Agent-Oriented Software Engineering -AOSE 2012

                        AOSE 2012
13th International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

********** SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED ***********


Held with AAMAS 2012, Valencia, Spain, June 4, 2012
http://winf.in.tu-clausthal.de/events/aose12


MOTIVATION

Since the early 1990s, multi-agent system researchers have developed a
large body of knowledge on the foundations and engineering principles
for designing and developing agent-based systems. The 12 past editions
of the agent-oriented software engineering workshop (AOSE) had a key
role in this endeavor. For 2012, the workshop organizers and the
steering committee propose to organize an edition of AOSE workshop aimed
at exploring the new emerging role of agent-oriented software
engineering as a bridge from the now consolidated agent oriented
programming languages and platforms, to recent systems modelling
paradigms like self-*, autonomic systems, and systems of systems (SoS).
Thus, it is our hope to explore from an agent-based perspective,
foundations, models, methods, architectures, and tools for
engineering future software-intensive IT eco-systems.

The workshop organizers plan to publish accepted papers on a USB stick
as part of the AAMAS workshop registration package.
Revised post-proceedings papers will later be published in
a volume of the Lecture Notes for Computer Science series.


GOALS and TOPICS

The general goal of this year workshop is twofold: The first goal is to
study the role of agent-oriented software engineering in the design
phase of agents development. It is well known and accepted that agents -
from the software engineering perspective - are of particular interest
as an analysis abstraction. This has been true for several years but the
most recent advancements in agent-oriented programming languages have
proposed new challenges: software engineers may now design and code
their solutions in terms of agents. The old need of moving to the
object-oriented level of abstraction is overpassed and the new
developing platforms allow for a more natural transformation of AO
analysis models into AO design models. This reality has been soon
perceived by researcher and practitioners. An example of this new trend
may be found in the refreshed interest about testing of agents.

The second goal concerns the other side of the proposed ideal bridge:
the needs of new design approaches specifically suited for facing the
needs of self-organizing systems, autonomic systems and systems of
systems. In the last years we have seen considerable research efforts on
these topics; however, only few of them have their scope and foundations
in the software engineering field.

Novel efforts are necessary to cope with these new challenges in order
to find specific solutions that could bring such systems from research
to industrialization. In this context, a means for bridging the above
mentioned research (and application) streams may come from the advances
on organizations, norms, and institutions. Are they mature enough for
being applied to stable agent-oriented languages and for contributing to
the engineering of self-organizing and autonomic systems? The proposed
aim is find an answer to this question or to propose further hints for
future investigations on the application of organizations, norms and
institutions to the design of agent-oriented systems.

Topics of regular papers include but are not restricted to:

* Agent-based concepts for systems of systems engineering
* Agent-based solutions for managing complexity in software engineering
* Agents and model-driven approaches
* Agents and services
* Agents for self-adaptive systems
* Alignment of agents with service-oriented software development
* Autonomy vs. dependability and robustness
* CASE tools to support agent-oriented software development in practice
* Coordination infrastructures for multi-agent systems
* Engineering multi-agent organizations
* Engineering self-organizing systems
* Goal-oriented design
* Implications of introducing agent-based solutions on the development organization
* Integration of agents with legacy systems
* Middleware integration of agent-based software
* Multi-agent based simulation
* Programming agents and multi-agent systems
* Qualities and tradeoffs of agent-based architectures
* Reusable design knowledge: patterns and reference architectures
* Social engineering
* Software architectures for multi-agent systems
* Standardization efforts for multi-agent systems
* Testing of agent-based software
* Validation of agent technology in practice
* Verification of agent-based software


AUTHOR GUIDELINES

AOSE welcomes the submission of theoretical, experimental,
methodological as well as application papers with a clear research focus
on the topics outlined above. Each paper will be evaluated by three
members of the PC. Papers that present a valuable idea that needs
further development can be accepted as a short paper.


SUBMISSIONS

Papers should be between 8 and 12 pages, including the text, figures,
and references. The submissions must be formatted according to the
Springer Verlag LNCS style. PDF format is required. Papers can be
submitted via EasyChair 'AOSE2012',
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aose2012
The good receipt of your submission will be confirmed by email.


PUBLICATIONS

Pre-proceedings containing all accepted papers are provided
electronically on a USB stick as part of the AAMAS workshop registration
package. The plan is to publish revised versions of accepted papers in a
Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume. For this purpose, authors will
be given the opportunity to revise and re-submit their contributions
after the conference.


IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline: 11th March 2012
Paper notifications: 6th April 2012
Camera ready paper (pre-proceedings): 8th April 2012
Workshop: 4th June 2012


COMMITTEES

Organizing Committee
* Massimo Cossentino, National Research Council of Italy, Palermo, Italy
* Joerg P. Mueller, Technische Universitaet Clausthal, Institut for Informatik, Germany

Preliminary Program Committee:

Carole Bernon,Universite Paul Sabatier, France
Lars Braubach,University of Hamburg, Germany
Scott A. Deloach,Kansas State University, USA
Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni,University Pierre and Marie Curie, France
Giancarlo Fortino,Universita della Calabria, Italy
Aditya Ghose,University of Wollongong, Australia
Holger Giese,University of Potsdam, Germany
Adriana Giret,Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain
Marie-Pierre Gleizes,Universite Paul Sabatier, France
Jorge Gomez-Sanz,Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Moreno,Universidad de Vigo, Ourense, Spain
Joao Leite,University of Lisbon, Portugal
Philippe Mathieu,Universite Lille 1, France
Frederic Migeon,Universite Paul Sabatier, France
Ambra Molesini,University of Bologna, Italy
Pavlos Moraitis,Universite Paul Descartes, France
Andrea Omicini,University of Bologna, Italy
Flavio Oquendo,Universite de Bretagne Sud, France
Juan Pavon,Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain
Alexander Pokahr,University of Hamburg, Germany
Alessandro Ricci,University of Bologna, Italy
Fariba Sadri,Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, England
Valeria Seidita,University of Palermo, Italy
Onn Shehory,IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel
Danny Weyns,Linnaeus University, Sweden

Multi-agent Systems and Social Networks (MASSN2012)

The 1st International Workshop on

        Multi-agent Systems and Social Networks (MASSN2012)


co–located with the 2012 International Conference on 

        Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2012) 

 26-29 August 2012, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, TURKEY


It is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the The 1st International
Workshop on Multi-agent Systems and Social Networks (MASSN2012)  that is held as a part of the International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2012).

Social networks and multi-agent systems share both the structure and the scope, since they are composed of  individuals  connected with  some kinds  of 
relationship  and  they are  realized  for accomplishing individual and/or common
goals. A multi agent system is a system composed of multiple interacting agents; therefore, it is natural to think about synergies between social network and multi-agent system research and application. In fact, multi-agent system models, techniques and technologies have been used and have important potentialities for the study of social networks and the development of social network models. Moreover, the results coming from the experimentation of the more widespread social network systems could be used for the improvement of multi-agent system models, techniques and technologies.

This workshop aims at promoting the interchange among the two communities to allow a transfer of methodologies and to clarify the meaning of the respective terminologies which share many concepts but only at an informal level. 
    
The workshop aims not only at presentation of papers but also to promote the discussion about the following research topics:

    i) to show the relationships of multi-agent systems with social network models and techniques; and

   ii) to discuss about the use of multi-agent systems in development of social network theories and systems.

 
Topic of Interest
 

The scope of the The 1st International Workshop on Multi-agent systems and Social Networks (MASSN2012) includes, but is not limited to the following topics:

 · Multi-agent social network modeling and analysis
 · Multi-agent recommendation networks
 · Multi-agent community discovery
 · Multi-agent data mining and network analysis
 · Multi-agent evolution of patterns in the Web
 · Dynamics and evolution patterns of social networks
 · Organizational structure evaluation
 · Collaborative environments, incl. wikis
 · Applications of multi-agent social network analysis
 

Special Issue

The extended versions of selected papers presented during the MASSN 2012 workshop will be published in the special issue of the prestigious Social Network Analysis and Mining (SNAM) journal.

 
Paper Submission

Papers reporting original and unpublished research results pertaining to the above topics are solicited. New full paper submission deadline is May 7, 2012. These papers will follow an academic review process. Full paper manuscripts
must be in English with a maximum length of 8 pages (using the IEEE two-column
template). Submissions should include the title, author(s), affiliation(s), e-mail address(es),tel/fax numbers, abstract, and postal address(es) on the first page. Papers should be submitted to the https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=massn2012. If Web submission is not possible, manuscripts
should be sent as an attachment via email to kaya@firat.edu.tr by May 7, 2012. The attachment must be in PDF or Word .doc format.

It is important to note that IEEE CPS will publish the proceedings of ASONAM 2012 and hence all the rules and regulations of IEEE CPS will be applied as explained in the following link:

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/cscps/policies

Papers will be selected based on their originality, timeliness, significance,
relevance, and clarity of presentation. Authors should certify that their
papers represent substantially new previously unpublished work. Paper
submission implies that the intent is for one of the authors to present the
paper if accepted and that at least one of the authors register for a full
conference fee.


Key Dates

· May 7, 2012 : Full paper submission deadline
· June 1, 2012 : Notification of acceptance
· June 15, 2012 : Camera-ready papers due
· June 15, 2012 : Presenting author registration due
· August 26, 2012 : Workshop 
 

General Chair

· Brahim Chaib-draa, Computer Science and Software Engineering Department, Laval University, Canada

Email: chaib@ift.ulaval.ca
 

Workshop Co-Chairs

· Mehmet Kaya, Department of Computer Engineering, Firat University, Elazig, Turkey
Email: kaya@firat.edu.tr
· Mohsen Afsharchi, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran
Email: afsharchim@znu.ac.ir


Program Committee (To be extended)

· Reda Alhajj, University of Calgary, Canada
· Kae Won Choi, SeoulTech, Korea

· Sertan Girgin, Google France, France
· Krzysztof Juszczyszyn, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland
· Keivan Kianmehr, University of Western Ontario, Canada
· Tansel Ozyer, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Turkey
· Faruk Polat, Middle East Technical University, Turkey
· Mehmet Tan, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Turkey 

Multi-Agent System Technologies - MATES 2012

MATES 2012 - The Tenth German Conference on Multi-Agent System Technologies
"Research and Innovation for a Smarter Society"

October, 10th-12th, 2012.
Trier, Germany
http://mates2012.uni-trier.de
===========================================================================

The German conference on Multi-Agent system TEchnologieS (MATES) provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers, users (members of business and industry) and developers of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems. The thematic focus of this MATES 2012 is on technologies that enable societies and organisations to be more resilient, inter-connected and collaborative. The conference investigates technologies for truly open distributed systems --- covering a wide spectrum of approaches from self-organization and autonomous systems to agreement computing. Advances in research work, as well as prototyped or fielded systems of intelligent agents will be presented and discussed. The conference covers the whole range from theory to application of agent- and multi-agent technologies in order to promote theory and application of agents and multi-agent systems. The conference features an exhibition of practical applications with an advanced concept of agency. Integral part of the technical program will be an exhibition of a variety of tools for the development, and prototypes of all kinds of practical applications of agent and multi-agent technology at the conference venue. The conference will also host a doctoral consortium.

For the tenth time the German special interest group on Distributed Artificial Intelligence jointly with the steering committee of MATES organizes this international conference in order to promote theory and application of agents and multi-agent systems. Building on the sequence of agent-related events in Germany in the past such as VDI 1998 (Chemnitz), VertIS 2001 (Bamberg), and KI 2002 (Aachen), the MATES conference series (from 2003 to 2011) now is exclusively devoted to agents and multi-agent systems, and the cross-fertilization between agent theory and application. This year is also the 20th year of the German special inerest group on Distributed Artificial Intelligence – another reason for an inspiring conference on agents! The conference language is English.

Salve – welcome to Trier! The conference takes place in Germany’s oldest city - close to Saarbrücken, Frankfurt/Main and Luxemburg as well as the well-known Leibniz Center for Informatics (Schloss Dagstuhl).

The MATES series has been ranked by the Computing Research & Education initiative as a CORE B conference. The proceedings will be published as Springer LNCS.

Contact: mates2012@easychair.org

TOPICS OF INTEREST

MATES 2012 welcomes contributions from the field of agent-oriented computing and agent technologies. We solicit both basic as well as applied research papers on recent advances in the area of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems in general. Also papers reporting on the successful application of agent technologies in any kind of domain are very welcome. MATES 2012 encourages submissions from recent and emerging areas of interest such as a Autonomic Computing, Self-organisation and Agreement Technologies. Additionally, we encourage the submission of elaborated vision and challenge papers that discuss mid-term and long-term directions for research and application.

The topics of interest for MATES-2012 include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Agent-based simulation and analysis of social networks
• Agents and communities
• Large-scale agent-based simulation of cities, economies, etc.
• Adaptive agents and multi-agent learning
• Advanced theories of collaboration: Modelling and formation of teams, coalitions, groups, and organizations
• Agents and autonomic computing
• Agent and multi-agent architectures
• Agents and peer-to-peer computing
• Agents and pervasive computing
• Agents for Ambient Intelligence
• Agent-based service discovery, matchmaking, brokering, and composition
• Agent communication languages
• Agents for e-business and e-government
• Agent technologies in the context of service-oriented computing and architectures
• Agent to non-agent interoperability
• Agents in novel applications
• Application of agent-technologies in industrial practice
• Artificial social systems: Conventions, norms, institutions; trust and reputation
• Autonomous robots and robot teams
• Commitment, delegation, responsibility, and obligations in artificial and hybrid societies
• Complex systems and their management
• Coordination, negotiation, argumentation, and conflict resolution
• Deployed agent-based business applications
• Hybrid human and agent societies
• User modelling and interface agents
• Embodied conversational actors and believable agents
• Mobile agents
• Model-driven design of multi-agent systems
• Multi-agent-based simulation
• Multi-agent planning and scheduling
• Multi-agent platforms and tools
• Multi-agent (social) simulation and (cognitive) modelling with agents
• Practical aspects of programming agent systems: Robustness, fault tolerance, scalability and performance measurement
• Roles and structures, adaptive learning and cognition in organizational models
• Semantics of the dynamics of organizational models
• (Semantic) web services and agents
• Standards for agents and multi-agent systems

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Paper submissions to MATES-2012 will be handled using the EasyChair system at this link: www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mates2012.

Submissions must comply with the following requirements:

* For preparation of papers to be submitted please follow the instructions for authors available at the Springer LNCS Web page: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.
* The length of each paper including figures and references shall not exceed 14 pages.
* All papers must be written in English and submitted in PDF format.
* Papers that have been accepted or are under review by other conferences or journals are not eligible for submission. However, we encourage interdisciplinary contributions submitted or presented in part to a forum outside of agent technology.

Submissions not conforming to the above instructions may be rejected without review.

Please notice that the submission of a paper should be regarded as an undertaking that, should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will attend the conference to present the work.

MATES 2012 will include a doctoral mentoring program: This program will provide an opportunity for students to interact closely with established researchers in their fields, to receive feedback on their work and to get advice on managing their careers.

The Doctoral Mentoring Program will:

* Match each student with an established researcher who will act as a mentor.
* Allow students an opportunity to present their work to a friendly audience of other students, as well as mentors.
* Provide students with contacts and networking opportunities.

IMPORTANT DATES

Abstracts due: April 21, 2012
Full papers due: April 28, 2012
Notification: June 19, 2012
Doctoral mentoring: July 13, 2012
Camera-ready submission: July 13, 2012
Early registration: August 5, 2012
Conference: October 10-12, 2012

CONFERENCE CHAIRS

* Christian Guttmann (EBTIC - Etisalat BT Innovation Centre, Abu Dhabi, UAE)
* Ingo J. Timm (U Trier, Germany)

STEERING COMMITTEE

* Matthias Klusch (DFKI, Germany)
* Winfried Lamersdorf (U Hamburg, Germany)
* Jörg P. Müller (TU Clausthal, Germany)
* Paolo Petta (U Vienna, Austria)
* Rainer Unland (U Duisburg-Essen, Germany)
* Gerhard Weiss (Maastricht U, The Netherlands)

Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems - PRIMA 2012

                                                                              PRIMA 2012

    The 15th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems

                                                                Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

                                                                    September 3-7, 2012

                                                                http://www.prima2012.org/

                                    Co-located with PRICAI 2012, DC 2012 and PKAW 2012

Paper submission: March 30, 2012

Author notification: May 28, 2012

Camera-ready papers: June 15, 2012

Agent computing is an exciting, transformational approach to developing computer systems

that can rapidly and reliably solve real-world problems that usually demand human knowledge

and expertise. The value, power and flexibility of agent and multi-agent systems has been

demonstrated in application areas such as logistics, manufacturing, simulation, robotics,

decision support, entertainment, and especially in online market environments. As one of

the largest and fastest growing research fields of Computer Science, agent research today

includes a wealth of topics. The PRIMA 2012 Program Committee invites submissions of

original, unpublished, theoretical and applied work on any such topic, and encourages

reports on the development of prototype and deployed agent systems, and of experiments

that demonstrate novel agent system capabilities.

PRIMA 2012 proceedings will be published by Springer as a volume in the LNAI series and

proceedings will be available at the conference. Submitted papers should be 12-15 pages

in Springer LNCS format and must be in a form suitable for "double-blind" review.

Each submission will be subject to peer review in two rounds coordinated by an international

Senior Program Committee, and authors will be able to provide a short "rebuttal" of the

reviews before final decisions are made. A broad range of agent topics are of interest,

but all papers should clearly identify how their scientific or technical contributions

advance the state-of-the-art of agent computing practice or have a strong potential to do so.

Submitted papers should not be under review or submitted for publication elsewhere during

the review period.

Springer LNCS Author Instructions: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html

Submission: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=prima2012

Enquiries: prima2012-pc-chairs@cse.unsw.edu.au

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Organization

General Chairs

  Sandip Sen  (University of Tulsa, USA)

  Toshiharu Sugawara (Waseda University, Japan)

Local Arrangements Chairs

  Dickson Lukose (MIMOS Berhad, Malaysia)

  Cheah Wai Shiang (Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia)

Sponsorship Chairs

  Longbing Cao (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

  Matthias Klusch (DFKI Saarbruecken, Germany)

  Sarvapali Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)

  Jie Zhang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Program Chairs

  Iyad Rahwan (Masdar Institute, UAE and MIT, USA)

  Wayne Wobcke (University of New South Wales, Australia)

Senior Program Committee

  Stephen Cranefield (University of Otago, New Zealand)

  Frank Dignum (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

  Guido Governatori (NICTA, Australia)

  Katsutoshi Hirayama (Kobe University, Japan)

  Kate Larson (University of Waterloo, Canada)

  Rey-Long Liu (Tzu Chi University, Taiwan)

  Alessio Lomuscio (Imperial College London, UK)

  Andrea Omicini (University of Bologna, Italy)

  Jeremy Pitt (Imperial College London, UK)

 David Pynadath (University of Southern California, USA)

  Alex Rogers (University of Southampton, UK)

  Paolo Torroni (University of Bologna, Italy)

Tutorial Chair

  Edith Elkind (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Workshop Chairs

  Sherief Abdallah (British University in Dubai, UAE and University of Edinburgh, UK)

  Hiromitsu Hattori (Kyoto University, Japan)

Publicity Chairs

  Jacob Crandall (Masdar Institute, UAE and MIT, USA)

  Koen Hindriks (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Topics

Foundations of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

  Logics of Agency

  Logics of Multi-Agent Systems

  Normative Systems

  Computational Game Theory

  Uncertainty in Agent Systems

  Agent and Multi-Agent Learning

  Agent and Multi-Agent System Architectures

Agent Programming Languages and Platforms

  Multi-Agent System Languages and Platforms

  BDI Architectures and Extensions

  Normative Multi-Agent Systems

  Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

  AOSE Methodologies

  Tools for Agent and Multi-Agent System Development

  Formal Specification and Verification

  Deployed System Case Studies

Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation

  Simulation Languages and Platforms

  Artificial Societies

  Virtual Environments

  Workflow Simulation

  Emergent Behaviour

  Modelling System Dynamics

  Application Case Studies

  Collaboration/Coordination/Communication

  Agent Communication Languages and Protocols

  Distributed Problem Solving

  Teamwork Models

  Coalition Formation

  Argumentation, Negotiation, Bargaining

  Auctions and Mechanism Design

  Trust and Reputation

  Computational Voting Theory

Hybrid Technologies

  Agents in Planning

  Agent-Based Scheduling

  Agent-Based Optimization

  Distributed Constraint Satisfaction

  Agents and Data Mining

  Semantic Web Agents

  Agents and Grid Computing

  Agents and Service Oriented Computing

  Agents and Pervasive Computing

  Robotics and Multi-Robot Systems

Application Domains

  Healthcare

  Transport/Logistics

  Emergency/Disaster Management

  Energy/Utility Management

  Sustainability/Resource Management

  Games/Entertainment

  eBusiness/eCommerce/eGovernment

  eResearch/eLearning

  Security/Surveillance

  Smart Cities

Applications

  Adaptive Personal Assistants

  Embodied Conversational Agents

  Virtual Characters

  Multi-Modal User Interfaces

  Autonomous Systems

  Mobile Agents

  Human-Robot Interaction

  Social Recommender Systems

EMOTIONAL AND EMPATHIC AGENTS (EEA'12)

             ** WORKSHOP ON EMOTIONAL AND EMPATHIC AGENTS **

                                          at AAMAS 2012

                                 June 4-8, 2012, Valencia, Spain





                          http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/aamas12-wseea

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                      2ND CALL FOR PAPERS



                 [apologies for cross-postings, please distribute]



--------------------------

Workshop Organizers

--------------------------

João Dias (INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico, PT)

Janneke van der Zwaan (Delft University of Technology, NL)

Jason Tsai (University of Southern California, USA)



---------------------------------

Senior Steering Committee

---------------------------------

Ana Paiva (PT)

Catholijn Jonker (NL)

Stacy Marsella (USA)

Virginia Dignum (NL)



-------

Goals

-------

The main goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to discuss the creation of what we call "empathic agents". Empathy has been associated with the processes that make a person to have "feelings that are more congruent with another's situation than with his own situation". Humans, when interacting with virtual agents or robots can be led to feel empathy, and experience a diverse set of emotional reactions. On the other hand, agents and robots can in a certain, perhaps limited way, also show certain emotions in reaction to human emotions, thus seemingly expressing empathy towards other agents and towards humans.  Further, agents interacting in social simulation scenarios may react to the other agents in a way that is more congruent with the other's. Thus, by seeking inspiration in empathic relations established between humans and between humans and animals, in this workshop we expect to explore these dimensions of empathic agents.



This workshop is multidisciplinary in nature. We expect to involve researchers who are not only interesting in studying intelligent virtual agents, social simulation and social robotics, but also those interested in empathy, cognition, ethology, emotions, human interactions, computer graphics, human-robots interaction and human/computer interaction.



---------------------

Topics of Interest

---------------------

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Models of empathy

- Empathy for rational agents

- Architectures for empathic agents and robots

- Emotional contagion

- Emotional interactions and regulation with agents

- Emotion modeling for empathic agents and robots

- User modeling for empathic agents and robots

- Social robots and social agents and empathy

- Inter-agent communication and empathy

- Expression of virtual agents for empathic interactions

- Empathy and facial expressions in virtual agents

- Empathic synthetic speech for virtual agents

- Applications to health and social education

- Interactive storytelling and empathy

- Entertainment and education applications

- Emotional and empathic agents in video games

- Empathy and long term interactions with virtual agents and robots

- Evaluating empathy in agents and robots

- Evaluating human empathic reactions to artificial agents and robots



--------------------

Important Dates

--------------------

Paper submission: February 28, 2012

Acceptance notification: March 27, 2012

Camera ready: April 10, 2012

Uploading of workshop papers to website: May 1, 2012

Workshop: June 4-5, 2012 (provisory date)



---------------

Submissions

---------------

Researchers are invited to submit papers for the workshop focusing the topics of interest of the workshop stating clearly how they can contribute to the themes proposed. Papers should be no longer than 8 pages and must use the AAMAS format (http://aamas2012.webs.upv.es/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=19). All papers will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee in a single-blind review process. At least one author of each accepted paper is required to register for the workshop.



Papers should be submitted through Easychair in pdf format: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=eeaaamas2012



-------------------------

Program Committee

-------------------------
Please check the program committee members at http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/aamas12-wseea/index.php/committees

Ambient Systems, Networks and Technologies (ANT-2012)

         The 3rd International Conference on Ambient Systems, Networks and Technologies (ANT-2012)
       
                                             27-29 August, 2012
                                       Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

                            Website:http://cs-conferences.acadiau.ca/ant-12/
             ****************************************************************************

IMPORTANT DATES
===============
- Full Paper Submission:      February 29, 2012 (Extended)
- Acceptance Notification:    April 10, 2012
- Camera-Ready Submission:    May 10, 2012
- Workshops Proposals:        December 10, 2011

ANT-2012 accepted papers will be printed in the conference proceedings published by Elsevier Science in the open-access Procedia Computer Science series (on-line and CD). Procedia Computer Sciences is hosted on www.Elsevier.com and on Elsevier content platform ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com), and will be freely available worldwide. All papers in Procedia will also be indexed by Scopus (http://www.scopus.com) and Engineering Village (Ei) (http://www.engineeringvillage.com). This includes EI Compendex (http://www.ei.org/compendex). The papers will contain linked references, XML versions and citable DOI numbers. All accepted papers will also be indexed in DBLP (http://dblp.uni-trier.de/). Selected papers will be invited for publication in special issues of international journals.

Conference Tracks:
=================
- Agent Systems, Intelligent Computing and Applications
- Automatic Networks and Communications
- Data Management
- Emerging Networking, Tracking and Sensing Technologies
- Multimedia and Social Computing
- Multimodal Interfaces
- Service Oriented Computing for Systems & Applications
- Smart Environments and Applications
- Systems Security and Privacy
- Systems Software Engineering
- Vehicular Networks and Applications
- General Track

COMMITTEES
=========

General Chairs
Nick Cercone, York University, Canada
Albert Zomaya, The University of Sydney, Australia

Program Chairs
Hossam Hassanein, Queen's University, Canada
Muhammad Younas, Oxford Brookes University, UK
Takahiro Hara, Osaka University, Japan

Advisory Committee
Ali Ghorbani, University of New Brunswick, Canada
Katia Sycara, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Erol Gelenbe, Imperial College, UK
Vincenzo Loia, University of Salerno, Italy
Ralf Steinmetz, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany
Peter Thomas, Manifesto Research, Australia
Sajal K. Das, The University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Timothy K. Shih, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Workshops Chairs
Senol Erdogan, Maltepe University, Turkey
Markus Aleksy, ABB Corporate Research Center, Germany

Program vice Chairs
Rainer Unland, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Reiner Wichert, Fraunhofer-Institut for Computer Graphics IGD, Germany
Jiang Li, Howard University, USA
Tarek Sheltami, KFUPM, Saudi Arabia
Eric Pardede, La Trobe University, Australia
Irena Mlynkova, Charles University, Czech Republic
Abdelfettah Belghith, University of Manouba, Tunisia
Anis Koubaa, Al-Imam University, Saudi Arabia/CISTER Research Unit, Portugal
Keivan Kian-Mehr, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Tansel Ozyer, TOBB Econo & Tech University, Turkey
Thomas Grill, University of Salzburg, Austria
Mohyuddin, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Saudi Arabia
Zakaria Maamar, Zayed University, UAE
Jamal Bentahar, Concordia University, Canada
Abdallah Mhamed, Telecom SudParis, France
Wail Mardini, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan
Ridha Khedri, McMaster University, Canada
Luis Javier Garc抋 Villalba, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Agustinus Waluyo, Monash University, Australia
Bharat Jayaraman, University at Buffalo (SUNY), USA
Soumaya Cherkaoui, Sherbrooke University, Canada
G. Ram Mohana Reddy, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India
Adnan Al-Anbuky, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

International Journals Chair
Nauman Aslam, Northumbria University, UK

Local Arrangement Chairs
Ramiro Liscano, University of Ontario, Canada
Bessam Abdulrazak, Sherbrooke University, Canada

Publicity Chairs
Weiwei Fang, Beijing Jiaotong University, China
Djamal Benslimane, Lyon 1 University, France
Thais Regina de Moura Braga Silva, Federal University of Vicosa, Brazil
Wael M El-Medany, University of Bahrain, Bahrain

International Liaison Chairs
Karim Djouani, South African Institute of Technology, South African
Verdi Marchm, HP Labs Singapore, Singapore

Awards Chairs
Maytham Safar, Kuwait University, Kuwait
Bernady Apduhan, Kyushu Sangyo University, Japan

Steering Committee Chair
Elhadi Shakshuki, Acadia University, Canada

Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OPTMAS V)

Fifth International Workshop on Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OPTMAS V)

To be held in conjunction with the *Eleventh International Conference on Autonomous and Multi-Agent Systems  (AAMAS 2012)*

4 or 5 June 2012

cfp at:https://sites.google.com/site/optmas2012

=====================================================================

Call
----
This workshop invites works from different strands of the multi-agent systems community that pertain to the design of algorithms, models, and techniques to deal with multi-agent optimisation problems. In so doing, this workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers to discuss common issues that arise in solving optimisation problems in different areas and elaborate common benchmarks to test their solutions.

Invited Talk
----------------
to be announced
(Previous invited speakers include Moshe Tennenholtz (2008), Milind Tambe (2009), Paul Scerri (2010), Sven Koenig (2011) ).

Background
----------------
The number of novel applications of multi-agent systems has followed an exponential trend over the last few years, ranging from online auction design, through in multi-sensor networks, to scheduling of tasks in multi-actor systems. Multi-agent systems designed for all these applications generally require some form of optimization in order to achieve their goal. Given this, a number of advancements have been made in the design of winner determination, coalition formation, and distributed constraints optimization algorithms among others. However, there are no general principles guiding the design of such algorithms that would enable researchers to either exploit algorithms designed in other areas or to ensure that their algorithms conform to some level of applicability to real problems.
This workshop aims to address the above issues by bringing together researchers from different parts of the Multi-Agent Systems research area to present their work and discuss acceptable solutions, benchmarks, and evaluation methods for generally researched optimization problems.
In particular, the main issues to be addressed by the workshop include (but are not limited to):

1. Techniques to model and solve optimisation problems in which the actors
are partly or completely distributed and can only communicate with their peers.
2. Algorithms to compute solutions to mechanisms that deal with different stakeholders who  may  be  self  interested  or  may  have  different computation/communication capabilities from their peers.
3. Techniques to manage and disseminate relevant information across different agents.
4. Dealing with privacy concerns: solving complex  optimization  problems while leaking as little private information as possible
5. Problems that require anytime algorithms.
6. Approximate algorithms that need to provide  guarantees  on  the  quality of the solution.
7. Mechanisms whose properties  can  be  significantly  affected  if  the solution computed is not the optimal one.
8. Techniques to deal with optimizations that have to  be  repeated  with possibly only slight changes in the input data.
9. Techniques to deal  with  situations  where  the  input  data  may  be uncertain or unreliable, requiring that the solution computed be robust to slight differences from the true values.
10. Techniques to deal with agents that are tied to physical devices. This involves computation and communication constraints that need to  be considered in the coordination techniques, as well as the possibility of failures of the devices and communication links.

Keywords
-------------
Topics include but are not limited to:

* Distributed Constraints Optimisation/Satisfaction
* Winner Determination Algorithms in Auctions
* Coalition Formation Algorithms
* Algorithms to compute Nash Equilibrium in games
* Optimisation under uncertainty
* Optimisation with incomplete or dynamic input data
* Algorithms for real-time applications

Workshop motivation
--------------------------
OPTMAS complements the objectives of the AAMAS conference by providing a forum for multi-agent algorithm designers. The workshop will be attractive to those working in the general areas of distributed optimization, auction design, coordination, learning, and uncertainty and will be a good place to present original work and discuss acceptable benchmarks and evaluation methods for generally researched optimization problems.
The aim of OPTMAS is to complement the theoretical angle taken by work presented in the main conference, and other workshops, by focusing on the implementation issues and the general trends in optimization problems that arise across a variety of multi-agent applications.

Important dates
---------------------
* 28th FEBRUARY, 2012 - Submission of contributions to workshops
* 27th MARCH, 2012 - Workshop paper acceptance notification
* 4th or 5th JUNE, 2012 - Workshop takes place in conjunction with AAMAS 2012.

Submission
---------------
Submissions should conform to the ACM SIG style (follow the formatting instructions available at the AAMAS-2012 website) and should not be more than *10* pages long (excluding appendices).

Authors can submit their papers through the OPTMAS 2012 Easychair submission site:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=optmas2012

Reviewing process
-----------------
Papers will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. Criteria for selection of papers will include: originality, readability, relevance to themes, soundness, and overall quality.

Publication
-----------
Best papers from OPTMAS 2008 and OPTMAS 2009 were selected for publication in the
special issue on Optimisation in Multi-Agent System of the Journal of Autonomous and Multiagent Systems (http://www.springerlink.com/content/n7p264t41264 ).

We plan to continue this initiative for the 2010, 2011, 2012 edition. Therefore, we will negotiate the publication of selected, best papers in a quality journal (JAAMAS or similar).

Organizing committee
--------------------
Dr. Jesus Cerquides Bueno, IIIA - CSIC, Spain
Dr. Alessandro Farinelli, University of Verona, Italy
Dr. Sarvapali D. Ramchurn University of Southampton, UK
Dr. Juan Antonio Rodriguez-Aguilar,IIIA - CSIC, Spain
Dr. Meritxell Vinyals, University of Verona, Italy

Programme Committee
--------------------------------------
Mohsen Afsharchi         University of Zanjan
Ana L. C. Bazzan         Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Christian Blum           Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Archie Chapman           University of Sydney
Francesco M. Fave        University of Southampton
Katsutoshi Hirayama      Kobe University
Christopher Krenkintveld University of Texas
Sven Koenig              University of Southern California
Nikos Komodakis          University of Crete
Akshat Kumar             University of Massachusetts
Robert N. Lass           Drexel University
Victor Lesser            University of Massachusetts
Beatriz López            University of Girona
Pedro Meseguer           IIIA-CSIC
Maria Polukarov          University of Southampton
Marc Pujol               IIIA-CSIC
Talal Rahwan             University of Southampton
Norman Salazar           IIIA-CSIC
Onn Shehory              IBM Haifa Research Lab
Eric Shieh               University of Southern California
Sameer Singh             University of Massachusetts
Ruben Stranders          University of Southampton
Greet Vanden             Berghe KaHo Sint-Lieven
William Yeoh             Singapore Management University
Roie Zivan               Ben Gurion University of the Negev
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