Formal Methods for Coordinating Multi-Agent Systems (Dagstuhl Seminar 14332)

Abstract

This report documents the programme and outcomes of the Dagstuhl Serminar 14332 "Formal Methods for Coordinating Multi-Agent Systems", that took place from 10 to 14 August, 2014. This seminar brought together researchers from the following subfields of multi-agent systems: logic, game theory, and agreement technologies.  It is set up at the intersection of  these active fields of research and aimed at fostering collaborations between them. A key objective of the seminar has been to shed light on formal methods for coordinating multi-agent systems, in particular, how to combine research and tools from the different areas to obtain new techniques for coordinating the behavior of agents.  The coordination problem is a key problem in multi-agent systems: how can we coordinate the individual behaviour of the agents such that the global behaviour of the system as a whole satisfies our needs? Dagstuhl was an excellent venue to bring together leading researchers from logics, game theory, and agreement technologies to learn about their research activities, to discuss as well as to work on timely problems, and to establish new collaborations between researchers. The outcome of the working groups and discussions  provides promising avenues and open questions for future research in the field.