Title: Multi-agent systems: theory and applications survey

Authors: Nawfal Naciri; Mohamed Tkiouat

Addresses: Islamic Financial Engineering Laboratory (IFELab), Studies and Research Laboratory in Applied Mathematics (LERMA), Mohammadia School of Engineering, Mohamed V University, Rabat BP 765, Morocco ' Islamic Financial Engineering Laboratory (IFELab), Studies and Research Laboratory in Applied Mathematics (LERMA), Mohammadia School of Engineering, Mohamed V University, Rabat BP 765, Morocco

Abstract: Research in multi-agent systems (MAS) aims to understand how a set of autonomous entities called agents can organise themselves to solve problems, achieve tasks and produce global phenomena that agent cannot realise alone. The MAS represent a credible alternative to conventional approaches. Agent-based modelling used to represent computationally complex systems that can not be expressed easily in the form of mathematical equations. MAS draw its ideas from three areas: methods of logical reasoning of classical artificial intelligence (AI), process management work of distributed AI and the behavioural approach of artificial life. The first applications of multi-agent simulation appeared in the mid-1980s, and gradually covered a variety of domains, ranging from social science to ethology, ecology, biology, traffic and transport and manufacturing. The goal of this paper is to explore clearly the agent concept and MAS, and furthermore to show the interest of the use and the applications of multi-agent simulation.

Keywords: DAI; distributed artificial intelligence; agents; multi-agent systems; MAS; multi-agent simulation; agent-based modelling; agent-based systems; artificial life.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2015.074078

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2015 Vol.14 No.2, pp.145 - 167

Received: 13 May 2015
Accepted: 27 Oct 2015
Published online: 06 Jan 2016 *

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