This special issue of the Journal of Physical Agents is devoted to human interaction with domestic robots. The form, features and future, of domestic robotic devices, from entertainment-based agents through to robotic cleaners, companions, assistants and helpers, are considered and…

An adaptive attention mechanism is a requirement when an autonomous robot has to deal with real world environments. In this paper we present a novel cognitive architecture which enables integrated and efficient filtering of multiple modality sensory information. The proposed…

Nowadays robots are being created that interact with human beings in order to satisfy certain social needs. Following this trend, the development of the social robot Probo has started. The robot will be used in hospitals, as a tele-interface for…

This paper presents a multi-robot mapping and localization system. Learning maps and efficient exploration of an unknown environment is a fundamental problem in mobile robotics usually called SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping problem). Our approach involves a team of mobile…

This paper presents a multiagent recommendation system (RecMAS) able to coordinate the interactions between a user agent (AgUser) and a set of commercial agents (AgComs). It provides a useful service for monitoring changes in the AgUser’s beliefs and decisions based…

This special issue of the Journal of Physical Agents is devoted to multi-robot systems. Some might perhaps argue that the term should have been ”multi-agent systems” or ”physical multi-agent systems”, in accordance with the title of the journal. In any…

This paper briefly introduces a summary of the special session on Hybrid Reasoning and Coordination Methods on Multi-Agent Systems, held in conjunction with the 4th International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems 2009 (HAIS’09). The research papers of this session…

The Workshop of Physical Agents intends to be a forum for information and experience exchange in different areas regarding the concept of agent on physical environments, especially applied to the control and coordination of autonomous systems: robots, mobile robots, industrial…

Social knowledge is one of the key aspects of MAS in order to face complex problems in dynamical environments. However, it is usually incorporated without specific support on behalf of the platform and that does not let agents take all…

Open societies are situated in dynamic environments and are formed by heterogeneous autonomous agents. In order to ensure social order, norms have been employed as coordination mechanisms. However, the dynamical features of open systems may cause that norms loose their…