Application Impact of Multi-agent Systems and Technologies: A Survey

While there is ample evidence that Multiagent Systems and Technologies (MAS&T) are vigorous as a research area, it is unclear what practical application impact this research area has accomplished to date. In this chapter, we describe method and results of a survey aiming at a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of deployed examples of MAS&T. We collected and analyzed 152 applications, covering important perspectives, such as ownership, maturity, vertical sectors, and usage of programming languages and agent platforms. We conclude that MAS&T have been successfully deployed in a significant number of applications, though mostly in what could be called niche markets. Off the spotlights of mass markets and current funding buzzwords, it appears that MAS&T is useful for various sectors. Note: This is a preliminary authors’ copy of a paper to appear in the forthcoming book Agent-Oriented Software Engineering edited by Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, to be published in the Springer Software Engineering book series, see http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/book/978-3-642-54431-6. Please use the citation information provided on the official Springer site to refer to this paper.