Editorial: Why coordination models and languages in AI?

Abstract

The pervasive spreading of information technology, along with the continuously growing and almost ubiquitous request for intelligence in systems, is giving new life to AI research. At the same time, this introduces new issues in the AI field, like the engineering of intelligent systems, which calls for manageable abstractions, methodologies, and technologies effectively supporting engineers in the design, development, and deployment of intelligent systems. Interaction seems to be the most relevant feature of today's complex systems, so that new models and technologies are emerging that focus on engineering as an independent dimension in the modelling and engineering of hardware and software systems. In particular, research on coordination models and languages has provided computer scientists and engineers with abstractions and tools to model and shape the space of component interaction in multicomponent systems. In this article, the impact of coordination models and languages on the process of engineering intelligent systems is discussed, particularly when they are built and organized as multiagent systems. This topic is first speculated on in general, then some specific coordination issues in the context of intelligent systems are introduced, which are subsequently developed and discussed in the four articles constituting the remainder of this special issue.