| An Application Science For Multi-Agent Systems addresses the complexity of choosing which multi-agent control technologies are appropriate for a given problem domain or a given application. Without such knowledge, when faced with a new application domain, agent developers must rely on past experience and intuition to determine whether a multi-agent system is the right approach, and if so, how to structure the agents, how to decompose the problem, and how to coordinate the activities of the agents, and so forth. This unique collection of contributions, written by leading international researchers in the agent community, provides valuable insight into the issues of deciding which technique to apply and when it is appropriate to use them. The contributions also discuss potential trade-offs or caveats involved with each decision. An Application Science For Multi-Agent Systems is an excellent reference for anyone involved in developing multi-agent systems.
This edited collection might have been more appropriately titled Toward an Application Science for Multi-Agent Systems as the community is still developing an understanding of when to use particular multi-agent system techniques to create an application for a particular problem. As of yet there is no hardand-fast methodology that enables an agent researcher or practitioner to examine the features of the application domain, and the application requirements, and then to know which techniques or algorithms to apply and their respective trade-offs. Currently, when faced with a new application domain, agent developers must rely on past experience and intuition to determine whether a multi-agent system is the right approach and, if so, how to structure the agents, how to decompose the problem, how to coordinate the activities of the agents, and so forth.
The papers in this collection are all designed to help address this topic – to provide some illumination into the issues of understanding which technique to apply, and when, and the potential trade-offs or caveats involved. The work presented here ranges from mature technology to anecdotal evidence. This is a testimony to the complexity of the issues and partly attributable to the relative youth of agent-based systems. Of course, there are many more mature subdisciplines of computer science that struggle with the same issues – given a problem, how does one evaluate the problem space and determine the right solution technique? There are seldom simple answers, though the total sum of knowledge on the subject continues to grow. |
