This book assembles some of the most important and useful papers on virtually all major aspects of agents. It features an extensive introduction plus 51 articles by over 140 leading authors.

Chapter 1 Agents and Multiagent Systems: Themes, Approaches, and Challenges

Comprehensive introduction by Huhns and Singh

Chapter 2 Applications

Section 2.1 Enterprises

Five articles (on industrial applications, information management with ontologies, concurrent engineering, constraint reasoning, electronic commerce)

Section 2.2 Internet and Information Access

Four articles (on softbots, query processing, matchmaking, digital libraries)

Section 2.3 Personal Assistants

Four articles (on interface agents, collaboration with people, meeting scheduling, exploratory data analysis)

Section 2.4 Other Applications

Five articles (on drama, animation, pedagogy, scheduling, dynamic design)

Chapter 3 Architectures and Infrastructure

Section 3.1 Architectures

Five articles (on architectures for multiagent systems--mediators, agent systems (2 articles), architectures for individual agents--rational and emotional)

Section 3.2 Communications and Knowledge Sharing

Three articles (on agent communication, knowledge sharing, application of ontologies)

Section 3.3 Distributed Computing Aspects

Six articles (on operating system aspects, mobile or itinerant agents, enabled email, digital cash and credit, security and trust)

Chapter 4 Models of Agency

Section 4.1 Rational Agency: Logical

Two articles (on BDI models and agent-oriented programming)

Section 4.2 Rational Agency: Economic

Three articles (on game theory and negotiation, market-oriented programming, focal point techniques)

Section 4.3 Social Agency

Five articles (on social knowledge and action, open systems science, dependence networks, society of objects, cooperative problem solving)

Section 4.4 Interactive Agency

Four articles (on pragmatics of interactions, coordination algorithms, communication semantics, cooperation)

Section 4.5 Adaptive Agency

Five articles (on learning to coordinate (2 articles), multiagent reinforcement learning, Markov processes, agent tracking)