11-15 May 2009
Budapest, Hungary
AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (AAMAS-09) http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/ (DEADLINE: 10:10:2008) CALL FOR PAPERS The Eighth International Joint Conference on AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (AAMAS-09) Budapest, Hungary May 11--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. We discourage the submission of papers that have previously been published in workshops with post-proceedings publications and/or that have been published as short papers in previous AAMAS proceedings, unless 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 contribution being presented, (ii) the *description level* of the contribution and, (iii) the intellectual *inspiration source* of the approach used in the research. 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 areas in AAMAS-09. DESCRIPTION LEVEL AXIS AAMAS-09 encourages the submission of papers in several descriptive styles: (i) theoretical, (ii) experimental (architecture/system-oriented), (iii) methodological (design/software/language-oriented), and (iv) application. 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. In addition, theoretical papers should make clear the significance of the results to the AAMAS community. Experimental papers should address broad issues in the context of autonomous agents or multi-agent systems architectures or performance rather than isolated generic capabilities (such as general planning or learning). Methodological papers should apply appropriate analysis and evaluation techniques. Application papers should make clear both their scientific and technical contributions, and their practical strengths and weaknesses. INSPIRATION SOURCE AXIS AAMAS-09 welcomes papers from many intellectual approaches, including artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, distributed systems, economics, social sciences, management sciences, robotics, and biologically-inspired approaches. FOCUS AXIS Broadly speaking, the AAMAS community specific topics of interest are focussed in individual agents, their environment, their interactions, and their social/organizational behaviors. 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 - virtual agents - believable agents - agents models of emotion, motivation, personality, etc. Environment Focus: contributions are focussed on the elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the the external world (including humans) and its information exchange with the processing entities: - environmment models - simulators/testbeds for agent environments - agent-human interaction - interface agents Interaction Focus: contributions are focussed 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 - coordination mechanisms - multi-agent planning and learning - reputation and trust - privacy and security Social/Organizational 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 planning/learning - coalition formation - open systems Comprehensive/Cross-cutting Focus: contributions dealing with all or more than one of the previous focus: - complete applications demonstrating several different significant foci - evaluation techniques - ethical and legal issues raised by agents and multiagent systems - standardization efforts in industry and commerce - meta-papers (on the state of agent research, on the conference, etc.) SPECIAL AREAS Particularly this year, we are strongly encouraging papers that focus on some of the issues located at the topological space described above: Inspiration source axis: - Robotics (specifically research on Multi-Robots) - Social Sciences Description level axis: - Agent oriented methodologies and programming languages - Applications Focus axis: - Virtual Agents - Social & Organizational Behavior 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 full 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 full paper. The program chairs may, at their discretion, accept papers submitted as full papers as extended abstracts; authors may withdraw such extended abstracts. Reviews will be double blind, therefore please avoid including anything that can be used to identify paper authors. Submissions will be peer reviewed rigorously and evaluated on the basis of originality, soundness, significance, presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall quality of their technical contribution. Authors should refer to the conference page to download the appropriate paper formats. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE General Chairs: Carles Sierra, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish Research Council (Spain) Cristiano Castelfranchi, ISTC-CNR (Italy) Program Chairs: Jaime Simao Sichman, Politecnic School, University of Sao 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: electronic abstract submission deadline Oct 14, 2008: electronic paper submission deadline Dec 19, 2008: paper notification Feb 06, 2009: camera-ready copy submission deadline