coordination and despite the fact that each agent's set of nearest neighbors change with time as the system evolves. This paper provides a theoretical explanation for this observed behavior. In addition, convergence results are derived for several other similarly inspired models.

The advent of software agents gave rise to much discussion of just what such an agent is, and of how they differ from programs in general. Here we propose a formal definition of an autonomous agent which clearly distinguishes a software agent from just any program. We also offer the beginnings of a

This paper provides a theoretical framework for analysis of consensus algorithms for multi-agent networked systems with an emphasis on the role of directed information flow, robustness to changes in network topology due to link/node failures, time-delays, and performance guarantees. An overview

, scalability, and customizability. To address these issues, researchers are investigating a variety of innovative approaches. The most promising and intriguing ones are those based on the ability of moving code across the nodes of a network, exploiting the notion of mobile code. As an emerging research field

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Many emerging applications (e.g., teleconference, real-time information services, pay per view, distributed interactive simulation, and collaborative work) are based upon a group communications model, i.e., they require packet delivery from one or more authorized senders to a very large number

This paper provides an overview of research and development activities in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. It aims to identify key concepts and applications, and to indicate how they relate to one-another. Some historical context to the field of agent-based computing

We present the a-calculus, a calculus of communicating systems in which one can naturally express processes which have changing structure. Not only may the component agents of a system be arbitrarily linked, but a communication between neighbours may carry information which changes that linkage

Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover and take advantage of contextual information (such as user location, time of day, nearby people and devices, and user activity). Since it was proposed about a decade ago, many researchers have studied

, there have been few serious attempts to cast agent systems as a software engineering paradigm. This paper seeks to rectify this omission. Specifically, it will be argued that: (i) the conceptual apparatus of agent-oriented systems is well-suited to building software solutions for complex systems and (ii