Book excerpt: Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) is a dynamic area of research and this book is the first comprehensive, truly integrated exposition of the discipline presenting influential contributions from leaders in the field. Commences with a solid introduction to the theoretical and practical issues of DAI, followed by a discussion of the core research topics--communication, coordination, planning--and how they are related to each other. The third section describes a number of DAI testbeds, illustrating particular strategies commissioned to provide software environments for building and experimenting with DAI systems. The final segment contains contributions which consider DAI from different perspectives.