The autonomous agents and multi-agent systems domain was
very active and fruitful along the last decade, mainly due to the community
research efforts, with the organization of more than 50 workshops and a
yearly major international conference (AAMAS). Moreover, the domain has
reached the 3rd. place in IJCAI 2009 and the 2nd. place in ECAI 2010 in
the number of accepted full papers, thus revealing its high relevance within
the mainstream current research in the major field of Artificial Intelligence.
In this paper, we try to cover its five key elements (agents, environments,
interactions, organizations and users), after presenting a brief sketch of
its historical milestones. We conclude by pointing out the future aims of
research and the right place of negotiation and argumentation within the
context of the domain.
Keywords: Agency, Autonomy, Classification Grid, Coalition, Consilience,
Decision Theory, Distribution, Game Theory, Governance, Heuristics,
Pattern of Cooperation, Social Exchange.
