General introduction by John-Jules Meyer

Course description:

In this course we will provide an overview of agent-related research. Starting out from philosophical ideas, the discipline of agent technology developed to a new way of thinking about software and computer-based systems (including robots) more in general. We trace its historical development through formalisation of the philosophical theory in logic and realisation of agents using special agent-based architectures and special purpose agent-oriented programming. Furthermore we give an inkling of the huge potential of applications and the many subdiciplines of agent technology that have emerged.

Tutor bio:

Prof.dr. John-Jules Ch. Meyer studied mathematics with computer science and digital signal processing at Leyden University. In 1985 he obtained his Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam on a thesis entitled "Programming Calculi Based on Fixed Point Transformations", a subject in theoretical computer science. From 1988 to 1993 he was a professor at the computer science department at the VU Amsterdam holding a chair in "Logic for distributed systems and artificial intelligence". From 1989 to 1993 he also was a professor of theoretical computer science at the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Since 1993 he has been a professor at the computer science department of Utrecht University (UU). At the moment he is heading the Intelligent Systems Group of the Institute of Computing and information Sciences of the UU. Prof. Meyer was also the scientific director of the national Dutch graduate school in Information and Knowledge-based Systems (SIKS) during the period 1995-2005. He is a member of the IFAAMAS board steering the international AAMAS conferences, and of the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, Data and Knowledge Engineering and the Journal of Intelligent Agents & Multi-Agent Systems. His current research interests include logics for AI, intelligent agents and cognitive robotics, and he has been involved with agent research for over a decade now, ranging from theoretical / logical foundations, via agent programming to the many applications that are currently being investigated in his group.