AAMAS 2009

source https://mail.in.tu-clausthal.de/Lists/event/Message/887.html?Language=english (apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call)

CALL FOR PAPERS The Eighth International Joint Conference on AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (AAMAS-09) Budapest, Hungary May 10--15, 2009 http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/

(please note that, while some prior publicity has given a start date of May 11, the conference as whole will begin with tutorials and doctoral consortium on May 10)

INTRODUCTION

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was initiated in 2002 by merging highly respected individual conferences: - the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS); - the International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL); - the International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA). The aim of the joint conference is to provide a single, high-profile, internationally respected archival forum for scientific research in the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multiagent systems. See http://www.ifaamas.org for more information.

AAMAS-09 is the Eighth conference in the AAMAS series, following enormously successful previous conferences at Bologna, Italy (2002), Melbourne, Australia (2003), New York, USA (2004), Utrecht, The Netherlands (2005), Hakodate, Japan (2006), Honolulu, USA (2007) and Estoril, Portugal (2008). AAMAS-09 will be held at the Europa Congress Center, Budapest, Hungary.

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS

AAMAS-09 encourages the submission of *original* papers covering theoretical, experimental, methodological, and application issues in autonomous agents and multiagent systems. Authors are discouraged to submit papers describing work that has already been published in previous AAMAS workshops with post-proceedings publications and/or published as short papers in previous AAMAS proceedings, unless that the authors *clearly* demonstrate significant new content with respect to the previous publication.

The main theme of AAMAS-09, based on feedback from previous conferences, will be reinforcing the rich panorama of authors in particular, to reflect about their work not as belonging to just a niche in a long list of topics, but rather as a point in an abstract topological space defined by three complementary axes: (i) the *focus* of the work contribution being presented, (ii) the
 * interconnections* in the field. We encourage the community, and the
 * description level* of the contribution and, (ii) the intellectual
 * inspiration source* of the approach used in the research.

Every paper will be evaluated appropriately with respect to each of these three axes. Moreover, the use of this topological space will help this year and future AAMAS conference organizers to better stress some particular points in this space to be highlighted in the program, as it was the case of the special tracks presented in AAMAS-08 and will be the case of the special areas in AAMAS-09.

DESCRIPTION LEVEL AXE

AAMAS-09 encourages the submission of papers in several descriptive styles: (i) theoretical, (ii) experimental (architecture/system-oriented), (iii) methodologies/languages (design/software engineering/programming-oriented), and (iv) applications. Every paper should make clear its contribution to the AAMAS field, place itself in the context of relevant related work, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of its approach.

Theoretical papers should make clear the significance and application-relevance of the results to the AAMAS community.

Experimental papers should address broad issues in the context of autonomous agents or multi-agent systems architectures or performance rather than isolated generic capabilities (such as general planning or learning).

Methodological and language papers should propose advances in MAS analysis/design methodologies, process and process models for agent-oriented software development, frameworks for MAS specific properties (like cooperation, coordination etc...), agent verification and validation techniques/tools, and multi-agent programming languages, deployment platforms and development tools.

Application papers should make clear both their scientific and technical contributions, and their practical strengths and weaknesses.

INSPIRATION SOURCE AXE

AAMAS-09 welcomes papers from many intellectual approaches, including artificial intelligence, distributed systems, economics, social/management sciences, (multi-)robotics, and biologically-inspired approaches.

FOCUS AXE

Broadly speaking, the AAMAS community-specific topics of interest are focussed in individual agents, their environment, their interactions, and their social/organizational structure.

Agent Focus: contributions are focussed on the elements for structuring/defining/analyzing individual processing entities: - agent architectures - agent reasoning/deliberation/decision mechanisms - agent perception and action - believable agents - believable agents - agents models of emotion, motivation, personality, etc.

Environment Focus: contributions are focussed on the elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the the external world (including humans) and its information exchange with the processing entities: - environmmental entities - agent-human interaction - interface agents

Interaction Focus: contributions are focussed on the elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the information and control exchange between the processing entities - agent communication languages - interaction protocols - ontological / semantic interactions - conflict resolution and negotiation - argumentation theories - coordination mechanisms - multi-agent planning and learning - reputation and trust - privacy and security

Social/Organizational Structure Focus: costributions are focussed on elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the identity and properties of multiple processing entities - groups and teams - norms and normative behavior - commitments - autonomy - organizations and institutions - organizational planning/learning - organizational reputation and trust - coalition formation - open systems

Comprehensive/Cross-cutting Focus: contributions dealing with all or more than one of the previous focus - complete applications demonstrating several different significant foci - evaluation techniques - ethical and legal issues - standardization efforts in industry and commerce - meta-papers (on the state of agent research, on the conference, etc.)

SPECIAL AREAS

Particularly this year, we are strongly encouraging papers that focus on some of the issues located at the topological space described above:

Inspiration source axe: - (Multi-)Robotics - Social Sciences

Description level axe - Methodologies/languages - Applications

Focus axe - (Virtual) Agents - Social/Organizational Structure

In addition to conventional conference papers, AAMAS-09 will also include a demonstration track for work focusing on implemented systems, software, or robot prototypes; and an industry track for descriptions of industrial applications of agents. The submission processes for the demonstration and industry tracks will be separate from the main paper submission process.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

This year the conference is soliciting regular papers (8 pages) and extended abstracts (2 pages). Extended abstracts are encouraged as a mechanism for the timely reporting of interesting but preliminary work, that may not as yet have the level of evaluation or detail that would be expected for a regular paper. The program chairs may, at their discretion, accept papers that were submitted as regular papers as extended abstracts, if the authors have explicitly agreed to this when registering their papers.

Accepted regular papers will receive a slot for oral presentation in the conference. In addition, both regular and extended abstracts will be presented in poster sessions and appear in the conference proceedings.

Reviews will be double blind, therefore authors are requested to avoid including anything that can be used to reveal their identity. Submissions will be peer reviewed rigorously and evaluated on the basis of adherence, originality, soundness, significance, presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall quality of their technical contribution. More details about the review process can be found in the conference page.

Authors should refer to the conference page to download the adequate paper formats and the instructions to access the Confmaster system.

Full instructions and style files are now available, and submission will be possible from 20th September onwards.

http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/submission.html

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

General Chairs:

Carles Sierra, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish Research Council (Spain)

Cristiano Castelfranchi, ISTC-CNR (Italy)

Program Chairs:

Jaime Simão Sichman, Politecnic School, University of São Paulo (Brazil)

Keith S. Decker, Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware (USA)

A more complete list of other members of the AAMAS-09 Organizing Committee may be found in http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/.

IMPORTANT DATES

Oct 10, 2008 EDT (GMT-4): electronic abstract submission deadline Oct 14, 2008 EDT (GMT-4): electronic paper submission deadline Dec 19, 2008: paper notification Feb 06, 2009: camera-ready copy submission deadline

-- Dr Simon Miles Agents and Intelligent Systems Group Department of Computer Science Kings College London, UK