Call for Papers: 10th International Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS'12)

[Brian Logan]

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Tenth International Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS'12)
<http://www.agents.cs.nott.ac.uk/events/promas2012>

ProMAS'12 is a satellite workshop at AAMAS 2012 Valencia, Spain, 4-5 June 2012
<http://aamas2012.webs.upv.es/>

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:
<https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=promas2012>

Papers should be formatted using Springer LNCS style
<http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html>
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)