As today's most complex computing environment, the Internet confronts IT researchers, system designers, and application developers with completely new challenges and, as a fascinating new computing paradigm, agent technology has recently attracted broad interest and strong hopes for shaping the future information society. Relating both, the Internet and agents, opens up a whole new range of advanced applications in vibrant subfields of information technology such as middleware, mobile commerce, e-learning, collaborative working, and intelligent information services. Many modern advanced systems are likely to exploit Internet agents - and exploiting Internet agents mostly means dealing with coordination models and technologies of various sorts. This monograph-like anthology is the first systematic guide to models and enabling technologies for the coordination of intelligent agents on the Internet and respective applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th German Conference on Multiagent System Technologies, MATES 2013, held in Koblenz, Germany, in September 2013. The 29 revised full papers and 3 keynote talks presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers cover a broad area of topics of interest ranging from issues of agent-based coordination to simulation to negotiation.

Agent technology has recently become one of the most vibrant and fastest growing areas in information technology. Within this booming area, intelligent information agents are attracting particular attention from the research and development community as well as from industry and user communities interested in everyday private and professional applications. This monographic text is the first systematic state-of-the-art survey on intelligent information agents. Eighteen coherently written chapters by leading authorities provide complementary coverage of the relevant issues organized in four parts: cooperative information systems and agents; rational information agents and electronic commerce; adaptive information agents; mobile agents and security. In addition, the volume editor has provided a detailed introductory survey chapter, motivational introductions to the four parts, and a comprehensive bibliography listing more than 700 entries.

As today's most complex computing environment, the Internet confronts IT researchers, system designers, and application developers with completely new challenges and, as a fascinating new computing paradigm, agent technology has recently attracted broad interest and strong hopes for shaping the future information society. Relating both, the Internet and agents, opens up a whole new range of advanced applications in vibrant subfields of information technology such as middleware, mobile commerce, e-learning, collaborative working, and intelligent information services. Many modern advanced systems are likely to exploit Internet agents - and exploiting Internet agents mostly means dealing with coordination models and technologies of various sorts. This monograph-like anthology is the first systematic guide to models and enabling technologies for the coordination of intelligent agents on the Internet and respective applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Quantum Interaction, QI 2009, held in Saarbrucken, Germany, in March 2009.

The 21 revised full papers presented together with the 3 position papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers show the cross-disciplinary nature of quantum interaction covering topics such as computation, cognition, decision theory, information retrieval, information systems, social interaction, computational linguistics and finance.

These are the proceedings of the 12th international workshop on cooperative informationagents(CIA2008), heldattheCzechTechnicalUniversityinPrague, Czech Republic, on September 10-12, 2008. In today's world of ubiquitously connected heterogeneous information s- tems, business services and computing devices, the intelligent coordination and provisionofrelevantadded-value informationor servicesto the user atany time, anywhere is of key importance to a variety of applications. This challenge is - visioned to be coped with by means of appropriate intelligent and cooperative information agents. An intelligent information agent is a computational software entity that is capable of accessing one or multiple, potentially heterogeneous and distributed information sources, proactively acquiring, mediating, and maintaining relevant information or services on behalf of its human users, or other agents, preferably just in time and anywhere. One key challenge of developing intelligent and - operative information systems is to balance the autonomy of networked data, information, and knowledge sourceswith the potential payo?of leveragingthem by the appropriate use of such agents. Researchonintelligentinformationagentsandsystemsisinherentlycrossd- ciplinary covering themes from domains such as AI, Multiagent Systems, HCI, SemanticWebTechnologies, WebServices, InformationSystems, KnowledgeD- covery, Information Retrieval, and P2P Computing.

The globaltrendtowardsmore?exible anddynamic businessprocessintegration and automation has led to a convergence of interests between service-oriented computing, semantic technology, and intelligent multiagent systems. In parti- lar the areas of service-oriented computing and semantic technology o?er much interestto the multiagentsystemcommunity, including similaritiesin system- chitectures and provision processes, powerful tools, and the focus on issues such as quality of service, security, and reliability. Similarly, techniques developed in themultiagentsystemsandsemantictechnologypromisetohaveastrongimpact on the fast-growing service-oriented computing technology. Service-oriented computing has emerged as an established paradigm for d- tributed computing and e-business processing. It utilizes services as fundam- tal building blocks to enable the development of agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Services are self-contained, platform-independent software components that can be described, published, discovered, orchestrated, and deployed for the purpose of developing distributed applications across large heterogeneous networks such as the Internet. Multiagent systems are also aimed at the development of distributed - plications, however, from a di?erent but complementary perspective. Servi- oriented paradigmsaremainly focused on syntacticaland declarativede?nitions of software components, their interfaces, communication channels, and ca- bilities with the aim of creating interoperable and reliable infrastructures. In contrast, multiagent systems center on the development of reasoning and pl- ning capabilities of autonomous problem solvers that apply behavioral concepts such as interaction, collaboration, or negotiation in order to create ?exible and fault-tolerant distributed systems for dynamic and uncertain environments

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th German Conference on Multiagent Systems Technologies, MATES 2007, held in Leipzig, Germany, in September 2007, co-located with NetObjectDays (NODe 2007).

The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on engineering multi-agent systems, multi-agent planning and learning, multi-agent communication, interaction, and coordination, multi-agent resource allocation, multi-agent planning and simulation, as well as trust and reputation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, CIA 2007, held in Delft, The Netherlands, September 19-21, 2007.

The 19 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Information Search and Processing, Applications, Rational Cooperation, Interaction and Cooperation and Trust.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, CIA 2006, held in Edinburgh, UK in September 2006. The 29 revised full papers presented together with four invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections.

After two successful MATES conferences in Erfurt 2003 and 2004, the 3rd G- man conference on Multi-agent System Technologies (MATES 2005) took place in Koblenz, Germany, in September 2005, and was co-located with the 28th German Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (KI 2005). Building onotheragent-relatedeventsinGermanyinthepast, andorganized by the GI German Special Interest Group on Distributed Arti?cial Intelligence, the MATES conference series aims at promoting the theory and applications of agentsandmultiagentsystems.Incorporatingthe9thInternationalWorkshopon Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2005), the topics of interest for MATES 2005 also covered the ?elds of intelligent information agents and systems for the Internet and the (Semantic) Web. As in recent years, MATES 2005 provided a distinguished, lively and int- disciplinary forum for researchers, users, and developers of agent technology, to present and discuss the latest advances of research and development in the area of autonomous agents and multiagent systems. Accordingly, the topics of MATES 2005 covered the whole range from the theory to applications of age- and multiagent technology. The technical program included a total of 24 sci- ti?c talks, and demonstrations of selected running agent systems, and both the MATES 2005 Best Paper and the CIA 2005 System Innovation awards

This book introduces major agent platforms, frameworks, systems, tools, and applications. Each system is described by their developers in sufficient detail so that the reader can get a good understanding of the architecture, functionality, and application areas of the system. All systems are running systems. One main focus of the book lies on agent platforms and toolkits. They form the basis for the development of agent-based systems, thus, are a convenient starting point for everybody who wants to apply agent technology. Another focus lies on agent-based applications. These systems prove that agent technology is mature enough to permit the development of sophisticated applications, like electronic marketplaces, environments for computer-supported cooperative work, or transportation systems.

These are the proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2004), held at the Fair and Congress Center in - furt, Germany, September 27-29, 2004. It was part of the multi-conference Net. ObjectDays 2004, and, in particular, was co-located with the 2nd German Conference on Multiagent Systems Technologies (MATES 2004). In today's networked world of linked heterogeneous, pervasive computer systems, devices, and information landscapes, the intelligent coordination and provision of relevant added-value information at any time, anywhere, by means of cooperative information agents becomes increasingly important for a variety of applications. An information agent is a computational software entity that has access to one or multiple, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed data and information sources. It proactively searches for and maintains information on behalf of its human users, or other agents, preferably just in time. In other words, itismanagingandovercomingthedi?cultiesassociatedwithinformation overload in open, pervasive information and service landscapes. Cooperative - formation agents may collaborate with each other to accomplish both individual and shared joint goals depending on the actual preferences of their users, b- getary constraints, and resources available. One major challenge of developing agent-based intelligent information systems in open environments is to balance the autonomy of networked data, information, and knowledge sources with the potential payo? of leveraging them using information agents. Interdisciplinaryresearchanddevelopmentofinformationagentsrequires- pertise in relevant domains of information retrieval, arti?cial intelligence, database systems, human-computer interaction, and Internet and Web techn- ogy.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th Information Agents, CIA 2002, held in Helsinki, Finland in August 2003. The 17 revised full papers and 6 revised short papers presented together with 2 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on pervasive information service provision, information agents and peer-to-peer computing, trading and negotiation, information gathering and integration, collaborative search and filtering, collaboration in open environments, trust in agent-based information provision, and information agent systems engineering.

This book presents 10 chapters on various aspects of intelligent information agents contributed by members of the respective AgentLink special interest group. The papers are organized in three parts on agent-based information systems, adaptive information agents, and coordination of information agents. Also included are a comprehensive introduction and surveys for each of the three parts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, CIA 2002, held in Madrid, Spain, in September 2002.The revised papers - 15 full and 8 short - presented together with 4 invited contributions, were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on information agents for mobile computing environments, interaction and negotiation, information gathering and collaborative filtering, agent-based information and knowledge management, agent communication and cooperation, and information agent mobility.

These are the proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, held in Modena, Italy, September 6-8, 2001. Information agent technology has become one of the major key technologies for the Internet and the World Wide Web. It mainly emerged as a response to the challenges of cyberspace from both the technological and human user perspective. Development of information agents requires expertise from di?erent research disciplines such as Arti?cial Intelligence (AI), advanced databases and knowledge base systems, distributed information systems, information retrieval, and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The ?fth international workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA) continued the tradition by capturing the intrinsic interdisciplinary nature of the above research area by calling for contributions from di?erent research communities, and by promoting open and informative discussions on all related topics. In keeping with tradition, the workshop featured a sequence of regular and invited talks of excellence given by leading experts in the ?eld. This year the topics of the talks are mainly on the challenges of information agents in the upcoming age of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. These challenges are in particular due to the necessity of an e?cient utilization, evolution, and trust management of information agents for user-oriented information search, pro- sion, and visualization in networked computing environments with small, mobile, and embedded devices. A di?erent issue concerns the potential of agent-based support of massive distributed data warehousing worldwide.

These arethe proceedingsof the Fourth InternationalWorkshopon Cooperative Information Agents, held in Boston Massachusetts, USA, July 7-9, 2000. Cooperative information agent research and development focused originally onaccessingmultiple, heterogeneous, anddistributedinformationsources. Ga- ingaccesstothesesystems, throughInternetsearchengines, applicationprogram interfaces, wrappers, and web-based screens has been an important focus of - operative intelligent agents. Research has also focused on the integration of this information into a coherent model that combined data and knowledge from the multiple sources. Finally, this information is disseminated to a wide audience, giving rise to issues such as data quality, information pedigree, source reliability, information security, personal privacy, and information value. Research in - operative information agents has expanded to include agent negotiation, agent communities, agent mobility, as well as agent collaboration for information d- covery in constrained environments. TheinterdisciplinaryCIAworkshopseriesencompassesa widevarietyoft- ics dealing with cooperative information agents. All workshop proceedings have been published by Springer as Lecture Notes in Arti?cial Intelligence, Volumes 1202 (1997), 1435 (1998), and 1652 (1999), respectively. This year, the theme of the CIA workshop was The Future of Information Agents in Cyberspace, a very ?tting topic as the use of agents for information gathering, negotiation, correlation, fusion, and dissemination becomes ever more prevalent. We noted a marked trend in CIA 2000 towards addressing issues related to communities of agents that: (1) negotiate for information resources, (2) build robust ontologies to enhance search capabilities, (3) communicate for planning and problem so- ing, (4) learn and evolve based on their experiences, and (5) assume increasing degrees of autonomy in the control of complex systems."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Cooperative Information Systems, CIA'99, held in Uppsala, Sweden in July/August 1999.
The 16 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 46 submissions. Also included are ten invited contributions by leading experts. The volume is divided in sections on information discovery and management on the Internet; information agents on the Internet-prototypes systems and applications; communication and collaboration, mobile information agents; rational information agents for electronic business; service mediation and negotiation; and adaptive personal assistance.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Cooperative Information Systems, CIA'98, held in cognition with Agents World in July 1998 in Paris.
The book presents nine invited contributions together with 14 revised full papers selected from a total of 54 submissions. The book is divided in parts on systems and applications; issues of design, querying, and communication; rational cooperation and electronic commerce; adaptive and collaborative information gathering; and mobile information agents in the internet.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents - DAI Meets Databases, CIA-97, held in Kiel, Germany, in February 1997.
The book opens with 6 invited full papers by internationally leading researchers surveying the state of the art in the area. The 16 revised full research papers presented were carefully selected during a highly competitive round of reviewing. The papers are organized in topical sections on databases and agent technology, agents for database search and knowledge discovery, communication and cooperation among information agents, and agent-based access to heterogeneous information sources.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th German Conference on Multiagent System Technologies, MATES 2016, held in Klagenfurt, Austria, in September 2016. 12 long papers and 5 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 28 submissions. MATES 2016 conference talks covered a broad area of topics of interest including MAS engineering and modeling, issues of human-agent interaction, collaboration and coordination, agent-based adaptation and optimization, and applications of MAS, in particular in the smart energy domain.

ThesearetheproceedingsoftheGermanconferenceonMultiagentSystemTe- nologies(MATES2003), whichwasthe?rstconferenceorganizedbytheGerman specialinterestgrouponDistributedArti?cialIntelligencetopromotethetheory and application of agents and multiagent systems. Its goals were to cover the whole range from the theory to applications of agent and multiagent technology and re?ect the national and international state of the art. The conference p- vided an excellent interdisciplinary forum for both researchers and members of business and industry to present and discuss the latest advances in theoretical work on and prototyped or ?elded systems of intelligent agents. Building on the sequence of agent-related events in Germany in the past, such as VDI 1998 (Chemnitz), VertIS 2001 (Bamberg), and KI 2002 (Aachen), MATES 2003 was exclusively devoted to agents and multiagent systems, and the cro- fertilization between agent theory and application. In addition, it built on the success of the past international workshop on "Agent Technology and Software Engineering (AgeS 2002)," and the international symposium on "Multiagent Systems, LargeComplexSystems, andE-Businesses"(MALCEB2002).MATES 2003 was co-located with the fourth international Net.ObjectDays conference in an exciting event held in Erfurt during September 22-24. The MATES 2003 conference featured a sequence of regular and invited talks of excellence given by leading experts in the ?eld. Among these were two k- notes, an invited talk and 18 paper presentations selected from 49 submissions.