This special issue includes extended versions of selected papers presented in the Intelligent Robotics and Multi-Agent Systems (IRMAS) track of the 34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2019), held in Limassol, Cyprus, on 9th April 2019, an international event sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing (SIGAPP). The SAC conference has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. The IRMAS track focuses on all aspects of intelligent robotics and multi-agent systems (MAS) including related areas and applications. Its primary goal is to exploit synergies between robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), more precisely between intelligent robotics and MAS, and bring together researchers from both fields. For many years, robotics and AI researchers have worked separately, both fields have matured enormously, and today there is a growing interest in getting the two research fields together. Many in robotics believe that the focus in the near future should be adding capabilities to robots that lie at the core of AI research. Reciprocally, AI researchers aim at embedding their techniques in physical robots that can perceive, reason and act in real, dynamic environments. A total of 28 papers were submitted to the IRMAS track of SAC 2019 from Europe (8), South America (9), USA (5), South Asia (4), and Far East (2), in response to the call for papers of the conference, which was distributed in worldwide mailing lists on robotics and AI and in private mailing lists of the Program Committee (PC) members. After a rigorous blind peer review process by 62 PC members, with at least three reviewers per paper, 7 regular papers and 2 poster papers were accepted to be presented in the IRMAS track of the conference, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 32%. The authors of the 4 best papers presented in the IRMAS track of SAC 2019 were invited to submit an extended version to this special issue on Intelligent Robotics and Multi-Agent Systems in the Cybernetics and Systems: An International Journal. The authors were required to extend their papers presented in the conference with at least 30% of new content. After a rigorous review process of every manuscript submitted to the special issue by four to five specialized reviewers per paper, 4 articles were accepted to be published in this special issue, covering important and up-to-date topics on Intelligent Robotics and Multi-Agent Systems, including multi-robot and multi-agent coordination, distributed sensing with drones, swarm robotics, and reinforcement learning in MAS. We thank all authors for their contributions and all reviewers for their insightful and thorough reviews during the review process of this special issue.

中文翻译：

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客座社论：智能机器人和多智能体系统特刊

本期特刊包括 2019 年 4 月 9 日在塞浦路斯利马索尔举行的第 34 届 ACM/SIGAPP 应用计算研讨会 (SAC 2019) 的智能机器人和多代理系统 (IRMAS) 轨道中发表的选定论文的扩展版本，以及由 ACM 应用计算特别兴趣小组 (SIGAPP) 赞助的国际活动。SAC 会议一直是来自世界各地的应用计算机科学家、计算机工程师、软件工程师和应用程序开发人员的主要聚会论坛。IRMAS 赛道侧重于智能机器人和多智能体系统 (MAS) 的各个方面，包括相关领域和应用。其主要目标是利用机器人与人工智能 (AI) 之间的协同作用，更准确地说是智能机器人与 MAS 之间的协同作用，并将两个领域的研究人员聚集在一起。多年来，机器人和人工智能研究人员分开工作，这两个领域都非常成熟，如今人们越来越有兴趣将这两个研究领域结合起来。机器人领域的许多人认为，在不久的将来，重点应该是为处于人工智能研究核心的机器人添加功能。反过来，人工智能研究人员的目标是将他们的技术嵌入到能够在真实动态环境中感知、推理和行动的物理机器人中。共有来自欧洲（8）、南美（9）、美国（5）、南亚（4）和远东（2）的 28 篇论文提交到 SAC 2019 的 IRMAS 轨道，以响应号召会议论文分发在全球关于机器人和人工智能的邮件列表以及程序委员会 (PC) 成员的私人邮件列表中。经过 62 名 PC 成员严格的盲审，每篇论文至少有 3 位审稿人，7 篇常规论文和 2 篇海报论文被接受在会议的 IRMAS 轨道上提交，导致整体接受率为 32%。在 SAC 2019 的 IRMAS 轨道上发表的 4 篇最佳论文的作者受邀在控制论和系统：国际期刊中的智能机器人和多代理系统特刊上提交扩展版本。作者被要求扩展他们在会议上发表的论文，至少增加 30% 的新内容。每篇论文经过四到五名专业审稿人的严格审核，最终有4篇文章被接受在本期特刊上发表，涵盖智能机器人和多智能体系统的重要和最新主题，包括多机器人和多智能体协调、无人机分布式传感、群体机器人和 MAS 中的强化学习。我们感谢所有作者的贡献，感谢所有审稿人在本期特刊的审阅过程中所做的有见地和彻底的审阅。