A Systematic Literature Review in Multi-Agent Systems: Patterns and Trends

Multi-Agent Systems became a powerful solution to model and solve problems in complex and dynamic environments. While research in this area grew exponentially before 2009, there is a need to understand the status quo of the field from 2009 to June 2017 in order to comprehend the general evolution. The results of a SLR related to Multi-Agent Systems, its applications and research gaps, following Kitchenham and Wholin guidelines are presented in this paper. From the analysis of 279 papers (out of 3522 candidates), our findings suggest that: a) there is a general decreasing trend of publications (but it is increasing for specific domains), b) only 15% of the papers portrayed a real case study, c) the top 20 were formed by 67 authors, d) the papers were mostly published in journals and conferences, e) there is no unified methodology or framework, f) the top 3 application domains were transport / traffic, healthcare / biology, and logistics / manufacturing, g) MAS interact with different disciplines like machine learning. Finally, the MAS community should work together to close the gaps and unify the field, bridging with other disciplines and industry.