Engineering Multi-agent Systems Anno 2025

Abstract

Modern software-intensive systems are increasingly blending cyber, physical, and social elements, demanding higher degrees of autonomy and adaptability than ever before. In combination with the ever growing integration and scale of systems, and the inherent uncertainties modern systems face, the principles from MAS engineering remain particularly attractive for engineering systems in a wide variety of domains today. In this chapter, we reflect on the role and potential of MAS engineering on a selection of key facets that characterize modern software engineering practice. We focus at facets that we believe are important in relation to MAS engineering. Concretely, we look at agile development, Cloud and edge computing, distributed ledgers and blockchain, Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things, and finally green computing. For each of these facets we highlight opportunities to EMAS engineering, but also the challenges these facets raise. We conclude with highlighting a number of ethical issues that the engineers of modern software-intensive systems and thus also MAS will face in the years to come.