This paper presents a brief summary of the post-proceedings of the special session on practical applications held in the framework of IWANN 2009. The special session was supported by the THOMAS (TIN2006-14630-C03-03) project and aims at presenting the results obtained…

This paper describes a multi-agent based simulation (MABS) framework to construct an artificial electric power market populated with learning agents. The artificial market, named TEMMAS (The Electricity Market Multi-Agent Simulator), explores the integration of two design constructs: i) the specification…

Multi-agent systems are composed of autonomous entities that cooperate forming emergent behaviors. The communication between agents is sometimes unpredictable, and the resulting communication patterns can become crucial in their performance. This paper presents a metrics suite for evaluating the communication…

A paradigm for modelling and analysing Home Automation Systems is introduced, based on Multi-Agent System theory. A rich and versatile environment for Home Automation System simulation is constructed for investigating the performances of the system. The exploitation of limited resources…

This article presents a case study in which the THOMAS architecture is applied in order to obtain a multi-agent system (MAS) that can provide recommendations and guidance in a shopping mall. THOMAS is made up of a group of related…

Mobile agent technology has traditionally been recognized as a very useful approach to build applications for mobile computing and wireless environments. However, only a few studies report practical experiences with mobile agents in a mobile medium. This leads us to…

This paper introduces the development of an infrastructure to study highly complex systems of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) which involve a large number of users. The key ideas about the development of a multi-agent based simulation (MABS) for such purposes, Ubik,…

In this paper we will propose the use of social robots as interface between users and services in a Smart Environment. We will focus on the need for a robot to recognize the user’s feedback, in order to respond and…

A major challenge in deploying robots into the real world is the design of an architectural framework which can provide extended, natural and effective interactions with people. Within this framework, key issues that need to be solved relate to the…

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…