Multi-agent systems allow many intelligent agents to interact with each other, and this field of study has advanced at a rapid pace since the publication of the first edition of this book, which was nearly a decade ago. With this exciting new edition, the coverage of multi-agents is completely updated to include several areas that have come to prominence in the last several years, including auctions, computational social choice, and markov decision processes. In turn, a variety of topics that were initially considered critical have dwindled in importance, so the coverage of that subject matter is decreased with this new edition. The result of this redefined balance of coverage is a timely and essential resource on a popular topic.
By the end of the book, you will have a firm grasp on how agents are distinct from other software paradigms and understand the characteristics of applications that lend themselves to agent-oriented software.
