Environment in multiagent systems by Tom Holvoet and Danny Weyns

Course description:

Standard literature on multiagent systems used for education deals very briefly with the topic of the environment in multiagent systems. Recent research on environments puts forward the environment as a first-order concept in multiagent systems. The environment is an essential part of every multiagent system that should be considered explicitly in the design and implementation of multiagent systems. Moreover, as a design abstraction, the environment can be exploited when building a multiagent system, improving separation of concerns and helping to manage the complexity of demanding problem domains.

The course is structured in three parts. We start with an overview of the state-of-the-art of environments in multiagent systems. From this overview, we then discuss the environment as a first-order abstraction in multiagent systems and we derive a basic set of responsibilitiesfor environments. In the final part, we illustrate how the environment is exploited in a complex real-world application.

Tutor bio:

Tom Holvoet is a full time professor in the Computer Science Department at the Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven, Belgium. Tom obtained his PhD in 1997 for work in open concurrent software development. Since then he is active in multiagent systems research. Tom Holvoet has published more than 80 articles in this area. Tom teaches courses on Object-Oriented Programming and Multiagent Systems and leads a research group on multiagent systems with seven PhD students.

Danny Weyns is since 2001 a PhD student in the Computer Science Department at the Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven, Belgium. His supervisor is Tom Holvoet. The topic of Danny's research is software architecture for self-managing distributed applications based on the paradigm of situated multiagent systems. Danny has published more than 45 articles on this topic and is co-editor of two books on Environments for Multiagent Systems. Danny is the initiator of the AAMAS workshops series on "Environments for Multiagent Systems" and was the chair of the AgentLink III Technical Forum Group on Environments for Multiagent Systems.