Trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems (TruMAS'12)

1st International Workshop on Trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems (TruMAS'12)
KES-AMSTA 2012 Special Session, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 25-27 June 2012
http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/~ndra/TruMAS12
Proceedings published by Springer-Verlag in a volume of LNCS/LNAI.

IMPORTANT DATES

5 February 2012  Submission of papers
22 February 2012 Notification of acceptance
7 March 2012 Camera ready
25-27 June 2012 TruMAS and KES-AMSTA

WORKSHOP AIM AND SCOPE

The rapid development of computer-based technologies has made computers more and more complex and ubiquitous. Many computer-based systems are in charge of critical tasks such as, to mention only a few, the management of financial and medical databases, the monitoring of nuclear plants, the flying of airplanes, etc. Multi-agent systems (MAS) have been proposed as a new paradigm for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing open and distributed software systems. The foundational idea behind a Multi-Agent System is to have a loosely coupled network of software agents (i.e., sophisticated computer programs that act autonomously on behalf of their users) which interact to solve problems that are beyond the individual capacities or knowledge of each single agent. Therefore, it is not surprisingly MAS have received a lot of attention as reference computing paradigm to tackle complexity in modern computer-based systems.

However, the complexity of modern computer-based systems as well as their numerous applications has inherently increased the challenges for ensuring trustworthiness. Trustworthiness encompasses vital characteristics of a system such as safety (the non-occurrence of catastrophic consequences for the environment the system works in), security (the non-occurrence of unauthorized disclosure of information), integrity (the non-occurrence of inadequate information alteration), availability (the readiness for correct service of the system), reliability (the property of the system to continuously provide service) or more generically dependability. The overall trustworthiness of a system is connected to all the aforementioned properties and should be regarded holistically. Functional correctness, security, safety, reliability are facets that have to be ensured for the system's components as well as for the system as a whole.

The 1st International Workshop on Trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems (TruMAS 2012) aims at bringing together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in all the different aspects of trust, dependability and security in Multi-Agent Systems. The workshop is expected to stimulate discussions about the future development of appropriate models, methods, notations, languages and tools for trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems. The overall goal is to explore the different facets of trustworthiness in Multi-Agent Systems, how every single aspect can be fostered, and how they relate.

Topics of interests include, but are not limited to:
- Trust and reputation models, metrics and assessment in Multi-Agent Systems
- Dependability facets in Multi-Agent Systems
- Fault-tolerance and robustness in Multi-Agent Systems
- Architectures for trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems
- Robust and secure communication in Multi-Agent Systems
- Robust and secure negotiation in Multi-Agent Systems
- Software engineering methodologies for trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems
- Security and access control in open Multi-Agent Systems
- Self-configuration and adaptation
- Formal methods and frameworks to model, analyze, prove, or measure aspects of trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems
- Industrial experiences in the adoption of trust-based Multi-Agent Systems approaches
- Rigorous software development to ensure trustworthiness in Multi-Agent Systems

Since the overall goal of trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems includes the investigation of several cross- disciplinary issues such as a deep understanding of trust vs. trustworthiness, trust-based approaches, dependability, etc..., a synergy between different scientific communities and research disciplines is needed. For this reason, although the workshop seems naturally focused on multi-agent issues, contributions from different disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, communication sciences, as well as from computer science specific sub-disciplines such as software engineering and dependability are welcomed and encouraged.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Submitted full papers must not exceed 10 pages in length, including bibliography and well-marked appendices. Papers can be submitted using the PROSE Online Paper Submission system available on the KES-AMSTA'12 Web site. Please remember to select the TruMAS invited session entry in the "Session Name" drop-down box when submitting your paper.

Please use the LNCS templates and style files available on the Springer Web site (Information for LNCS Authors).

Submitted papers will be evaluated by the program committee and chosen for presentation based on their scientific contribution and relevance to the topics of the workshop. At least one author of each accepted paper must register to the workshop and participate presenting the paper.

Proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in a volume of LNCS/LNAI.

CHAIRS

Nicola Dragoni
DTU Informatics
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
ndra@imm.dtu.dk

Manuel Mazzara
School of Computing Science
Newcastle University, UK
manuel.mazzara@newcastle.ac.uk

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Faycal Abouzaid, CRAC, Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Canada
Enrico Denti, DEIS, University of Bologna, Italy
Nicoletta Fornara, Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Lugano, Switzerland
Katsuhide Fujita, Institute of Engineering Innovation, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Mauro Gaspari, Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna, Italy
Paolo Giorgini, Information Engineering and Computer Science Department (DISI), University of Trento, Italy
Nathan Griffiths, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK
Koji Hasebe, Academic Computing & Communications Center, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Hiromitsu Hattori, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan
Takayuki Ito, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
Waqar Jaffry, Department of Artificial Intelligence, VU University, The Netherlands
Andrew J I Jones, Department of Informatics, King's College London, UK
Steve Marsh, Communications Research Centre, Canada
Hernan Melgratti, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Paul Scerri, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Eugen Staab, imc AG, Germany
Daniel Villatoro, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spanish Scientific Research Council, Spain
Mirko Viroli, DEIS, University of Bologna, Italy

Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies (DALT 2012)

            10th International Workshop on
             Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies
                             (DALT 2012)

                          4 or 5 June 2012

                           Valencia, Spain
                (held in conjunction with AAMAS 2012)

         URL: http://www.di.unito.it/~baldoni/DALT-2012/

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                           CALL FOR PAPERS
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The workshop  on Declarative Agent Languages  and Technologies (DALT),
in  its tenth  edition this  year,  is a  well-established forum  for
researchers  interested  in  sharing  their experiences  in  combining
declarative  and  formal approaches  with  engineering and  technology
aspects  of agents  and  multiagent systems.   Building complex  agent
systems calls for models  and technologies that ensure predictability,
allow for  the verification of properties,  and guarantee flexibility.
Developing  technologies  that can  satisfy  these requirements  still
poses  an  important   and  difficult  challenge.   Here,  declarative
approaches  have the  potential of  offering solutions  satisfying the
needs   for  both  specifying   and  developing   multiagent  systems.
Moreover,  they  are gaining  more  and  more  attention in  important
application   areas  such  as   the  semantic   web,  service-oriented
computing, security,  and electronic contracting.

DALT 2012 will be held as a satellite workshop of AAMAS 2012, the 11th
International  Joint Conference  on Autonomous  Agents  and Multiagent
Systems,  in June  2011 in Valencia, Spain.   Following the  success of
nine previous editions, DALT will again aim at providing a discussion
forum to  both (i) support  the transfer of declarative  paradigms and
techniques  to   the  broader  community  of   agent  researchers  and
practitioners, and (ii) to bring  the issue of designing complex agent
systems  to  the  attention  of  researchers  working  on  declarative
languages and technologies.

DALT 2012 will have as a special interest topics those future trends of
the web, where declarative languages and technologies for multiagents
systems will play an effective role: in particular, social computing
(models of social interactions, trust, commitments, and contracts;
social  environments based on declarative technologies) and its related
semantic issues (explicit representation of knowledge and mechanisms for
allowing societies of agents to reason on that).

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                          TOPICS OF INTEREST
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DALT topics of interest include, but are not limited to:


DALT 2012 special topic: declarative approaches for agent-based social
computing
* models of social interactions among agents
* models of buiness interactions among agents
* models of trust, commitments, and reputation for agents
* declarative description of contracts and negotiation policies
* social environments based on declarative technologies
* Semantic Web-aware declarative agents

General themes:
* specification of agents and multi-agent systems
* declarative approaches to engineering agent-based systems

Formal techniques:
* (constraint) logic programming approaches to agent systems
* distributed constraint satisfaction
* modal and epistemic logics for agent modeling
* game theory and mechanism design for multi-agent systems
* semantics of agent communication
* model checking agents and multi-agent systems
* agent communication and coordination languages
* protocol specification, verification, and reasoning

Declarative models:
* declarative models of agent beliefs, goals and capabilities
* declarative models of bounded rationality
* declarative approaches for agent-based grid computing
* declarative paradigms for the combination of heterogeneous agents
* declarative approaches to organizations and electronic institutions
* agent-inspired declarative approaches to Web services and
service-oriented computing

Applications of declarative techniques to:
* multi-agent systems for service-oriented computing
* agent-based grid computing
* security and trust in multi-agent systems
* e-health, e-commerce, e-learning, sociotechnical systems, social
networks, virtual organizations.

Evaluation of declarative approaches:
* experimental analysis of declarative agent technologies
* industrial experiences with declarative agent technologies

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                       SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
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We  welcome and  encourage  the submission  of high-quality,  original
papers, which  are not being submitted  simultaneously for publication
elsewhere.  Papers  should be written in  English, formatted according
to the Springer LNCS style,  and not exceed 16 pages. Paper submission
is electronic via the conference website.

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                         WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS
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Printed copies of  the proceedings will be available  at the workshop.
Assuming a sufficient number of high-quality submissions, we are again
going to  consider the publication of formal  post-proceedings with an
international  publisher.   The post-proceedings  of  DALT 2003  (LNAI
2990), DALT 2004  (LNAI 3476), DALT 2005 (LNAI  3904), DALT 2006 (LNAI
4327),  DALT 2007 (LNAI  4897), DALT  2008 (LNAI  5397),  DALT 2009
(LNAI  5948), and DALT 2010 (LNAI 6619) have  been published  by
Springer-Verlag  in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series.

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                           IMPORTANT DATES
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Paper submission deadline:                    28 February 2012
Notification of acceptance/rejection:         27 March 2012
Camera-ready copies due:                      10 April 2012
Workshop Date:                                4 or 5 June     2012

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                         WORKSHOP ORGANISERS
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Matteo Baldoni (University of Torino, Italy)
Louise Dennis (University of Liverpool, UK)
Viviana Mascardi (University of Genova, Italy)
Wamberto Vasconcelos (University of Aberdeen, UK)
_______________________________________________

Affective Computing (AC’2011)

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AC@EPIA2011 :: CALL FOR PAPERS

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Special Track on Affective Computing (AC’2011)

15th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence - EPIA 2011

10th-13th October, 2011 :: Lisbon, Portugal

http://epia2011.appia.pt

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Submission deadline: 10th May, 2011

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The workshop on Affective Computing (AC) will focus on the role of affect, social behaviour, and related issues in the development of computer systems. Relevant topics include the consideration of factors like emotions, mood, personality traits, and attitudes in human-computer, human-robot, and human-environment interaction, especially insofar as they provide better or more "natural" support for humans. Also relevant is the role of such factors in facilitating access to the knowledge essential for making better decisions in response to interactions between individuals and the environments (e.g. facilitating social interaction among humans or among humans and artificial characters).

Affective Computing is a multidisciplinary field that draws upon such areas as sociology, psychology, human-machine interaction, virtual environments, and, obviously, Artificial Intelligence. It is also a field with a wide range of applications, including virtual reality, decision support, computer games, and ambient intelligence, social robotics, and ECAs (Embodied Conversational Agents).

The purpose of this workshop on Affective Computing is to bring together researchers to discuss theories, architectures and applications which are based on a combination of cognitive and affective considerations and that can be applied to groups of individually different persons and their interactions.

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CONTRIBUTIONS

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In order to fulfill these objectives, submissions of substantial, original and previously unpublished work are invited in all areas of Affective Computing.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Computational models of emotions

Individual Emotion recognition

Social Web

Personality in Agents Architectures

Group Emotion

Emotion and learning

Artificial characters

Affect and emotion recognition

Emotion and memory

Emotion content classification and affect content classification, used to evaluate or analyse human-X interaction;

Using reputation and trust models in social interactions

Using negotiation and persuasion in social interactions

Infrastructure and policy for affective computing

Understanding and Modelling groups and other social systems

Social aspects of globally distributed computing and new cooperative work technologies

New forms of education, entertainment and social relations based on cooperation technologies

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SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS and PAPERS FORMAT

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Papers should not exceed fifteen (15) pages in length and must be formatted according to the information for LNCS authors. Papers must be submitted in PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) format and will not be accepted in any other format.

Papers that exceed 15 pages or do not follow the LNCS guidelines risk being rejected automatically without a review. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference. More information about the Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) are available on the Springer LNCS Web site http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0.

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SUBMITTING PAPERS

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In order to submit a paper, authors must register at the EPIA 2011 conference management system (available soon), using the entry of the Affective Computing.

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IMPORTANT DATES

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Submission deadline:           10th May, 2011

Notification of acceptance:    10st June, 2011

Camera-ready papers:           1st July, 2011

EPIA 2011 Conference:          10th - 13th October, 2011

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PUBLICATION

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As usual in the EPIA conference series, a set of the best full accepted papers will be published in a volume of the LNAI series published by Springer, edited by EPIA 2011 Conference Chairs.

All other accepted papers presented at the conference appear in a published book.

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ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

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Goreti Marreiros, goreti@dei.isep.ipp.pt(ISEP, Portugal)

Andrew Ortony, ortony@northwestern.edu(Northwestern University, USA)

Ana Paiva, Ana.Paiva@inesc-id.pt, (INESC-ID and IST, Portugal)

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CONTACTS  goreti@dei.isep.ipp.pt

2nd International Conference on Reputation (ICORE 2011)

2nd International Conference on
                           Reputation
                          (ICORE 2011)
           Montpellier, France, September 19th, 2011

                     http://2011.icore.name

                         co-located with
                           ESSA 2011



IMPORTANT DATES


** Abstract submission: June, 1st, 2011 **
Full papers required on 15 June.
Notification of acceptance: 10 July.
The conference will take place on 19 September.

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The second International Conference on *Reputation*: 'Society,
Economy, Trust' follows the success of the first edition
(http://2009.icore.name) as a point of convergence in the
interdisciplinary study of reputation.

The study of reputation and gossip is paramount in many fields of the
social sciences, for example organization science, policy-making,
(e-)governance, cultural evolution, social dilemmas, socio-dynamics,
and sociobiology. Interest in reputation is increasing in philosophy,
psychology, social psychology, sociology, and cognitive science;
formal models appear in game theoretical, mathematical, and physics
journals; computational reputation systems are among the most studied
subjects in multi-agent technology and social simulations.

Our objective is that of providing a common ground for all the
interested disciplines to share techniques and ideas on a stage where
the selection process approach is founded not on one specific method,
and even less on established practices and rituals, but rather on an
open-minded scientific approach to the the object of study.

This year, the  conference focuses on the foremost of Reputation's
relative, trust, and their effects together on the economy, and on the
society as a whole. What is the link between reputation and trust on
one side, and social well-being, equality and happiness on the other?
We invite contributions on reputation and trust, and how these come to
affect the society of agents that use them, ranging from web
reputation platforms to informal models of gossip. Trust and
reputation as means to build social capital and to overcome inequality
and misunderstandings are deeply needed from society just now.


TOPICS


We invite papers from all scientific communities working on reputation.

Topics for ICORE 2011 include but are not limited to:

   * Theory of reputation
   * Simulation of reputation
   * Computational models of reputation
   * Agent reputation models
   * Ontologies of reputation
   * Logical formalization of reputation
   * Experimental evidence of reputation diffusion
   * Reputation-based e-government, e-learning, e-business
   * Reputation in p2p systems
   * Reputation in grid environments
   * Reputation for partner selection
   * Incentives in reputation mechanisms
   * Image and reputation
   * Reputation management and optimisation
   * Reputation and social networks
   * Reputation and norms
   * Reputation and altruism, reciprocity, and cooperation
   * Reputation and trust
   * Reputation for sabotage tolerance in large-scale applications
   * Reputation and exchange
   * Reputation and institutions
   * Reputation and social capital
   * Corporate and firm reputation
   * Reputation and peer review
   * Reputation, trust, and societal cohesion
   * Reputation, trust and equality


SUBMISSIONS INSTRUCTIONS

Please check the conference website (http://2011.icore.name) where
detailed information on how to submit papers will appear.

Submission is in two steps: extended abstract first, followed by an
open discussion phase, then full paper. See important dates above.

REVIEW CRITERIA

Papers should present novel ideas related to reputation, clearly
motivated by problems from current practice or applied research.
We expect claims to be substantiated by theoretical or formal
analysis, experimental evaluations, comparative studies, and so on.
Authors are also encouraged to submit application papers. Application
papers are expected to address an indication of the real world
relevance of the problem that is solved, including a description of
the deployment domain, and some form of evaluation of performance,
usability, or superiority to alternative approaches.