Agent Autonomy, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2003 Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations Series, Vol. 7

Autonomy is a characterizing notion of agents, and intuitively it is rather unambiguous. The quality of autonomy is recognized when it is perceived or experienced, yet it is difficult to limit autonomy in a definition. The desire to build agents that exhibit a satisfactory quality of autonomy includes agents that have a long life, are highly independent, can harmonize their goals and actions with humans and other agents, and are generally socially adept. Agent Autonomy is a collection of papers from leading international researchers that approximate human intuition, dispel false attributions, and point the way to scholarly thinking about autonomy. A wide array of issues about sharing control and initiative between humans and machines, as well as issues about peer level agent interaction, are addressed.

1. A Prospectus on Agent Autonomy.- 2. Autonomy: Variable and Generative.- 3. Representing and Analyzing Adaptive Decision-Making Frameworks.- 4. Quantifying Relative Autonomy in Multiagent Interaction.- 5. Obligations and Cooperation: Two Sides of Social Rationality.- 6. From Automaticity to Autonomy: The Frontier of Artificial Agents.- 7. Adjusting the Autonomy in Mixed-initiative Systems by Reasoning about Interaction.- 8. Interacting with IDA.- 9. Policy-based Agent Directability.- 10. Adjustable Autonomy for the Real World.- 11. Adjustable Autonomy and Human-Agent Teamwork in Practice: An Interim Report on Space Applications.