[agents] Multi-Agent Programming Contest (ProMAS 2008)

[Tristan Marc Behrens]

=================== Call for Submissions =====================

            Second Multi-Agent Programming Contest
                    in association with
                         ProMAS 2008

                        May 12-13 2008
                       Estoril, Portugal
         http://cig.in.tu-clausthal.de/agentcontest2008/

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

* 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 and
   2- collecting suitable benchmarks
that can serve as milestones for testing multi-agent programming
languages, platforms and tools.

* Short scenario description
It consists of applying (or developing from scratch) a multi-agent
system to solve a cooperative task in a highly dynamic environment.
The environment of the multi-agent system is a grid-like world in
which animals (e.g., cows) are moving around collectively in one or
more groups showing swarm like behaviour. There are two corrals
each belongs to one of the 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 has a higher
number of cows collected in its corral. The technical description
of the scenario will be available soon (15 February) on the contest
webpage.   

* 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.
The maximum length 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.
Further technical details on how to participate in this contest
can be found on the contest webpage

      http://cig.in.tu-clausthal.de/agentcontest2008/

* How To Submit: Please announce your intention to attend the contest by
subscribing to the mailing list **now**.

Participants and all interested colleagues are invited to subscribe to
the agentcontest2008-general [at] in.tu-clausthal.de mailing list. 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 agentcontest2008-general-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.

Please submit a 5 page description of your solution to Mehdi Dastani
(mehdi at cs.uu.nl).

* Important Dates:
Submission of the description:    February 25, 2008
Notification:                     March 3, 2008
Camera-Ready of the description:  March 12, 2008
Competition:                      TBA
Winner announcement:              TBA