Multi-Agent Contest 2010 -- Call for Participation

[Tristan Behrens]

=================== Call for Participation 
====================

            Multi-Agent Programming Contest 2010

              http://www.multiagentcontest.org

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

Organizers:
   Tristan Behrens (Clausthal University of Technology)
   Jürgen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology)
   Jomi Hübner (Federal University of Santa Catarina)
   Michael Köster (Clausthal University of Technology)

Steering Committee:
   Mehdi Dastani (Utrecht University)
   Jürgen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology)
   Peter Novak (Czech Technical University)



1. Aims and Scope

This competition is an attempt to stimulate research 
in the area
of multi-agent system development and programming by
1. identifying key problems,
2. collecting suitable benchmarks, and
3. gathering test cases which require and enforce 
coordinated action
that can serve as milestones for testing multi-agent 
programming
languages, platforms and tools.



2. Short Scenario Description

The contest scenario consists of developing a 
multi-agent system to
solve a cooperative task in a dynamic environment. 
The environment
is a grid-like world in which virtual cows are 
moving around
collectively in one or more herds exhibiting a 
swarm-like behavior.
There are two corrals, each belongs to one of the 
two agent teams.
The teams of agents compete to control the behavior 
of animals and
lead them to their own corral. The winning agent 
team is the one
that scores highest. A detailed scenario description 
of the scenario
will be available in time.



3. Participation Requirements

The participation in this contest consists of these 
parts:

1. Declaring the intent to participate by registering to
the mailing list.

2. Submission of the description of analysis, design and
implementation of a multi-agent system for the above 
application.
Thus registering to the contest officially.

3. Participation in the contest tournament by taking 
part on the
final tournament.

4. Submitting the source-code of your application 
right after
the tournament.



4. Important Dates

Stating your intent to
participate:			  now

Publication of the software:	  January 2010

Submission of the description
and registration to the contest:  July 2009

Notification:                     after submission

Camera-Ready of the description:  after notification

Testing phase:			  July - September 2010

Competition:                      September 2010

Winner announcement:              after competition



4. Details

4.1 Intention to Participate

Please announce your intention to attend the contest by
subscribing to the mailing list. Participants and 
all interested
colleagues are invited to subscribe to the mailing list
      agentcontest2010 [at] in.tu-clausthal.de

All the important details and announcements 
including scenario and communication
protocol specifications as well as software release 
announcements and
bug reports will be announced and discussed via this 
list.

To subscribe, send an e-mail to
           agentcontest2010-subscribe [at] 
in.tu-clausthal.de
with the subject "subscribe". The confirmation request
and welcome message will be sent to you shortly 
afterwards. Please
follow the instructions in the automatic mailing 
list replies.


4.2 Packages

The packages that we will publish include: 1. the 
protocol description
that defines the communication scheme between agents 
and our server, 2.
the scenario description that defines the 
environment, 3. the MASSim server,
4. the scenario itself, 5. template-agents 
implemented in Java, and 6. an EIS.


4.3 Submissions of the Short Descriptions

We intend to handle the submissions of the short 
system-descriptions via EasyChair.
We also aim at publishing in the CLIMA (@ECAI) 
post-proceedings (still in a planning
phase). We will provide details in time.


4.4 Scenario

The scenario will be *almost the same* as in 2010. 
The only thing that we are
going to adapt is the scoring schema (more details 
later). But if we
discover further adaptations that would make the 
scenario more interesting
from a research-point-of-view, we could adapt as well.

4.5 Source Codes Obligation

Note that the submission of the source-codes is 
obligatory in 2010.