Multiagent Platforms

by Toru Ishida

Autonomousagents andmultiagentsystems are computationalsystems inwhich several (semi-)autonomous agents interact each other or work together to p- form some set of tasks or satisfy some set of goals. These systems may involve computationalagents that are homogeneous or heterogeneous, they may involve activities on the part of agents having common goals or distinct goals, and they may involve participation on the part of humans and intelligent agents. The increase of agent research activities can be observed in the series of ICMAS (- ternational Conference of Multi-Agent Systems). In ICMAS’95,209participants were there. At ICMAS’96,the number increased to282,and atICMAS’98,there were 552participants. Thoughwealready haveseveral workshopsinAsia Paci c countries, such as MACC (Multiagent Systems and Cooperative Computation) in Japan from 1991 and Australian Workshop on Distributed Artic ial Int- ligence from 1995, there is not enough interaction so far among the countries compared to Euro