[agents] AAMAS-09 Call for Papers

[Simon Miles]

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

-- 
Dr Simon Miles
Lecturer, Department of Computer Science
Kings College London, WC2R 2LS, UK
+44 (0)20 7848 1166