"Soft-computing techniques have been successfully applied to analyze complex systems operating in uncertain and unstructured environments. Their ability to develop implicit and explicit models of system behaviour combined with capabilities to represent the state of knowledge of interacting computational entities, has led to a number of approaches that apply these techniques to develop multiagent systems. The European Centre for Soft Computing (Mieres, Spain) and Dr. Enrique H. Ruspini, an expert in the field of soft computing from SRI International (Palo Alto, California, U.S.) are proposing a research project focusing in collaborative information systems involving multiple interacting agents. Dr. Ruspini will investigate new research lines aimed at designing, understanding, and implementing this type of systems. The objectives of these studies will be, on one hand, robotic and sensor systems incorporating a large number of interacting agents and, on the other, distributed information systems incorporating sophisticated coordination and interaction tools. Soft-computing techniques will be applied to the design, analysis, and implementation of multiagent systems including hybrid systems where several human and autonomous agents collect, exchange, and process information to regulate system behaviour. Multiple agent systems are ubiquitous in science, industry, and commerce. The project plans to cover a wide range of applications such as manufacturing, scheduling, control, diagnosis, logistics, environmental emergency management, energy managing, and road traffic management. The project is based in a multidisciplinary approach that will integrate developments stemming from insights from a number of perspectives, notably biology, cognitive science, linguistics, economics, and social sciences."