.

1 Multiagent Engineering: A New Software Construction Paradigm Multiagent systems have a long academic tradition. They have their roots in distributed problem solving in Artificial Intelligence (AI) from where they emerged in the mid-eighties as a distinctive discipline. Research in multiagent systems owes much to the work of Rosenschein on rationality and autonomy of intelligent agents, the European MAAMAW workshop series, and last but not least the famous readings of Bond & Gasser (1988) and Jacques Ferber´s book on multiagent systems (1991). It gained further by a public discussion via the Distributed AI mailing list in summer 1991, when the pioneers of the field compared in much detail the concepts of distributed problem solvers to multiagent systems. Within only five years, a new exciting field of research had been established. Now, 15 years later, the field has matured to a degree that allows the - sults of academic research to be passed on to practical use and commercial exploitation. This potential coincides with a need for much larger flexib- ity of our IT infrastructure in light of its highly distributed character and extreme complexity, but also the global character of the business processes and the large number of business partners due to outsourcing and specia- zation. Many experts claim that multiagent systems are the right software technology for the needed IT infrastructure at the right time. The appeal has much to do with the broad perspectives of multiagent systems research.

The IBM project LILOG presented in this volume represents afundamental stepbeyond computer science as hithertounderstood. It was a successful project in every respect andhas shed light on conjectured basic interrelations betweenknowledge processing and language definition. Knowledgeprocessing is strongly coupled to the natural language used,and for applied knowledge processing an information base isneededwhich defines the semantic contents andinterrelations of the language.The LILOG project was an implementation of an informationbasein the German language. A set of tools was alsodeveloped to work with the system, including structuredman-machine interfaces using natural language, inferencealgorithms, and a complete subsystem to acquire and storethe required knowledge.The LILOG project started in 1985 and a functional systemwas demonstrated in 1991. The project involved approximately200 of the scientists working in Germany in the fields ofcomputational linguistics, natural language understandingsystems, and artificial intelligence. The project provesthat a cooperative project between universities and industrycan produce useful results both in pure research and inimplemented methods and tools.

Eine Arbeitsgruppe des Fachbereichs KI der Gesellschaft für Informatik hatte auf Anregung von W. Bibel hin ein neues Konzept für die Jahrestagung dieses Fachbereichs erarbeitet. Christopher Habel, Clans-Rainer Rollinger und Thomas Christaller sind an erster Stelle als Autoren des Vorschlags zu nennen, auf dem wesentliche Elemente dieser 17. KI-Jahrestagung autbauen. Diese neue KI-93 besteht im wesentlichen aus zwei Teilen mit einem gemeinsamen Tag: - vom 13. - 15. September findet der "Wissenschaftliche Kongress" statt, der aus Vorträgen und 17 Workshops besteht (Leitung des Programmkomitees: Thomas Christaller), -vom 15. -16. September schließt sich der ,,Anwender­ Kongress" an, der durch Vorträge den erfolgreichen Einsatz von KI-Methoden demonstrieren wird (\I orsitz des Programmkomitees: Dieter Schütt). Daneben wird es auch zahlreiche Demonstrationen von Anwendungsbeispielen und von experimen­ tellen KI-Programmen zur Weiterentwicklung geben. Gastgeber der KI-93 ist dankenswerterweise die Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Leiter der lokalen OrganisationlDemos: Hans-Dieter Burkhard - schon jetzt vielen Dank an Renate Zirkelbach). Die ,,HUB" freut sich bereits auf viele Gäste -und für den Mittwoch Abend ist schon eine Schiffsfahrt auf der Spree organisiert. Mit dem neuen Tagungskonzept sollen - die neuesten Entwicklungen und Trends in der KI deutlich werden, -junge Wissenschaftler die Möglichkeit haben, ihre Arbeiten vorzustellen, -"Wissenschaftler und Praktiker" auf dem Gebiet der KI zusammenfmden können. Die Zusagen "gestandener Wissenschaftler" für eingeladene Vorträge, die zahlreichen Anmeldungen für Workshops und die Qualität der eingereichten Vorträge zeigen, daß dieses Konzept Beifall fand.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, KI-98, held in Bremen, Germany, in September 1998.The 16 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the proceedings. Also included are three invited papers and abstracts of two invited talks, as well as an appendix containing up-to-date descriptions of German AI projects. Thus the volume gives a unique overview of AI research in Germany.

1 Multiagent Engineering: A New Software Construction Paradigm Multiagent systems have a long academic tradition. They have their roots in distributed problem solving in Artificial Intelligence (AI) from where they emerged in the mid-eighties as a distinctive discipline. Research in multiagent systems owes much to the work of Rosenschein on rationality and autonomy of intelligent agents, the European MAAMAW workshop series, and last but not least the famous readings of Bond & Gasser (1988) and Jacques Ferber´s book on multiagent systems (1991). It gained further by a public discussion via the Distributed AI mailing list in summer 1991, when the pioneers of the field compared in much detail the concepts of distributed problem solvers to multiagent systems. Within only five years, a new exciting field of research had been established. Now, 15 years later, the field has matured to a degree that allows the - sults of academic research to be passed on to practical use and commercial exploitation. This potential coincides with a need for much larger flexib- ity of our IT infrastructure in light of its highly distributed character and extreme complexity, but also the global character of the business processes and the large number of business partners due to outsourcing and specia- zation. Many experts claim that multiagent systems are the right software technology for the needed IT infrastructure at the right time. The appeal has much to do with the broad perspectives of multiagent systems research.