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Nowadays, the development of automated traffic systems has been gaining increasing attention, and a substantial amount of effort has been invested in trying to find a solution to problems associated with road transport. Among these problems are road accidents caused by human-related factors, such as tiredness, loss of control, a slow reaction time and limited field of view. Another transport-related problem is that of loss of time which may be caused by a slow driving speed due to weather conditions, road conditions, visibility, traffic congestion, etc. The general problem of automated road transportation system can be instantiated into more specific transportation domains, such as the transportation system in a city, in an airport, in a park, in a manufacturing plant. In this article, we present a holonic simulation environment for the Global Automated Transportation System in which a distributed multi-agent model is used to manage dynamic environments. The case study scenario presented in this article is related to a manufacturing plant. In this scenario, there are different transportation vehicles, such as automated guided vehicles, trucks, lift trucks and cars. These vehicles have different features that make the transportation planning a complex problem. Moreover, dynamic events are triggered to simulate anomalous situations in which a repairing process must be executed in order to maintain the transportation system into a security execution. The simulated results prove that a distributed multi-agent model for autonomous road transportation systems is a secure approach to manage critical situations and autonomous execution of different levels in the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports published within the issue including an article by Renna concerning cellular manufacturing system scheduling by multiagent architecture in real time, an article by Adbi and Labib concerning reconfigurable manufacturing systems utilizing a holonic architecture that can adapt to unpredictable changes, and an article by Nair and Vidal concerning the relationship between the topology of a supply network and the supply network's robustness in the presence of targeted attacks and random failures.

The urgent need for sustainable development is imposing radical changes in the way manufacturing systems are designed and implemented. The overall sustainability in industrial activities of manufacturing companies must be achieved at the same time that they face unprecedented levels of global competition. Therefore, there is a well-known need for tools and methods that can support the design and implementation of these systems in an effective way. This paper proposes an engineering method that helps researchers to design sustainable intelligent manufacturing systems. The approach is focused on the identification of the manufacturing components and the design and integration of sustainability-oriented mechanisms in the system specification, providing specific development guidelines and tools with built-in support for sustainable features. Besides, a set of case studies is presented in order to assess the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing interest on developing virtual enterprises in order to deal with the globalisation of the economy, the rapid growth of information technologies and the increase of competitiveness. In this paper we deal with the development of normative open virtual enterprises (NOVEs). They are systems with a global objective that are composed of a set of heterogeneous entities and enterprises that exchange services following a specific normative context. In order to analyse and design systems of this kind the multi-agent paradigm seems suitable because it offers a specific solution for supporting the social and contractual relationships between enterprises and for formalising their business processes. This paper presents how the Regulated Open Multi-agent systems (ROMAS) methodology, an agent-oriented software methodology, can be used to analyse and design NOVEs. ROMAS offers a complete development process that allows identifying and formalising of the structure of NOVEs, their normative context and the interactions among their members. The use of ROMAS is exemplified by means of a case study that represents an automotive supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increase in collaborative work and the decentralization of processes in many domains, there is an expanding demand for large-scale, flexible and adaptive software systems to support the interactions of people and institutions distributed in heterogeneous environments. Commonly, these software applications should follow specific regulations meaning the actors using them are bound by rights, duties and restrictions. Since this normative environment determines the final design of the software system, it should be considered as an important issue during the design of the system. Some agent-oriented software engineering methodologies deal with the development of normative systems (systems that have a normative environment) by integrating the analysis of the normative environment of a system in the development process. This paper analyses to what extent these methodologies support the analysis and formalisation of the normative environment and highlights some open issues of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a MAS-based infrastructure for the specification of a negotiation framework that handles multiple negotiation protocols in a coherent and flexible way. Although it may be used to implement one single type of agreement mechanism, it has been designed in such a way that multiple mechanisms may be available at any given time, to be activated and tailored on demand (on-line) by participating agents. The framework is also generic enough so that new protocols may be easily added. This infrastructure has been successfully used in a case study to implement a simulation tool as a component of a larger framework based on an electronic market of water rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes a CASE tool for developing complex systems in which heterogeneous and autonomous agents may need to coexist in a complex social and legal framework. Model-Driven Technologies are used to integrate the design of systems of this kind with the verification of the models and with the generation of executable code from these models. The verification module is based on model-checking techniques to check the coherence of a modeled legal context at design time is presented and it is exemplified with a case study. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Today, the need for architectures and computational models for large-scale open multi-agent systems is considered to be a key issue for the success of agent technology in real-world scenarios. This paper analyzes the significant unsolved problems that must be taken into account in order to develop real, open multi-agent systems. It identifies requirements and related open issues, discusses how some of these requirements have been tackled by current technologies, and explains how the THOMAS architecture is able to give support to these open issues. This paper also describes the THOMAS abstract architecture and computational model for large-scale open multi-agent systems based on a service-oriented approach that specifically addresses the design of virtual organizations. An application example for the management of a travel agency system, which demonstrates the new features of the proposal, is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]