The eagerly anticipated updated resource on one of the most important areas of research and development: multi-agent systems 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. Introduces you to the concept of agents and multi-agent systems and the main applications for which they are appropriate Discusses the main issues surrounding the design of intelligent agents and a multi-agent society Delves into a number of typical applications for agent technology Addresses deductive reasoning agents, practical reasoning agents, reactive and hybrid agents, and more Reviews multi-agent decision making, communication and cooperation, and intelligent autonomous agents 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.