This book addresses the question of how to achieve social coordination in Socio-Cognitive Technical Systems (SCTS). SCTS are a class of Socio-Technical Systems that are complex, open, systems where several humans and digital entities interact in order to achieve some collective endeavour. The book approaches the question from the conceptual background of regulated open multiagent systems, with the question being motivated by their design and construction requirements. The book captures the collective effort of eight groups from leading research centres and universities, each of which has developed a conceptual framework for the design of regulated multiagent systems and most have also developed technological artefacts that support the processes from specification to implementation of that type of systems. The first, introductory part of the book describes the challenge of developing frameworks for SCTS and articulates the premises and the main concepts involved in those frameworks. The second part discusses the eight frameworks and contrasts their main components. The final part maps the new field by discussing the types of activities in which SCTS are likely to be used, the features that such uses will exhibit, and the challenges that will drive the evolution of this field.

This book addresses the question of how to achieve social coordination in Socio-Cognitive Technical Systems (SCTS). SCTS are a class of Socio-Technical Systems that are complex, open, systems where several humans and digital entities interact in order to achieve some collective endeavour. The book approaches the question from the conceptual background of regulated open multiagent systems, with the question being motivated by their design and construction requirements. The book captures the collective effort of eight groups from leading research centres and universities, each of which has developed a conceptual framework for the design of regulated multiagent systems and most have also developed technological artefacts that support the processes from specification to implementation of that type of systems. The first, introductory part of the book describes the challenge of developing frameworks for SCTS and articulates the premises and the main concepts involved in those frameworks. The second part discusses the eight frameworks and contrasts their main components. The final part maps the new field by discussing the types of activities in which SCTS are likely to be used, the features that such uses will exhibit, and the challenges that will drive the evolution of this field.

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Multi-agent systems (MAS) are often understood as complex entities where a multitude of agents interact, usually with some intended individual or collective goals.Such a view usually assumessomeform of organization, or set of norms or conventions that articulate or restrain interactions in order to make them more e?ective, certain, or predictable for participants. Engineering e?ective coordi- tion or regulatory mechanisms is a key problem for the design of open complex multi-agent systems. In recent years, social and organizational aspects of agency have become a major issue in MAS research especially in applications on service-oriented c- puting, grid computing and ambient intelligence. These applications enforce the need for using these aspects in order to ensure social order within these en- ronments. Openness, heterogeneity, and scalability of MAS pose new demands on traditional MAS interaction models. Therefore, the view of coordination and controlhasto be expanded to consider not onlyan agent-centricperspective but also societal and organization-centric views. However, agent autonomy is often needed for concretely implementing social order, because autonomousagents can intelligently adapt the designedorgani- tion to particular cases and can face unpredicted events. From this perspective autonomy can also be a possible source of internal change in the designed or- nizational constructs. Di?erently, autonomous behavior can also originate forms of self-organizationwhich emerge out of local interactions and are only partially externally programmed. In such situations the self-organized order and the - ternally designed organization can even be in con?ic

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2006, held as two events at AAMAS 2006, the 5th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems in Hakodate, Japan, and ECAI 2006, the 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Riva del Garda, Italy.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Agents, Norms and Institutions for Regulated Multiagent Systems, ANIREM 2005, and the International Workshop on Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems, OOOP 2005, held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2005. This is the first volume in a new series on issues in Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms (COIN) in multi-agent systems. Topics include modeling, analyzing and programming organizations and more.

The main concepts and techniques of multi-agent oriented programming, which supports the multi-agent systems paradigm at the programming level.A multi-agent system is an organized ensemble of autonomous, intelligent, goal-oriented entities called agents, communicating with each other and interacting within an environment. This book introduces the main concepts and techniques of multi-agent oriented programming, (MAOP) which supports the multi-agent systems paradigm at the programming level. MAOP provides a structured approach based on three integrated dimensions, which the book examines in detail: the agent dimension, used to design the individual (interacting) entities; the environment dimension, which allows the development of shared resources and connections to the real world; and the organization dimension, which structures the interactions among the autonomous agents and the shared environment. The book puts the approach into practice using the JaCaMo programming model and platform. It employs an easy-to-follow, step-by-step style, showing solutions to increasingly complex scenarios. The book also discusses the integration of MAOP into existing technologies and application domains, including mobile computing, web-based computing, and robotics. Finally, it considers artificial intelligence (AI)-related classical problems from an MAOP perspective and discusses an agent-oriented approach to software engineering.