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

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                                      2ND CALL FOR PAPERS



                 [apologies for cross-postings, please distribute]



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Workshop Organizers

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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)



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Senior Steering Committee

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Ana Paiva (PT)

Catholijn Jonker (NL)

Stacy Marsella (USA)

Virginia Dignum (NL)



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Goals

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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.



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Topics of Interest

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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



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Important Dates

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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)



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Submissions

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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



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Program Committee

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

Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS'12)

Tenth International Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS'12)


ProMAS'12 is a satellite workshop at AAMAS 2012 Valencia, Spain, 4-5 June 2012


Over the last decade, the ProMAS workshop series has provided a venue
for state-of-the-art research in programming languages and tools for
the development of multi-agent systems. With the increasing commercial
application of multi-agent systems, the need for development tools and
platforms capable of supporting "professional" or "industrial
strength" MAS development has only increased. Such languages and tools
must be developed in a way that is principled and and at the same time
practical, and ProMAS aims to address both theoretical and practical
issues related to developing and deploying multi-agent systems.

Now in its 10th edition, ProMAS has proved to be an invaluable venue
for bringing together leading researchers from both academia and
industry to discuss key issues in the design of programming languages
and tools for multi-agent systems. In particular, the workshop
promotes the discussion and exchange of techniques, concepts,
requirements and principles central to multi-agent programming
technology. These include the theory and application of agent
programming languages, how to effectively implement a multi-agent
system specification or design, the verification and analysis of agent
systems, as well as the implementation of social structures in
agent-based systems (e.g., organisations, coordination, and
communication in multi-agent systems).

We encourage the submission of papers describing proposals for
programming languages and tools that provide specific programming
constructs to facilitate the implementation of multi-agent system
concepts (e.g., mental attitudes, distribution, and social
interaction). We also welcome submissions describing significant
multi-agent applications, as well as agent programming tools that
allow the integration of agents with legacy systems. We are
particularly interested in approaches or applications that show
clearly the added-value of multi-agent programming, and explain why
and how this technology should be adopted by designers and programmers
both in academia and industry.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

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

- Programming languages, models and abstractions for MAS
- Extensions of traditional languages for multi-agent programming
- Programming mobile agents
- Semantics for multi-agent programming languages
- Computational complexity of MAS
- Algorithms, techniques, or protocols relevant to multi-agent
programming (e.g., coordination, cooperation, negotiation)
- Agent communication issues in multi-agent programming
- Programming social, organizational, and normative aspects of MAS
- Interoperability and standards for MAS
- Safety and security for mobile MAS deployment
- Fault tolerance and load balancing for mobile MAS
- Generic tools and infrastructures for multi-agent programming
- High-level executable multi-agent specification languages
- Formal methods and tools for specification and verification of MAS
- Agent/environment/interaction/organization development tools and platforms
- Benchmarks and testbeds for comparing multi-agent programming
languages and tools
- Applications of multi-agent programming languages including: legacy
systems, pervasive applications, multi-robot systems, autonomous
software (e.g., UAVs), (Semantic) Web and Grid-based applications, and
deployed (industrial-strength) multi-agent systems
- Integration of multi-agent and mainstream technologies

IMPORTANT DATES

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

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Authors should submit their papers via the easychair conference
management system:


Papers should be formatted using Springer LNCS style

and should be less than 16 pages in length.

PUBLICATION

Accepted papers will be appear in informal proceedings to distributed
among participants during the workshop. As was the case with previous
editions of the ProMAS workshop, we are planning to publish extended
versions of selected and invited papers as a volume of the Lecture
Notes in Computer Science series by Springer-Verlag.


ORGANISING COMMITTEE

- Mehdi Dastani (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
- Brian Logan (University of Nottingham, UK)
- Jomi Hubner (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)


STEERING COMMITTEE

- Rafael H. Bordini (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
- Mehdi Dastani (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
- Juergen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology, Germany)
- Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni (University of Paris VI, France)

Special Issue on Agent Communication

Call for Papers
Special Issue on Agent Communication
ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology

Agent communication research seeks to address challenges in the
development of applications involving multiple autonomous and
heterogeneous agents. Agent communication differs from communication
as studied in traditional distributed systems in its emphasis of
high-level abstractions that enable flexible interaction yet support
verifying compliance. Broad applications include business
interactions, contracts and compliance, virtual enterprises,
negotiation, argumentation and decision support, and so on.

We invite quality submissions that develop new insights, high-level
abstractions, patterns, languages, formal theories, reasoning, and
methodologies for communication in multiagent systems.

Broad topics include

Protocols
Dialogs and argumentation
Virtual organizations, institutions
Commitments, norms, and other social concepts
Trust and deception
Correctness properties and their verification
Tying communication with agent design and execution strategies
Architecture, middleware, patterns, and programming language support
Standardization of communication primitives
Application-specific modeling and insights

Key Dates
*July 25, 2010 - Submissions*
October 15, 2010 - Decisions
December 15, 2010 - Final versions
Publication - Early 2011

Submission
On-Line Submission (will be available before July 25, 2010):
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tist (please select Special Issue:
Agent Communication as the manuscript type).

Each paper will be reviewed by at least three expert reviewers.
Details of the journal and manuscript preparation are available on at
http://tist.acm.org/

Guest Editors

Amit K. Chopra (also Contact editor)
University of Trento, Italy
chopra@disi.unitn.it

Alexander Artikis
National Centre for Scientific Research Demokritos, Greece
a.artikis@iit.demokritos.gr

Jamal Bentahar
Concordia University, Canada
bentahar@ciise.concordia.ca

Frank Dignum
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
dignum@cs.uu.nl 

Special Issue on: Distributed Intelligence and Data Fusion for Sensor Systems

Call for Papers

Special Issue on:
Distributed Intelligence and Data Fusion for Sensor Systems

in IET Communications (SCI Indexed)
http://scitation.aip.org/IET-COM

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

Scope

Use of intelligence, data mining and data fusion has provided new momentum in 
the use of sensors and converted WSNs into a new brand of dynamic, autonomous 
and intelligent Distributed Sensor Systems. These features enable new smart 
sensors to play new roles as intelligent nodes gathering, manipulating and 
decimating data for more reliable and secure communication whilst performing 
more efficiently using less energy and number crunching.

This special issue aims at presenting innovative and signifi cant research 
papers on the design, implementation and evaluation of wireless sensors, 
especially for use of distributed intelligence and data fusion. 



Topics of primaryinterest include, but are not limited to:
 
* applications and deployment of intelligence in sensor systems and distributed 
  data fusion
* sensor networking protocols and algorithms
* sensor network management protocol and systems
* cross-layer design and sensor network management protocols
* security of distributed intelligence in sensor networks
* inter-connection between distributed sensor systems
* testbed, experimental measurements & performance analysis
* systems for context sensing and context awareness
* tools and methodologies for sensory data fusion
* QoS provisioning protocols with data fusion technology
* collaborative in-network processing and data sharing
* use of Intelligence and data in energy harvesting



IMPORTANT DATES

* Deadline for Submission of Paper:   01 July 2010
* Authors to receive a 1st decision:  30 September  2010
* Final notification of acceptance:   31 January 2011
* On-line and print publication:      Q1/Q2 2011



Paper Submission:
All papers must be submitted through the journal's Manuscript Central system:




Guest editors:
 
 Dr. Lei Shu (Corresponding)
 Nishio Lab., Department of Multimedia Engineering
 Graduate School of Information Science and Technology
 Osaka University, Japan
 E-mail: lei.shu@ieee.org
 
 Prof. Jaime Lloret Mauri
 Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain
 E-mail: jlloret@dcom.upv.es

 Prof. Joel Rodrigues
 University of Beira Interior, Portugal
 E-mail: joeljr@ieee.org

 Prof. Min Chen
 Seoul National University, Korea
 E-mail: minchen@ieee.org



IET Publishing Dept. contact:
 Paul Rowley
 Editorial Assistant
 IET Communications
 E-mail: prowley@theiet.org
 
 Professor Habib F. Rashvand
 Series Editor
 IET Communications
 E-mail: h.rashvand@warwick.ac.uk

Int. Conference on Wireless Communications, Network and Mobile Computing (WiCOM2010)

Paper Submission Deadline Has Been Extended to April. 6, 2010. ============================================================== The 6th International Conference on Wireless Communications, Network and Mobile Computing (WiCOM2010) http://www.wicom-meeting.org/2010 Chengdu, China     September 23-25, 2010 ==============================================================

The conference proceedings will be published by IEEE, all the accepted papers will be indexed by EI Compendex and ISTP.

The technical areas to be covered in this conference include: Wireless Communications Network Technologies Services and Application

Special track within WiCOM2010: Signal and Image Processing (SIP)

Full papers will be due by April 6, 2010.

For more information, please contact: wicom@scirp.org

WiCOM Organizing Committee