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Preface
The Workshop “From Objects to Agents” (WOA) is the reference event for Italian researchers
active in the agents and multi-agent systems research domain. Since its very first edition in 2000,
located in Parma, WOA was conceived as a meeting occasion for researchers and practitioners
from MAS-AI*IA (the AI*IA working group on MAS) and TABOO (the association for advanced
technologies based on concepts from object-orientation). Since then, WOA was held on a
yearly basis in many different Italian locations, from north to south (islands included), gaining
a conspicuous success and succeeding in gathering researchers and practitioners from various
research fields, thanks to its format.
Despite stemming from an Italian initiative, WOA is an international workshop where presen-
ters and participants exchange opinions and discuss on-going works in a friendly yet rigorous
setting. Furthermore, since 2004, WOA includes a one-day mini-school, where experienced sci-
entists and professionals can introduce younger researchers as well as Ph.D. and undergraduate
students to hot topics in the fields of AI, MAS, and programming languages.
The 21𝑠𝑡 edition of the workshop was held on September 14–16, 2020 in Bologna, as an
on-line virtual meeting. During the three days, more than 18 speakers joined the workshop,
as well as many more attendants. In particular, this edition was structured in two mini-school
sessions, one keynote speech, and in six technical sessions—each one discussing three papers.
The six technical sessions hosted the presentation of 18 papers, 17 of which are collected in this
virtual volume published by CEUR in the AI*IA Series.
The topics discussed in the papers cover some of the hottest topics laying under the umbrella
of “MAS for human-centred intelligent systems”, as requested by the call for papers. The choice
of this theme was deliberate. In fact, it is widely recognised that nowadays intelligent systems
have to be human-centred, with the human(s) in the loop acting synergistically within the
system. Accordingly, human-centred AI focuses on the design, development, and deployment
of intelligent systems that co-operate with humans in real-time in a deep and meaningful way.
There, the AI system is expected to continuously improve itself by learning from humans while
creating an effective interactive experience. In such a scenario, sub-symbolic techniques play a
major role to provide sophisticated features that would be hard for developers to implement
otherwise. However, symbolic approaches are getting more and more attention as those that
could make AI amenable to human understanding and interpretation, once suitably integrated
with sub-symbolic approaches. In this context, MAS are the core of the design of intelligent
systems, as they represent the glue making symbolic and sub-symbolic components fruitfully
interoperable.
As far as the mini-school is concerned, two sessions were organised, hosting talks from
experts in the fields of Logic Programming and MAS. In particular, in the first session, Fabrizio
Riguzzi illustrated the role of Probabilistic Logic Programming (PLP). PLP provides a powerful
combination that has already achieved successful applications in a variety of fields. The talk
discussed PLP languages under the distribution semantics – one of the most impactful semantics
in this area – and introduced the types of reasoning that can be performed with these languages:
inference, weight learning and structure learning. In the second session, Viviana Mascardi
provided an enlightening perspective on the current status of logic-based technologies for
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MAS, based on her review “Logic-based Technologies for Multi-agent Systems: A Systematic
Literature Review”. The talk emphasised the core role of MAS in the design of intelligent systems
since their very beginning and their long-term connection with logic-based technologies, thus
opening new ways to engineer explainable intelligent systems.
The “Fabio Bellifemine” keynote speech was given by Alessandro Ricci discussing the topic
of programming multi-agent systems—“Reflections after a decade building and using JaCaMo”.
There, JaCaMo is a platform that allows to program multi-agent systems integrating agent,
environment and organisation as first-class design and programming dimensions, and exploiting
Jason, CArtAgO and Moise as concrete technologies. Within the talk, Alessandro Ricci shared
his experience, reflections, and thoughts about the future of agent-oriented programming.
The 17 papers collected in this issue were organised, presented, and discussed into six
thematic sessions. The final versions here includes also include the outcomes of some of the
several interesting discussions that followed the presentations at the workshop. The authors’
contributions cover quite relevant research areas that include (i) simulation, (ii) organisations,
norms, and argumentation, (iii) features of MAS as robustness, trust, and explainability, (iv)
healthcare applications, (v) agents and actors for data science and (vi) tools and application for
MAS.
Finally, the Organising Scientific Committee gratefully thanks all those who have contributed,
with their work and their enthusiasm, to the success of this edition of WOA: the members of
the WOA Board; the members of the Program Committee; the Department of Informatics –
Engineering and Information Sciences (DISI) of the University of Bologna; the Alma Mater
Research Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence of the University of Bologna; the
local organisers; the speakers of the workshop sessions; the mini-school lecturers; the sponsors;
and all collaborators who participated in the organisation. More generally, we would like to
thank the lively, creative, and sometimes even volcanic community that has been regularly
meeting for 21 years at the workshop.
Bologna, Italy
October 15, 2020
Roberta Calegari
Giovanni Ciatto
Enrico Denti
Andrea Omicini
Giovanni Sartor
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