Multi-Agent Programming Contest (ProMAS 2007) - *** New deadlines ***

[Peter Novak]

[apologies for multiple copies]


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***            *** New submission deadline ***               ***
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               Multi-Agent Programming Contest
                    in association with
                        ProMAS 2007

                       May 14/15 2007
                      Honolulu, Hawaii
          http://cig.in.tu-clausthal.de/AgentContest/

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Aims and Scope:
This competition is an attempt to stimulate research in the
area of multi-agent programming by

    1- identifying key problems and
    2- collecting suitable benchmarks

that can serve as milestones for testing agent-oriented
programming languages, platforms and tools. We also expect
that participating at the contest helps to debug a system
and to identify weak parts in it.

The performance of a particular system  will be determined
in a series of games where the systems compete against each
other. While winning the competition is not the main point,
we hope it will shed light on the applicability of certain
frameworks to particular domains.


* History
This is the third such contest. The first two were organized
within the CLIMA conference series.



* Scenario description
This year, the contest is organised as part of the ProMAS
workshop (a workshop organized within AAMAS 07). It consists
of applying (or developing from scratch) a multi-agent system
to solve a cooperative task in a dynamically changing environment.
The environment of the multi-agent system is a grid-like world
where agents can move from one cell to a neighbouring cell
if there is no agent or obstacle already in that cell. In
this environment, gold can appear in the cells. Participating
agent teams explore the environment, avoid obstacles and
compete with another agent team for the gold in the environment.


We encourage submissions that specify and design a multi-agent
system in terms of high-level concepts such as goals, beliefs,
plans, roles, communication, coordination, negotiation, and
dialogue in order to generate an efficient and effective
solution for the above mentioned application. Moreover, the
use of agent-oriented programming languages, platforms, tools,
and techniques in the implementations of multi-agent system is
appreciated.


* Participation requirements:
The participation in this contest consists of two parts:

1- Submission of the description of analysis, design and
   implementation of a multi-agent system for the above
   application. Existing multi-agent system methodologies such
   as Gaia, Prometheus or Tropos can be used to describe the
   system. For the description of the implementation, it should
   be explained how the design is implemented. This can be done
   by explaining, for example, which programming language,
   platform, tools, and techniques are used to implement the
   multi-agent system. The maximum length of this description is
   5 pages according to the LNCS format.

2- Participation in the contest tournament by means of an
   (executable) implementation of a multi-agent system.
   The agents from each participating systems (agent teams) will
   be executed locally (on the participant's hardware) while the
   simulated environment, in which all agents from competing teams
   perform actions, is run on the remote contest simulation server.

   Interaction/communication between agents from one team should
   be managed locally, but the interaction between individual
   agents and their environment (run on the simulation server)
   will be via Internet. Participating agents connect to the
   simulation server that provides the information about the
   environment. Each agent from each team should connect and
   communicate to the simulation server using one TCP connection.


Further technical details on how to participate in this contest
can be found on the contest webpage

     http://cig.in.tu-clausthal.de/AgentContest/

The source code together with instructions on how to install it
including precise instructions on software and hardware
requirements should be submitted just before the competition starts.



* How To Submit:

Please announce your intention to attend the contest by subscribing
to the mailing list (details on the home page)  **now**.

Please submit a 5 page description of your solution to Mehdi
Dastani (mehdi at cs.uu.nl). Several days before the start of the
competition, the contest organisers will contact participants
via e-mail with details on time and Internet coordinates
(IP addresses/ports) of the simulation server.


* Important Dates:
    * Submission of the description   : March 6, 2007 *New deadline!*
    * Notification                    : March 10, 2007
    * Camera-Ready of the description : March 19, 2007 (hard deadline)
    * Competition                     : TBA (in April)
    * Winner announcement             : May 14/15, 2007


* Winning Criteria:
The winner of the contest will be the best performing team with
the highest number of points from the tournament. The original,
innovative, and effective application of agent-oriented programming
languages, platforms, tools, and techniques for the implementation
of multi-agent systems will influence the final decision as well.


-- 
peter.novak at tu-clausthal.de | http://cig.in.tu-clausthal.de/
Department of Informatics | Clausthal University of Technology
Julius-Albert-Str. 4 | D-38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld | Germany
Tel +49 5323 72 71 90 | Fax +49 5323 72 71 39