This book constitutes revised, selected, and invited papers from the 4th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems, EMAS 2016, held in Singapore, in May 2016, in conjunction with AAMAS. The 10 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. The book also contains 2 invited papers; extended versions of AAMAS 2016 demonstration abstracts. EMAS deals with MAS software engineering processes, methodologies and techniques; Programming languages for MAS; Formal methods and declarative technologies for the specification, validation and verification of MAS; and development tools.

This book presents a coherent, well-balanced survey of recent advances in software engineering approaches to the design and analysis of realistic large-scale multi-agent systems (MAS). The chapters included are devoted to various techniques and methods used to cope with the complexity of real-world MAS. Reflecting the importance of agent properties in today's software systems, the power of agent-based software engineering is illustrated using examples that are representative of successful applications.

The aim of the CEEMAS conference series is to provide a biennial forum for the presentation of multi-agent research and development results. With its p- ticular geographicalorientation towards Central and Eastern Europe, CEEMAS has become an internationally recognised event with participants from all over the world. After the successful CEEMAS conferences in St. Petersburg (1999), Cracow (2001) and Prague (2003), the 2005 CEEMAS conference takes place in Budapest. The programme committee of the conference series consists of est- lished researchers from the region and renowned international colleagues, sh- ing the prominent rank of CEEMAS among the leading events in multi-agent systems. In the very competitive ?eld of agent oriented conferences and workshops nowadays(suchasAAMAS,WI/IAT,EUMAS,CIA,MATES)thespecialpro?le of CEEMAS is that it is trying to bridge the gap between applied research achievements and theoretical research activities. Our ambition is to provide a forum for presenting theoretical research with an evident application potential, implemented application prototypes and their properties, as well as industrial case studies of successful (but also unsuccessful) agent technology deployments. This is why the CEEMAS proceedings volume provides a collection of research and application papers. The technical research paper section of the proceedings (see pages 11–499) contains pure research papers as well as research results in application settings while the application papers section (see pages 500–530) contains papers focused on application aspects. The goal is to demonstrate the real life value and commercial reality of multi-agent systems as well as to foster communication between academia and industry in this ?eld.

Methodological Guidelines for Modeling and Developing MAS-Based Simulations The intersection of agents, modeling, simulation, and application domains has been the subject of active research for over two decades. Although agents and simulation have been used effectively in a variety of application domains, much of the supporting research remains scattered in the literature, too often leaving scientists to develop multi-agent system (MAS) models and simulations from scratch. Multi-Agent Systems: Simulation and Applications provides an overdue review of the wide ranging facets of MAS simulation, including methodological and application-oriented guidelines. This comprehensive resource reviews two decades of research in the intersection of MAS, simulation, and different application domains. It provides scientists and developers with disciplined engineering approaches to modeling and developing MAS-based simulations. After providing an overview of the field’s history and its basic principles, as well as cataloging the various simulation engines for MAS, the book devotes three sections to current and emerging approaches and applications. Simulation for MAS — explains simulation support for agent decision making, the use of simulation for the design of self-organizing systems, the role of software architecture in simulating MAS, and the use of simulation for studying learning and stigmergic interaction. MAS for Simulation — discusses an agent-based framework for symbiotic simulation, the use of country databases and expert systems for agent-based modeling of social systems, crowd-behavior modeling, agent-based modeling and simulation of adult stem cells, and agents for traffic simulation. Tools — presents a number of representative platforms and tools for MAS and simulation, including Jason, James II, SeSAm, and RoboCup Rescue. Complete with over 200 figures and formulas, this reference book provides the necessary overview of experiences with MAS simulation and the tools needed to exploit simulation in MAS for future research in a vast array of applications including home security, computational systems biology, and traffic management.

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.

Multi-agent system (MAS) is an expanding field in science and engineering. It merges classical fields like game theory with modern ones like machine learning and computer science. This book provides a succinct introduction to the subject, covering the theoretical fundamentals as well as the latter developments in a coherent and clear manner. The book is centred on practical applications rather than introductory topics. Although it occasionally makes reference to the concepts involved, it will do so primarily to clarify real-world applications. The inner chapters cover a wide spectrum of issues related to MAS uses, which include collision avoidance, automotive applications, evacuation simulation, emergence analyses, cooperative control, context awareness, data (image) mining, resilience enhancement and the management of a single-user multi-robot.