In this paper we present a novel approach to assigning roles to robots in a team of physical heterogeneous robots. Its members compete for these roles and get rewards for them. The rewards are used to determine each agent’s preferences…

Recent multi-robot exploration algorithms usually rely on occupancy grids as their core world representation. However, those grids are not appropriate for environments that are very large or whose boundaries are not well delimited from the beginning of the exploration. In…

In the last decade competitions proved to be a very efficient way of encouraging researchers to advance the state of the art in different research fields in artificial intelligence. In this paper we focus on the optional task of the…

Self-organising neural models have the ability to provide a good representation of the input space. In particular the Growing Neural Gas (GNG) is a suitable model because of its flexibility, rapid adaptation and excellent quality of representation. However, this type…

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…

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…

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…

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…