This modern field of multi-agent systems has developed from two main lines of earlier research: its practitioners generally regard it as a form of distributed artificial intelligence, whereas some researchers have persistently advocated ideas from the field of artificial life. AI agents (and their designers) usually take the environment for agent interaction as granted. From the ALife perspective and for ALife agents, the environment for interaction is an active participant in agent dynamics, a first class member of the overall systems.

This book originates from the First International Workshop on Environments for Multi-Agent Systems, E4MAS 2004, held in New York, NY, USA in July 2004 as a satellite workshop of AAMAS 2004. The 13 carefully selected reviewed and revised papers presented together with an introductory survey article of close to 50 pages are organized in topical sections on conceptual models, language for design and specification, simulation and environments, mediated coordination, and applications.