Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems 

Agent-based Computing addresses the challenges in managing distributed computing systems and networks through monitoring, communication, consensus-based decision-making and coordinated actuation. As a result, intelligent agents and multi-agent systems have demonstrated the capability to use intelligence, knowledge representation and reasoning, and other social metaphors like 'trust', 'game' and 'institution', not only to address real-world problems in a human-like way but also to transcend human performance. This has had a transformative impact in many application domains, particularly in e-commerce, and also in planning, logistics, manufacturing, robotics, decision support, transportation, entertainment, emergency relief & disaster management, and data mining and analytics. As one of the largest and still growing research fields of Computer Science, agent-based computing today remains a unique enabler of inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary research. 

The collection seeks to capture experiences on using agents in an application domain and also discuss the challenges (resolved and unresolved issues) in deploying them. In general, the papers of this collection provides surveys discussing lessons learned and general directions of research using agents.

Representative topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

- Foundations of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 

- Agent and Multi-Agent System Architectures 

- Agent-Oriented Software Engineering 

- Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation 

- Cooperation/Collaboration, Coordination/Communication 

- Hybrid Technologies