Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

The journal provides a leading forum for disseminating significant original research results in the foundations, theory, development, analysis, and applications of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Specific topics of interest include, but are not restricted to: Agent decision-making architectures and their evaluation, including deliberative, practical reasoning, reactive/behavioural, plan-based, and hybrid architectures. Cooperation and teamwork, including organizational structuring and design for multi-agent systems, self-organization, emergent functionality and swarm intelligence. Multi-agent planning and planning for multi-agent systems, and the coordination of multi-agent plans and activities. Computational auction systems, computational market systems, algorithmic/automated mechanism design, automated negotiation, computational aspects of game theory (cooperative and non-cooperative), and computational social choice theory. Knowledge representation and reasoning for, and logical foundations of, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Agent programming languages - their implementation, semantics, and evaluation. Distributed constraint processing and distributed constraint optimization. Multi-agent argumentation and dialogue, conflict detection and resolution. Multi-agent learning, co-learning, and evolutionary approaches in multi-agent systems. Learning agents, including: computational architectures for learning agents; evolution, adaptation; multi-agent learning. Agent communication languages, their semantics, pragmatics, and implementation, and agent communication protocols and conversations. Conventions, commitments, norms, obligations, and social laws in multi-agent systems, and models of trust and reputation. Believable and synthetic agents and characters, and human-agent interaction. Environments, testbeds, and programming languages for experimentation with, and analysis of, agent systems.

topics of interest

Agent decision-making architectures and their evaluation, including: cognitive models; knowledge representation; logics for agency; ontological reasoning; planning (single and multi-agent); reasoning (single and multi-agent)
Cooperation and teamwork, including: distributed problem solving; human-robot/agent interaction; multi-user/multi-virtual-agent interaction; coalition formation; coordination
Agent communication languages, including: their semantics, pragmatics, and implementation; agent communication protocols and conversations; agent commitments; speech act theory
Ontologies for agent systems, agents and the semantic web, agents and semantic web services, Grid-based systems, and service-oriented computing
Agent societies and societal issues, including: artificial social systems; environments, organizations and institutions; ethical and legal issues; privacy, safety and security; trust, reliability and reputation
Agent-based system development, including: agent development techniques, tools and environments; agent programming languages; agent specification or validation languages
Agent-based simulation, including: emergent behavior; participatory simulation; simulation techniques, tools and environments; social simulation
Agreement technologies, including: argumentation; collective decision making; judgment aggregation and belief merging; negotiation; norms
Economic paradigms, including: auction and mechanism design; bargaining and negotiation; economically-motivated agents; game theory (cooperative and non-cooperative); social choice and voting
Learning agents, including: computational architectures for learning agents; evolution, adaptation; multi-agent learning.
Robotic agents, including: integrated perception, cognition, and action; cognitive robotics; robot planning (including action and motion planning); multi-robot systems.
Virtual agents, including: agents in games and virtual environments; companion and coaching agents; modeling personality, emotions; multimodal interaction; verbal and non-verbal expressiveness
Significant, novel applications of agent technology
Comprehensive reviews and authoritative tutorials of research and practice in agent systems
Comprehensive and authoritative reviews of books dealing with agents and multi-agent systems

works as

journal containing

Testing BDI-based multi-agent systems using discrete event simulation (2026) — Martina Baiardi, Samuele Burattini, Giovanni Ciatto, Danilo Pianini

From Large Language Models to Small Logic Programs: Building Global Explanations from Disagreeing Local Post-hoc Explainers (2024) — Andrea Agiollo, Luciano Cavalcante Siebert, Pradeep Murukannaiah, Andrea Omicini

Symbolic Knowledge Injection meets Intelligent Agents: QoS metrics and experiments (2023) — Andrea Agiollo, Andrea Rafanelli, Matteo Magnini, Giovanni Ciatto, Andrea Omicini

Logic-based Technologies for Multi-agent Systems: A Systematic Literature Review (2021) — Roberta Calegari, Giovanni Ciatto, Viviana Mascardi, Andrea Omicini

Mobile Apps as Personal Assistant Agents. The JaCa-Android Framework for Programming Agents-based applications on Mobile Devices (2020) — Angelo Croatti, Alessandro Ricci

Explainability in human-agent systems (2019) — Avi Rosenfeld, Ariella Richardson

Implicit: A Multi-agent Recommendation System for Web Search (2012) — Aliaksandr Birukou, Enrico Blanzieri, Paolo Giorgini

Environment Programming in Multi-Agent Systems – An Artifact-Based Perspective (2011) — Alessandro Ricci, Michele Piunti, Mirko Viroli

Technology Diffusion: Analysing the Diffusion of Agent Technologies (2008) — Jez McKean, Hayden Shorter, Michael Luck, Peter McBurney, Steven Willmott

Editorial: Special Issue on Foundations, Advanced Topics and Industrial Perspectives of Multi-agent Systems (2008) — Peter McBurney, Andrea Omicini

Special Issue on Foundations, Advanced Topics and Industrial Perspectives of Multi-agent Systems (2008) — Andrea Omicini, Peter McBurney

Artifacts in the A&A Meta-Model for Multi-Agent Systems (2008) — Andrea Omicini, Alessandro Ricci, Mirko Viroli

Autonomic Communication Services: A New Challenge for Software Agents (2008) — Raffaele Quitadamo, Franco Zambonelli

Industrial Deployment of Multi-Agent Technologies: Review and Selected Case Studies (2008) — Michal Pěchouček, Vladimír Mařík

Mechanisms for Environments in Multi-agent Aystems: Survey and Opportunities (2007) — Eric Platon, Marco Mamei, Nicolas Sabouret, Shinichi Honiden, H. Van Dyke Parunak

Infrastructures for the Environment of Multiagent Systems (2007) — Mirko Viroli, Tom Holvoet, Alessandro Ricci, Kurt Schelfthout, Franco Zambonelli

Environment as a First-class Abstraction in Multi-Agent Systems (2007) — Danny Weyns, Andrea Omicini, James J. Odell

Special Issue on Environments for Multi-Agent Systems (2007) — H. Van Dyke Parunak, Danny Weyns

Verifying Multi-agent Programs by Model Checking (2006) — Rafael H. Bordini, Michael Fisher, Willem Visser, Michael Wooldridge

Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology (2004) — Paolo Bresciani, Paolo Giorgini, Fausto Giunchiglia, John Mylopoulos, Anna Perini

Challenges and Research Directions in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (2004) — Franco Zambonelli, Andrea Omicini

An Automated Teamwork Infrastructure for Heterogeneous Software Agents and Humans (2003) — David V. Pynadath, Milind Tambe

The RETSINA MAS Infrastructure (2003) — Katia Sycara, Massimo Paolucci, Martin Van Velsen, Joseph Giampapa

LuCe: A Tuple-based Coordination Infrastructure for Prolog and Java Agents (2001) — Enrico Denti, Andrea Omicini

The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design (2000) — Michael Wooldridge, Nicholas R. Jennings, David Kinny

Coordination for Internet Application Development (1999) — Andrea Omicini, Franco Zambonelli

journal hosting

Special Issue on Foundations, Advanced Topics and Industrial Perspectives of Multi-agent Systems

Special Issue: Multi-Agent Systems and Explainable AI