Iberoamerican Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems (IBERAGENTS'2006)

The Iberoamerican Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems (Iberagents) started as an additional activity to the IBERAMIA conferences, in order to allow in-depth discussion on specific topics related to agent-based technology.

As in the previous editions (Xalapa, Toledo, Atibaia, Malaga, and Puebla), this workshop aims to promote current MAS research in Iberoamerican countries providing an open forum for exchanging ideas and debating research results. This year, the special theme of the workshop is multi-agent programming, although as usual any topics on agents is welcome. More concretely, we plan to have a special track dedicated to the discussion on concepts, architectures, properties, requirements, principles, and software tools that can have a significant impact on future programming technologies for multi-agent systems.

Most research in the MAS community has been devoted to analysis and design activities, and less attention has been given to the practical aspects of MAS development. Consequently, a gap has been created between MAS-oriented analysis, design, and specification of MAS applications and their implementations: MAS design is often given in terms of high-level abstract concepts such as organisations, roles, norms, and mentalistic concepts (e.g., beliefs, goals, and plans), but implementations of these abstractions are still mostly done in an ad hoc manner. The special track of Iberagents-2006 is of interest to researchers interested in bridging this gap by focusing on programming principles and technqiues that facilitate the implementation of MAS-oriented design and specification.