Emergent Intelligence of Networked Agents (Hardcover, 2007 ed.)

Recently, the study of intelligenceemerged from interactionsamong many agentshasbeenpopular. Inthisstudyitisrecognizedthatanetworkstructure oftheagentsplaysanimportantrole. Thecurrentstate-of-theartinage- based modeling tends to be a mass of agents that have a series of states thattheycanexpressasaresultofthenetworkstructureinwhichtheyare embedded. Agentinteractionsofallkindsareusuallystructuredwithcomplex networks. Researchoncomplexnetworksfocusesonscale-freenessofvarious kindofnetworks. Computationalmodelingofdynamicagentinteractionsonrichlystr- turednetworksisimportantforunderstandingthesometimescounter-intuitive dynamicsofsuchlooselycoupledsystemsofinteractions. Yetourtoolsto model, understand, andpredictdynamicagentinteractionsandtheirbe- vioroncomplexnetworkshavelaggedfarbehind. Evenrecentprogressin networkmodelinghasnotyeto?eredusanycapabilitytomodeldynamic processesamongagentswhointeractatallscalesonsuchassmall-worldand scale-freenetworks. Generallythehigh-dimensional, non-linearnatureofthe resultingnetwork-centricmulti-agentsystemsmakesthemdi?cultorimp- sibletoanalyzeusingtraditionalmethods. Agentsfollowlocalrulesunder complexnetworkconstraints. Theideaofcombiningmulti-agentsystemsand complexnetworksisalsoparticularlyrichandfreshtofostertheresearchon thestudyofverylarge-scalemulti-agentsystems. Weintendtoturnthisintoanengineeringmethodologytodesigncomplex agentnetworks. Multi-agentnetworkdynamicsinvolvesthestudyofmany agents, constituentcomponentsgenerallyactiveoneswithasimplestructures andwhosebehaviorisassumedtofollowlocalrules, andtheirinteractionson complexnetwork. Abasicmethodologyistospecifyhowtheagentsinteract, andthenobserveemergentintelligencethatoccuratthecollectivelevelin ordertodiscoverbasicprinciplesandkeymechanismsforunderstandingand shapingtheresultingintelligentbehavioronnetworkdynamics. Thevolumecontainsrefereedpapersaddressingvariousimportanttopics thataimsattheinvestigationofemergentintelligenceonnetworkedagents. vi Preface Especiallymostpapershighlightonthetopicssuch"networkformationamong agents," "in?uenceofnetworkstructuresonagents," "network-basedcoll- tivephenomenaandemergentintelligenceonnetworkedagents." TheselectedpapersofthisvolumewerepresentedattheWorkshopon EmergentIntelligenceofNetworkedAgents(WEIN06)attheFifthInt- nationalJointConferenceonAutonomousAgentsandMulti-agentSystems (AAMAS2006), whichwasheldatFutureUniversity, Hakodate, Japan, from May8to12,2006. WEIN06isconcernedwithemergenceofintelligentbe- viorsovernetworkedagents andfosteringtheformationofanactivemul- disciplinarycommunityonmulti-agentsystemsandcomplexnetworks. We especiallyintendedtoincreasetheawarenessofresearchersinthesetwo?elds sharingthecommonviewoncombiningagent-basedmodelingandcomplex networksinordertodevelopinsightandfosterpredictivemethodologiesin studyingemergentintelligenceonofnetworkedagents. Fromthebroadsp- trumofactivities, leadingexpertspresentedimportantpaperandnumerous practicalproblemsappearthroughoutthisbook. Weinvitedhighqualityc- tributionsonawidevarietyoftopicsrelevanttothewideresearchareasof multi-agentnetworkdynamics. Weespeciallycoveredin-depthofimportant areas including: Adaptation and evolution in complex networks, Economic agentsandcomplexnetworks, Emergenceincomplexnetworks, Emergent- telligenceinmulti-agentsystems, Collectiveintelligence, Learningandevo- tioninmulti-agentsystems, Webdynamicsascomplexnetworks, Multi-agent basedsupplynetworks, Network-centricagentsystems, Scalabilityinmul- agentsystems, Scale-freenetworks, Small-worldnetworks.