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Application Impact of Multi-agent Systems and Technologies: A Survey

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Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

Abstract

While there is ample evidence that Multi-agent Systems and Technologies (MAS&T) are vigorous as a research area, it is unclear what practical application impact this research area has accomplished to date. In this chapter, we describe methods and results of a survey aiming at a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of deployed examples of MAS&T. We collected and analyzed 152 applications, covering important perspectives, such as ownership, maturity, vertical sectors, and usage of programming languages and agent platforms. We conclude that MAS&T have been successfully deployed in a significant number of applications, though mostly in what could be called niche markets. Off the spotlights of mass markets and current funding buzzwords, it appears that MAS&T is useful for various sectors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    www.agentlink.org.

  2. 2.

    Note we have not included players such as Telecom Italia or Telefonica I+D in this list because, while they are using agent technology in their operations, their business does not build on it.

  3. 3.

    http://www.whitestein.com/.

  4. 4.

    http://aosgrp.com/.

  5. 5.

    http://aosgrp.com/.

  6. 6.

    http://www.iopenermedia.com/.

  7. 7.

    According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdWords.

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Acknowledgements

Numerous people, agent researchers and practitioners alike, have contributed to this work by participating in the online survey, thus pointing us to a large number of interesting applications, by providing information about applications they have been involved in, by email and in some cases via phone interviews. We are indebted to Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, Ana Bazzan, Ladislau Bölöni, Francois Bousquet, Jeff Bradshaw, Jean-Pierre Briot, Birgit Burmeister, Stefan Bussmann, Giovanni Caire, Jiri Chabera, David Clarke, Juan Manuel Corchado, Paul Davidsson, Keith Decker, Frank Dignum, Virginia Dignum, Klaus Dorer, Emad Eldeen Elakehal, Yehuda Elmaliah, Javier Garcia Algarra, Mike Georgeff, Maria Gini, Andrey Glaschenko, Jorge J. Gomez-Sanz, Amineh Gorbani, Danilo Gotta, Dominic Greenwood, Hiromitsu Hattori, Axel Hessler, Koen Hindriks, Benjamin Hirsch, Tom Holvoet, Michael Huhns, Nick Jennings, Catholijn Jonker, Olaf Junker, Gal Kaminka, Jan Keiser, Victor Lesser, Renato Levy, Andrew Lucas, Mike Luck, Philippe Mathieu, Peter McBurney, Felipe Meneguzzi, Tim Miller, Tsunenori Mine, Anabel Montero, Prabhu Natarajan, Bernhard Nebel, Pablo Noriega, Ingrid Nunes, James Odell, Steve Osborn, Julian Padget, Lin Padgham, David Parkes, Michal Pěchouček, Raymont Perrault, Valentin Robu, Alex Rogers, Tuomas Sandholm, Paul Scerri, Glenn Semmel, Alexei Sharpanskykh, Onn Shehory, Maarten Sierhuis, David Sislak, Petr Skobelev, Nikolaos Spanoudakis, Patrick Storms, Milind Tambe, Simon Thompson, Pavel Tichy, Luca Trione, Wim van Betsbrugge, M. Birna van Riemsdijk, Ondrej Vanek, Giuseppe Vizzari, Pavel Vrba, Michael Wellman, Danny Weyns, Michael Winikoff, and Peter Wurman.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, TU Clausthal, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

    Jörg P. Müller

  2. DFKI GmbH, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Klaus Fischer

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  1. Jörg P. Müller
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Correspondence to Jörg P. Müller .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Haifa Research Laboratory, Haifa, Israel

    Onn Shehory

  2. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Arnon Sturm

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Müller, J.P., Fischer, K. (2014). Application Impact of Multi-agent Systems and Technologies: A Survey. In: Shehory, O., Sturm, A. (eds) Agent-Oriented Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54432-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54432-3_3

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