Abstract
Recently on the borderline between computer science, software engineering and artificial intelligence the subject of intelligent agents has become in the limelight very much, cf. [WJ94]. Interestingly much work has been done on both the foundations and practical applications of agent technology. However, as yet there remains a big gap between these two in the sense that it is not obvious at all how the foundational work on agent logics and other formalisms relate to the practice of designing and implementing agent-based systems for such applications as the web and other user assistants more in general, but also for the control of hardware entities such as intelligent robots. In this paper we will discuss some of the work that has been done on the foundations of agents as well as the problems that remain to ‘bridge the gap’ between theory and practice.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35500-9_30
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Meyer, JJ.C. (2000). Keynote Address: Formal and Informal Aspects of Intelligent Agent-based Systems. In: Falkenberg, E.D., Lyytinen, K., Verrijn-Stuart, A.A. (eds) Information System Concepts: An Integrated Discipline Emerging. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 36. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35500-9_26
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