Preface

Abstract

The pervasiveness of open systems raises a range of challenges and opportunities for research and technological development in the area of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Open systems comprise loosely coupled entities interacting within a social space. These entities join the social space in order to achieve some goals that are unattainable by agents in isolation. However, when those entities are autonomous, they might misbehave and, furthermore, in open systems one may not know what entities will be active beforehand, when they may become active, or when they may leave the system.