Multi-agent systems are claimed to be especially suited to the development of software systems that are decentralized, can deal flexibly with dynamic conditions, and are open to system components that come and go. This is why they are used in domains such as manufacturing control, automated vehicles, and e-commerce markets. Danny Weyns' book is organized according to the postulate that "developing multi-agent systems is 95% software engineering and 5% multi-agent systems theory." He presents a software engineering approach for multi-agent systems that is heavily based on software architecture - with, for example, tailored patterns such as "situated agent," "virtual environment," and "selective perception" - and on middleware for distributed coordination - with programming abstractions such as "views" and "roles." Next he shows the feasibility and applicability of this approach with the development of an automated transportation system consisting of a number of automatic guided vehicles transporting loads in an industrial setting. Weyns puts the development of multi-agent systems into a larger perspective with traditional software engineering approaches. With this, he opens up opportunities to exploit the body of knowledge developed in the multi-agent systems community to tackle some of the difficult challenges of modern-day software systems, such as decentralized control, location-awareness, self-adaption, and large-scale. Thus his book is of interest for both researchers and industrial software engineers who develop applications in areas such as distributed control systems and mobile applications where such requirements are of crucial importance.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the tracks and workshops which complemented the 14th European Conference on Software Architecture, ECSA 2020, held in L'Aquila, Italy*, in September 2020. The 30 full papers and 9 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. Papers presented were accepted into the following tracks and workshops: ECSA 2020 Doctoral Symposium track; ECSA 2020 Tool Demos track; ECSA 2020 Gender Diversity in Software Architecture &Software Engineering track; CASA - 3rd International Workshop on Context-aware, Autonomous and Smart Architecture; CSE/QUDOS - Joint Workshop on Continuous Software Engineering and Quality-Aware DevOps; DETECT - 3rd International Workshop on Modeling, Verication and Testing of Dependable Critical Systems; FAACS-MDE4SA - Joint Workshop on Formal Approaches for Advanced Computing Systems and Model-Driven Engineering for Software Architecture; IoT-ASAP - 4th International Workshop on Engineering IoT Systems: Architectures, Services, Applications, and Platforms; SASI4 - 2nd Workshop on Systems, Architectures, and Solutions for Industry 4.0; WASA - 6th International Workshop on Automotive System/Software Architecture. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Multi-agent systems are claimed to be especially suited to the development of software systems that are decentralized, can deal flexibly with dynamic conditions, and are open to system components that come and go. This is why they are used in domains such as manufacturing control, automated vehicles, and e-commerce markets. Danny Weyns' book is organized according to the postulate that "developing multi-agent systems is 95% software engineering and 5% multi-agent systems theory." He presents a software engineering approach for multi-agent systems that is heavily based on software architecture - with, for example, tailored patterns such as "situated agent", "virtual environment", and "selective perception" - and on middleware for distributed coordination - with programming abstractions such as "views" and "roles." Next he shows the feasibility and applicability of this approach with the development of an automated transportation system consisting of a number of automatic guided vehicles transporting loads in an industrial setting. Weyns puts the development of multi-agent systems into a larger perspective with traditional software engineering approaches. With this, he opens up opportunities to exploit the body of knowledge developed in the multi-agent systems community to tackle some of the difficult challenges of modern-day software systems, such as decentralized control, location-awareness, self-adaption, and large-scale. Thus his book is of interest for both researchers and industrial software engineers who develop applications in areas such as distributed control systems and mobile applications where such requirements are of crucial importance.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of 5 workshops, held at the 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2011, in Taipei, Taiwan, May 2-6, 2011. The 37 revised full papers presented together with 1 invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in sections on the workshops Agent-Based Modeling for Policy Engineering (AMPLE), Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE), Autonomous Robots and Multirobot Systems (ARMS), Data Oriented Constructive Mining and Multi-Agent Simulation, Massively Multi-Agent Systems: Models, Methods and Tools (DOCM(3)AS), and Infrastructures and Tools for Multiagent Systems (ITMAS).

Software intensive systems are increasingly expected to deal with changing user needs and dynamic operating conditions at run time. Examples are the need for life recon?gurations, management of resource variability, and dealing with p- ticular failure modes. Endowing systems with these kinds of capabilities poses severe challenges to software engineers and necessitates the development of new techniques, practices, and tools that build upon sound engineering principles. The ?eld of multi-agent systems focuses on the foundations and engineering of systems that consists of a network of autonomous entities (agents) that int- act to achieve the system goals. One line of research in multi-agent systems, inspired by biological, physical and other naturally occurring systems, concerns multi-agent systems in which agents share information and coordinate their - havior througha shared medium called an agentenvironment. Typical examples are gradient ?elds and digital pheromones that guide agents in their local c- text and as such facilitate the coordination of a community of agents. Since environment-mediation in multi-agent systems has shown to result in mana- able solutions with very adaptable qualities, it is a promising paradigm to deal with the increasing complexity and dynamism of distributed applications. Control in environment-mediated multi-agent systems is decentralized, i. e., noneofthecomponentshasfullaccessorcontroloverthesystem. Self-organization isanapproachtoengineerdecentralized, distributedandresource-limitedsystems thatarecapableofdynamicallyadaptingtochangingconditionsandrequirements without external intervention. This useful system property is often re?ected in functionssuchasself-con?guration, self-optimization, andself-healing. Engine- ing approaches to self-organizing systems often rely on global functionality to emerge from localand autonomous decisions of individual agents that commu- catethroughasharedagentenvironmen

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Environments for Multiagent Systems, E4MAS 2006, held in Hakodate, Japan in May 2006. The 15 revised papers in this volume are organized in topical sections on models, architecture, and design, mediated interaction and stigmery, governing environment, and applications.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Environments for Multiagent Systems, E4MAS 2005, held in July 2005. The 16 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from the lectures given at the workshop. The papers are organized in topical sections on models, architecture, and design, mediated coordination, as well as applications.

The modern ?eld of multiagent systems has developed from two main lines of earlier research. Its practitioners generally regard it as a form of arti?cial intelligence (AI). Some of its earliest work was reported in a series of workshops in the US dating from1980, revealinglyentitled, DistributedArti?cialIntelligence, andpioneers often quoted a statement attributed to Nils Nilsson that all AI is distributed. The locus of classical AI was what happens in the head of a single agent, and much MAS research re?ects this heritage with its emphasis on detailed modeling of the mental state and processes of individual agents. From this perspective, intelligenceisultimatelythepurviewofasinglemind, thoughitcanbeampli?ed by appropriate interactions with other minds. These interactions are typically mediated by structured protocols of various sorts, modeled on human conver- tional behavior. But the modern ?eld of MAS was not born of a single parent. A few - searchershavepersistentlyadvocatedideasfromthe?eldofarti?ciallife(ALife). These scientists were impressed by the complex adaptive behaviors of commu- ties of animals (often extremely simple animals, such as insects or even micro- ganisms). The computational models on which they drew were often created by biologists who used them not to solve practical engineering problems but to test their hypotheses about the mechanisms used by natural systems. In the ar- ?cial life model, intelligence need not reside in a single agent, but emerges at the level of the community from the nonlinear interactions among agents. - cause the individual agents are often subcognitive, their interactions cannot be modeled by protocols that presume linguistic competence."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the tracks and workshops which complemented the 15th European Conference on Software Architecture, ECSA 2021, held in Vaxjoe, Sweden*, in September 2021. The 15 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions. Papers presented were accepted into the following tracks and workshops: Industry Track; DE&I - Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Track; SAEroCon - 8th Workshop on Software Architecture Erosion and Architectural Consistency; MSR4SA - 1st International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories for Software Architecture; SAML - 1st International Workshop on Software Architecture and Machine Learning; CASA - 4th Context-aware, Autonomous and Smart Architectures International Workshop; FAACS - 5th International Workshop on Formal Approaches for Advanced Computing Systems; MDE4SA - 2nd International Workshop on Model-Driven Engineering for Software Architecture; Tools and Demonstrations Track; Tutorial Track. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Software Architecture, ECSA 2021, held in Sweden, in September 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was held virtually. For the Research Track, 11 full papers, presented together with 5 short papers, were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections as follows: architectures for reconfigurable and self-adaptive systems; machine learning for software architecture; architectural knowledge, decisions, and rationale; architecting for quality attributes; architecture-centric source code analysis; and experiences and learnings from industrial case studies.

This book constitutes the revised and selected papers from the 6th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems held in Stockholm, Sweden, in July 2018, in conjunction with AAMAS 2018. The 17 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The book also contains a state-of-the-art paper that reflects on the role and potential of MAS engineering in a number of key facets. The papers are clustered around the following themes: programming agents and MAS, agent-oriented software engineering, formal analysis techniques, rational agents, modeling and simulation, frameworks and application domains.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Environments for Multiagent Systems, E4MAS 2014 - 10 years later, held in Paris, France, in May 2014 as an associated event of AAMAS 2014, the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. The 6 revised full papers presented together with 1 roadmap paper and 7 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 initial submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on connecting agents, environments, and humans; environments for complex and stigmergic systems; virtual and simulated environments; and open agent environments and interoperability.

Since the mid 1980s, software agents and multi-agent systems have grown into a very active area of research and also commercial development activity. One of the limiting factors in industry take-up of agent-technology, however, is the lack of adequate software engineering support. The Agent-Oriented Software Engineering Workshop, AOSE, focuses on the synergies and cross fertilization between software engineering and agent research.
This volume presents both thoroughly revised selected papers from the AOSE 2010 workshop held at AAMAS 2010 in Toronto, Canada in May 2010 as well as invited articles by leading researchers in the field. The papers cover a broad range of topics related to software engineering and agent-based systems, with particular attention to the integration of concepts and techniques from multi-agent systems with conventional engineering approaches on the one hand, and to the integration of agent-oriented software engineering and methodologies with conventional engineering processes on the other hand."