This book aims to provide readers with up-to-date knowledge on how to make these technologies smarter. Humanity is now going through difficult times to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, in these difficult times of physical separation, we can also realize how much digital society technology helps us cope with many difficulties that bring us this time. The authors focus on selected research challenges for intelligent digital society and state-of-the-art methods of how to face them. The book's subtitle suggests that a core concept that the reader can study from various points of view in particular book chapters is the knowledge. The knowledge that can help us intelligently face different digital society challenges (Part I of this book); the knowledge extracted from available big data employing intelligent analysis techniques (Part II). For efficient processing and analysis of data, there is a strong need for smart data and information modeling techniques (Part III).

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2013, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in August 2013, in conjunction with DEXA 2013. The 25 revised full papers presented together with two invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: MAS in automation and manufacturing; design, simulation and validation; MAS in transportation systems; industrial applications; and new trends.

Knowledge and Technology Integration in Production and Services presents novel application scenarios for balanced distributed and integrated systems based on knowledge and up-to-date technology and provides a great opportunity for discussion of concepts, models, methodologies, technological developments, case studies, new research ideas, and other results among specialists. It comprises the proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information Technology for BALANCED AUTOMATION SYSTEMS in Manufacturing and Services (BASYS'02), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in September 2002 in Cancun, Mexico.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2011, held in Toulouse, France, August 29-31, 2011.
The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on industrial agents, simulation and modelling, planning and scheduling, smart technical systems, and MAS for unmanned aerial vehicles.

The research of holonic and agent-based systems is developing very rapidly. The community around this R&D topic is also growing fast - despite the fact that the real-life practical implementations of such systems are still surprisingly rare. H- ever, the managers in different branches of industry feel that the holonic and agent-based systems represent the only way of managing and controlling very c- plex, highly distributed systems exploring vast volumes of accumulated knowledge. The relevant research and development activities gain more and more visible support from both industry as well as public sectors. Quite naturally, the number of scientific events aimed at the subject field is also growing rapidly. We see new lines of conf- ences like INDIN, we observe a strong focus of the already well-established conferences, e. g. , INCOM or ETFA, being shifted toward holonic and agent-based manufacturing systems. We see an increased interest of the IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics Society, especially its Technical Committee on Distributed Intelligent Systems which leverages the experience gathered by the members of the former Ho- nic Manufacuting Systems (HMS) consortium. We see a clear orientation of the IEEE SMC Transactions, part C, toward applications of agent-oriented solutions. The same is true of the International Journal on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (JAAMAS). This is a really good sign of the increasing importance of the field.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2007, held in Regensburg, Germany, September 3 - 5, 2007.

The 39 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 63 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on theoretical and methodological issues, algorithms and technologies, implementation and validation aspects, applications, and supply chain management.

The challenge faced in today s manufacturing and business environments is the question of how to satisfy increasingly stringent customer requirements while managing growing system complexity. For example, customers expect high-quality, customizable, low-cost products that can be delivered quickly. The systems that deliver these expectations are by nature distributed, concurrent, and stochastic, and, as a result, increasingly difficult to manage. Unfortunately, the traditional hierarchical, strictly centralized approach to control used in these domains is characteristically inflexible, fragile, and difficult to maintain. These shortcomings have led to the development of a new class of manufacturing and supply-chain decision-making approaches in recent years. Solutions based on these approaches usually explore a set of highly distributed decision-making units that are capable of autonomous operations while cooperating interactively to resolve larger problems. The units, referred to as agents in classical computer science and software engineering, or holons if physically integrated with the manufacturing hardware, interact by exchanging information. These units are motivated by arriving at local solutions as well as collaborating and sharing resources and goals in solving the overall problem in question collectively."

The increasing complexity of manufacturing systems as well as the overall demands for flexible and fault-tolerant control of production processes stimulates (among many others) two key emerging technologies that are already making an important breakthrough in the field of intelligent manufacturing, control, and diagnostics. These two paradigms are: * the holonic approach based on the event-driven control strategy, usually aimed at modular control systems that are directly physically linked with the manufacturing hardware equipment, and * the multi-agent approach developed in the area of distributed information processing. The research communities working in both these fields are approaching the problem of intelligent manufacturing from different viewpoints and, until recently, to a certain extent, in an independent way. We can however observe quite a clear convergence of these fields in the last few years: the communities have started to cooperate, joining efforts to solve the painful problems involved in achieving effective industrial practice. We can see convergence in the terminology, standards and methods being applied.

The refereed proceedings of the International Central and Eastern European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, CEEMAS 2003, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in June 2003. The 58 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 109 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on formal methods, social knowledge and meta-reasoning, negotiation, and policies, ontologies and languages, planning, coalitions, evolution and emergent behaviour, platforms, protocols, security, real-time and synchronization, industrial applications, e-business and virtual enterprises, and Web and mobile agents.

Knowledge and Technology Integration in Production and Services presents novel application scenarios for balanced distributed and integrated systems based on knowledge and up-to-date technology and provides a great opportunity for discussion of concepts, models, methodologies, technological developments, case studies, new research ideas, and other results among specialists. It comprises the proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information Technology for BALANCED AUTOMATION SYSTEMS in Manufacturing and Services (BASYS'02), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in September 2002 in Cancun, Mexico.

This book presents a collection of thoroughly refereed papers drawn together from three meetings on multi-agent systems.Five of the tutorial lectures included were presented at the ACAI/EASSS 2001 summer school on MAS, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in July 2001; seven revised reviewed student papers dealing with various aspects of MAS are included as well. A workshop on Adaptability and Embodiment using MAS, AEMAS 2001, also held in Prague, Czech Republic, concurrently with the ACAI/EASSS summer school, is represented by three papers. Finally, a further nine papers were selected from an International Workshop on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2001, held in Munich, Germany, in September 2001.

The Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence ACAI 2001 with the subtitle M ulti- Agent Systems and Their Applications , held in Prague, Czech Republic, was a joint event of ECCAI (the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence) and AgentLink, the European Network of Excellence for Agent-Based Computing. Whereas ECCAI organizes two-week ACAI courses on different topics every second year, AgentLink s European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) has been an annual event since 1999. This year, both of these important events were merged together, giving weight to the fact that multi-agent systems currently represent one of the hottest topics in AI research. The name, ACAI 2001 Summer School, is intended to emphasize that this event continues the tradition of regular ECCAI activities (ACAI), as well as the EASSS summer schools of AgentLink. The Prague ACAI Summer School was proposed and initiated by both the Gerstner Laboratory, Czech Technical University, Prague (GL-CTU) and the Czech Society for Cybernetics and Informatics (CSKI), with the support of the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna (OFAI). Part of our motivation was catalyzed by experience gained in 1992 during the International Summer School Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence (see Springer s LNAI vol. 617) which was organized by the same Czech and Austrian bodies. One of the most important stimulating factors behind the organization of ACAI 2001 was the support provided by the European Commission to the Gerstner Laboratory within the frame of the MIRACLE Center of Excellence project (IST No.

This book presents a modern and attractive approach to computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) by stressing the crucial role of information management aspects. The 31 contributions contained constitute the final report on the EC Project TEMPUS No. 2609 aimed at establishing a new curriculum and regular education in the new field of information management in CIM at European universities.
Much attention was paid to the style of writing and coverage of the important issues. Thus the book is particularly suited as a text for students and young scientists approaching CIM from different directions; at the same time, it is a comprehensive guide for industrial engineers in machine engineering, computer science, control engineering, artificial intelligence, production management, etc.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA), held in Prague, Czech Republic, in September 1993. Traditionally the objective of the DEXA conferences is to serve as an international forum for the discussion and exchange of research results and practical experinece among theoreticians and professionals working in the field of database and artificial intelligence technologies. Despite the fact that in the conference title the applications aspect is mentioned explicitly, the theoretical and the practical points of view in the field are well-balanced in the program of DEXA'93. The growing importance of the conference series is outlined by the remarkably high number of 269 submissions and by the support given by renown organizations. DEXA'93 is held for the first time outside the former GDR in an East-European country, and is essentially contributing to the advancement of the East-West scientific cooperation in the field of database and AI systems. This proceedings contains the 78 contributed papers carefully selected by an international program committee with thesupport of a high number of subreferees. The volume is organized in sectionson data models, distributed databases, advanced database aspects, database optimization and performance evaluation, spatial and geographic databases, expert systems and knowledge engineering, legal systems, other database and artificial intelligence applications, software engineering, and hypertext/hypermedia and user interfaces.

This volume contains the texts of 26 lectures and contributions to the program of the International Summer School on Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, July 6-17, 1992. The summerschool was intended for (postgraduate) students, researchers and all those who want to learn about recent progress in both theoretical and applied AI. The papers in the volume are organized into nine parts: - Introduction - Logic and logic programming - Machine learning - Planning and scheduling - Uncertainty - Second generation expert systemsand knowledge engineering - Qualitative reasoning - Neurocomputing -Natural language and interfaces

This volume presents the written versions of talks delivered at the symposium "The advent of AI in Higher Education" held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, October 23-25, 1989. Contributions review the current impact of AI on the educational process, stressing the problems and needs of universities. Particular systems, projects and methodologies are de scribed with the aim of gathering and generalizing the experience obtained. The latest developments prove that AI offers interesting methods which could be used with success across a wider range in the domain of education. The nature and spirit of AI forms a new phenomenon which necessitates reconsidering the whole educational process. Papers in this volume describe sophisticated tutoring systems as well as suggestions for new curricula.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2019, held in Linz, Austria, in August 2019. The 14 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 15 submissions, and 2 invited papers were also included. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: invited talks; methodologies and framework; agent-based production scheduling and control; data and knowledge; and MAS in various areas.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2017, held in Lyon, France, in August 2017. The 19 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: scheduling; knowledge engineering; modeling, simulation and reconfiguration; energy systems;and MAS in various areas.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2015, held in Valencia, Spain, in September 2015. The 19 revised full papers presented together with one invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: surveys, conceptual design and validation, digital factories and manufacturing control systems, ARUM: adaptive production management, and smart grids, complex networks and big data.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applcations, DEXA 2003, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in September 2003. The 91 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper and a position paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 236 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on XML, data modeling, spatial database systems, mobile computing, transactions, bioinformatics, information retrieval, multimedia databases, Web applications, ontologies, object-oriented databases, query optimization, workflow systems, knowledge engineering, and security.