PREFACE
This volume collects the papers of the 15st Hungarian
Conference on Agent-Based Computing (HUNABC '98), held between 29th and
31st of May 1998 at the Central European University, Budapest. This event
was the first of a planned series intending to bring the attention of Central
European scientists and professionals to this flourishing new field of
computer technology.
The event received an exceptional interest not only from
the region, but from all over the world, which is clearly shown by the
number of the works received. The submissions were reviewed and selected
according to their relevance, and their contribution to the conference's
overall goal of giving as broad an overview of the field as possible. In
addition to the presentations of the conference, this volume includes the
written form of the invited lectures and some works whose author's personal
difficulties had made their presence impossible.
In accordance with the conference's broad scope, the papers
in this volume cover a wide range of agent-related scientific topics and
miss the rather sharp focus, which is usual in case of such material. In
spite of this, editing this book we have tried to group these works according
to their main theme, which in fact resulted in sections corresponding to
the focus of agent-related research. In the case of some papers this placing
may seem a bit controversial, as some works really cross-cut the boundaries
of the major research directions which is common in the agent research
world.
