Guest Editorial

Excerpt

As the boundaries of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems continue to expand, there is an increasing need for agents to interact with humans. To date, the field of multi-agent systems has matured from conceptual models to real-world applications (e.g., energy and sustainability, disaster management, or health care). One significant challenge that arises when transitioning from conceptual models to applications is addressing how people will interact with these systems. To this end, this special issue examines major challenges at the intersection of human–agent systems. In particular, we focus on the challenges of designing and modelling human–agent interaction. Design challenges typically take a human-centric view of human–agent systems and focuses on human–agent coordination mechanisms, trust issues in human–agent interaction, interaction techniques, and human activity recognition. Modelling challenges are concerned with finding better models of human behaviour in a variety of settings so that autonomous and multi-agent systems can appropriately interact with human agents (e.g., agent–human negotiation strategies or health care agents encouraging physical therapy for a variety of recovering patients). …