Industrial Deployment of Multi-Agent Technologies: Review and Selected Case Studies

This paper reports on industrial deployment of multi-agent systems and agent technology. It provides an overview of several application domains and an in-depth presentation of four specific case studies. The presented applications and deployment domains have been analyzed. The analysis indicates that despite strong industrial involvement in this field, the full potential of the agent technology has not been fully utilized yet and that not all of the developed agent concepts and agent techniques have been completely exploited in industrial practice. In the paper, the key obstacles for wider deployments are listed and potential future challenges are discussed.

keywords   Multi-agent systems, Agent technologies, Industrial applications, Control, Simulation, Planning

origin event

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

 AL3-TF1

 AL3-TF2

 AL3-TF3

journal or series

 Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (J.AAMAS)

container publication

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

companion publication

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

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

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

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

funding project

 AgentLink III — A Coordination Network for Agent-based Computing (01/01/2004–31/01/2006)

companion publication for

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

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

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

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