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original, unpublished, theoretical and applied work on any such topic, and encourages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

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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)

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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

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

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Call
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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
_

Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems (CoopMAS-2012)

The Third Workshop on Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems                  (CoopMAS-2012)

            http://staff.science.uva.nl/~stephane/coopmas12/

                  Workshop co-located with AAMAS-2012
                            Valencia, Spain
                         June 4th or 5th, 2012

**Key dates**

  * Submission of contributions: February 28th 2012
  * Acceptance notification: March 27th 2012
  * Workshop: June 4th or 5th, 2012

*Submission Instructions*

Submission must follow the Springer LNCS format and should be a maximum of 15 pages.

Papers must be submitted in PDF through easychair:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coopmas2012

*Aims and Focus*

The use of cooperative game theory to study how agents should cooperate and collaborate, along with the related topic of coalition formation, has received growing attention from the multiagent systems, game theory, and electronic commerce communities.

The workshop is intended to focus on topics in cooperation in multi-agent systems, cooperative game theory and cooperative solution concepts, formation of coalitions, negotiation between agents, joint decision making, and voting. We encourage submission of papers describing original or recently published work (in venues that are not typically attended by AAMAS participants, i.e., conferences other than AAMAS/AAAI/IJCAI). We also encourage submission of full version of short papers accepted at AAMAS. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  * Cooperative game theory
  * Coalition formation
  * Joint decision making and voting
  * Representation issues
  * Negotiation
  * Collaborative filtering
  * Market and economics based cooperation
  * Interact with humans (negotiation / collaboration)

The workshop should be of interest to researchers in cooperative game theory and coalition formation, as well as to those who examine collaboration between agents, cooperation in multiagent systems and design and implement collaborating agents. We also welcome participants who are interested in applications of cooperative game theory, which include trading agents, sponsored search and recommender systems.

*Program Committee*
Confirmed PC members (to be completed)
  * Haris Aziz (Technische Universität München, Germany)
  * Georgios Chalkiadakis (Technical University of Crete, Greece)
  * Piotr Faliszewski (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)
  * Gianluigi Greco (University of Calabria, Italy)
  * Kate Larson (University of Waterloo, Canada)
  * Tomasz Michalak (University of Warsaw, Poland)
  * Maria Polukarov (University of Southampton, United Kingdom)
  * Ariel Procaccia (Carnegie Mellon University, United States)

*Workshop Organizers*

  * Stéphane Airiau (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
  * Yoram Bachrach (Microsoft Research, Cambridge United Kingdom)
  * Edith Elkind (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)   * Lirong Xia (CRCS, Harvard University, United States)