25 Years of Declarative Agent Technologies in Italy

Davide Ancona; Daniela Briola; Angelo Ferrando; Maurizio Martelli; Viviana Mascardi

doi:10.1007/978-3-032-22940-3_11

25 Years of Declarative Agent Technologies in Italy

Davide Ancona, Daniela Briola, Angelo Ferrando, Maurizio Martelli, Viviana Mascardi

Viviana Mascardi, Andrea Omicini (eds.)

The Agents Journey: Twenty-Five Years of Multi-agent Systems, chapter 11, pages 287–319

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (State-of-the-Art Survey) 16395

Springer Nature Switzerland

April 2026

Since the first appearance of agents and multiagent systems (MAS), their close connection with declarative technologies was clearly devised and drove – and still drives – a large share of the research in the field. Declarative technologies play many roles in the MAS context: they can be exploited in the specification of the agents and MAS architecture, in the specification of their conversational flow, in their implementation, and in the representation of the agents’ knowledge. In all of these roles, one main advantage of declarative technologies is the support to transparency and explainability thanks to a (more, w.r.t. other paradigms) readable, understandable, and interoperable description of the system, and to reliability, by means of formal verification of its properties. This chapter, guided by works presented at Workshop on Objects and Agents (WOA) starting from 2000, discusses the crucial role that declarative technologies play in a MAS context.

journal or series

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)

container publication

The Agents Journey (edited volume, 2026) — Viviana Mascardi, Andrea Omicini

companion publication

Preface (editorial/introduction/preface, 2026) — Viviana Mascardi, Andrea Omicini

Evolution of Programming Languages in Agent Systems and the Role of Computational Logic (book chapter, 2026) — Alina Vozna, Andrea Monaldini, Stefania Costantini, Giovanni De Gasperis, Pierangelo dell’Acqua, Andrea Formisano, Andrea Rafanelli

Looking for the Best Partners (book chapter, 2026) — Domenico Rosaci, Giuseppe M. L. Sarnè

Trust Evolution in Agent and Multi-agent Systems: A Computational Modeling Perspective (book chapter, 2026) — Alessandro Sapienza, Filippo Cantucci, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Rino Falcone

Interaction Protocols: From AUML to Social Commitments, from Artifacts to BSPL (book chapter, 2026) — Matteo Baldoni, Cristina Baroglio, Roberto Micalizio

Coordination of Software Agents: Models and Languages (book chapter, 2026) — Giacomo Cabri, Letizia Leonardi, Stefano Mariani, Franco Zambonelli

Self-organisation with Aggregate Computing: A Reflection Under the Lenses of Multi-agent Systems Engineering (book chapter, 2026) — Gianluca Aguzzi, Roberto Casadei, Danilo Pianini, Mirko Viroli

Rethinking Software Agents as Building Blocks of Software Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Federico Bergenti, Stefania Monica

Designing Agent-Oriented Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Massimo Cossentino, Luca Sabatucci, Valeria Seidita

Agent-Based Computing for Science and Engineering: Back to the Future and Beyond... (book chapter, 2026) — Alfredo Garro

Simulation and Agent-Based Simulation at WOA: 25 of Years of Simulation-Related Contributions, and an Outlook of What Awaits Us (book chapter, 2026) — Giuseppe Vizzari, Daniela Briola

Intelligent Agents from Symbolic to Neurosymbolic Systems: The Quest for Integration (book chapter, 2026) — Andrea Agiollo, Roberta Calegari, Giovanni Ciatto, Matteo Magnini, Andrea Omicini, Federico Sabbatini

From Objects to Agents, and Back to Smart Objects: Software Agents for Intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Daniel-Costel Bouleanu, Marco Loaiza, Claudio Savaglio, Costin Bădică, Raffaele Gravina, Giancarlo Fortino

AI Infrastructure: From Gigastructure to Edge Intelligence with Multi-Agent Systems (book chapter, 2026) — Andrea Omicini, Alessandro Ricci, Viviana Mascardi

funding project

ENGINES — ENGineering INtElligent Systems around intelligent agent technologies (28/09/2023–27/02/2026)

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