AAMAS-09 Final Call for Papers

[Simon Miles]

(apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call)

CALL FOR PAPERS
The Eighth International Joint Conference on
AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (AAMAS-09)
Budapest, Hungary
May 10--15, 2009
http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/

INTRODUCTION

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous
agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was
initiated in 2002 by merging highly respected individual conferences:
- the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS);
- the International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and
Languages (ATAL);
- the International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA).
The aim of the joint conference is to provide a single, high-profile,
internationally respected archival forum for scientific research in
the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multiagent
systems. See http://www.ifaamas.org for more information.

AAMAS-09 is the Eighth conference in the AAMAS series, following
enormously successful previous conferences at Bologna, Italy (2002),
Melbourne, Australia (2003), New York, USA (2004), Utrecht, The
Netherlands (2005), Hakodate, Japan (2006), Honolulu, USA (2007) and
Estoril, Portugal (2008). AAMAS-09 will be held at the Europa Congress
Center, Budapest, Hungary.

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS

AAMAS-09 encourages the submission of *original* papers covering
theoretical, experimental, methodological, and application issues in
autonomous agents and multiagent systems. Authors are discouraged to
submit papers describing work that has already been published in
previous AAMAS workshops with post-proceedings publications and/or
published as short papers in previous AAMAS proceedings, unless that
the authors *clearly* demonstrate significant new content with respect
to the previous publication.

The main theme of AAMAS-09, based on feedback from previous
conferences, will be reinforcing the rich panorama of
*interconnections* in the field. We encourage the community, and the
authors in particular, to reflect about their work not as belonging to
just a niche in a long list of topics, but rather as a point in an
abstract topological space defined by three complementary axes:

(i) the *focus* of the work, i.e., what is the AAMAS topic or  contribution
of the work

(ii) the *description level*, i.e., whether this contribution is mostly in the
theoretical, experimental, method/language, or application level

(iii) the intellectual *inspiration source*, i.e., what scientific domain has
given the main ideas for the contribution

Every paper will be evaluated appropriately with respect to each of
these three axes. Moreover, the use of this topological space will
help this year and future AAMAS conference organizers to better stress
some particular points in this space to be highlighted in the program,
as it was the case of the special tracks presented in AAMAS-08 and
will be the case of the special area tracks in AAMAS-09.


DESCRIPTION LEVEL AXIS

AAMAS-09 encourages the submission of papers in several descriptive
styles: (i) theoretical, (ii) experimental/empirical
(architectures/systems/simulations/data), (iii) methodologies/languages
(design/software engineering/programming-oriented), and (iv)
applications. Every paper should make clear its contribution to the
AAMAS field, place itself in the context of relevant related work, and
evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of its approach.

Theoretical papers should make clear the significance and
application-relevance of the results to the AAMAS community.

Experimental papers should address issues clearly in the context of
autonomous agents or multi-agent systems architectures, simulations,
or performance.

Methodological and language papers should propose advances in MAS
analysis/design methodologies, process and process models for
agent-oriented software development, frameworks for MAS specific
properties (like cooperation, coordination etc...), agent verification
and validation techniques/tools, and multi-agent programming
languages, deployment platforms and development tools.

Application papers should provide a motivation for why an agent- or
multi-agent approach was used, a clear description of the design and
implementation of the system, and a thorough evaluation of the system.

INSPIRATION SOURCE AXIS

AAMAS-09 welcomes papers from many intellectual approaches, including
artificial intelligence, distributed systems, economics,
social/management sciences, (multi-)robotics, and
biologically-inspired approaches.

FOCUS AXIS

Broadly speaking, the AAMAS community-specific topics of interest are
focused in individual agents, their environment, their interactions,
and their social/organizational structure.

Agent Focus: contributions are focussed on the elements for
structuring/defining/analyzing individual processing entities:
- agent architectures
- agent reasoning/deliberation/decision mechanisms
- agent perception and action
- believable agents
- agents models of emotion, motivation, personality, etc.

Environment Focus: contributions are focused on the elements for
structuring/defining/analyzing the the external world (including
humans) and its information exchange with the processing entities:
- environmmental entities
- agent-human interaction
- interface agents
- architectures

Interaction Focus: contributions are focused on the elements for
structuring/defining/analyzing the information and control exchange
between the processing entities
- agent communication languages
- interaction protocols
- ontological / semantic interactions
- conflict resolution and negotiation
- argumentation theories
- mechanism design
- multi-agent learning
- multi-agent planning
- auctions and related structures
- coordination mechanisms
- reputation and trust
- privacy and security

Social/Organizational Structure Focus: costributions are focused
on elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the identity and
properties of multiple processing entities
- groups and teams
- norms and normative behavior
- commitments
- autonomy
- organizations and institutions
- organizational learning
- organizational planning
- organizational reputation and trust
- coalition formation
- open systems
- collective decision making
- emergent behavior

Comprehensive/Cross-cutting Focus: contributions dealing with all or
more than one of the previous focus
- complete applications demonstrating several different significant foci
- agent-oriented software engineering (multiple foci)
- agent and multi-agent programming languages (multiple foci)
- multi-agent based simulation (multiple foci)
- evaluation techniques
- ethical and legal issues
- standardization efforts in industry and commerce
- meta-papers (on the state of agent research, on the conference, etc.)

SPECIAL AREA TRACKS

Particularly this year, we are strongly encouraging papers that focus
on some of the issues located in the topological space described above:

Inspiration source axis:
- (Multi-)Robotics
- Social Sciences

Description level axis:
- Methodologies/languages
- Applications

Focus axis:
- (Virtual) Agents
- Social/Organizational Structure

In addition to conventional conference papers, AAMAS-09 will also
include a demonstration track for work focusing on implemented
systems, software, or robot prototypes; and an industry track for
descriptions of industrial applications of agents. The submission
processes for the demonstration and industry tracks will be separate
from the main paper submission process.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

This year the conference is soliciting regular papers (8 pages) and
extended abstracts (2 pages). Extended abstracts are encouraged as a
mechanism for the timely reporting of interesting but preliminary
work, that may not as yet have the level of evaluation or detail that
would be expected for a regular paper. The program chairs may, at
their discretion, accept papers that were submitted as regular papers
as extended abstracts, if the authors have explicitly agreed to this
when registering their papers.

Accepted regular papers will receive a slot for oral presentation in
the conference. In addition, both regular and extended abstracts will
be presented in poster sessions and appear in the conference
proceedings.

Reviews will be double blind, therefore authors are requested to avoid
including anything that can be used to reveal their
identity. Submissions will be peer reviewed rigorously and evaluated
on the basis of adherence, originality, soundness, significance,
presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall
quality of their technical contribution. More details about the review
process can be found in the conference page.

Authors should refer to the conference page to download the adequate
paper style files and access the detailed instructions to access the
Confmaster system.


http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/submission.html


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

General Chairs:

Carles Sierra, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the
Spanish Research Council (Spain)

Cristiano Castelfranchi, ISTC-CNR (Italy)

Program Chairs:

Jaime Simão Sichman, Politecnic School, University of São Paulo (Brazil)

Keith S. Decker, Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences,
University of Delaware (USA)

A more complete list of other members of the AAMAS-09 Organizing
Committee may be found in http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/.

IMPORTANT DATES

Oct 10, 2008 EDT (GMT-4): electronic abstract submission deadline
Oct 14, 2008 EDT (GMT-4): electronic paper submission deadline
Dec 19, 2008: paper notification
Feb 06, 2009: camera-ready copy submission deadline



--
Dr Simon Miles
Agents and Intelligent Systems Group
Department of Computer Science
Kings College London, UK