[agents] CFP: Symposium on Behaviour Regulation in Multi-Agent Systems

[Nir Oren]

(Apologies for cross-posting)

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

THE SECOND SYMPOSIUM ON BEHAVIOUR REGULATION IN MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS
Held in conjunction with the AISB 2009 convention

Edinburgh, Scotland, 8 April 2009

http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/oren/aisb09

Multi-agent systems are a powerful problem solving paradigm, attacking a
problem via the interactions of many discrete components. The
interactions between agents provide the approach's strength, but they
also pose a great challenge: detecting and preventing undesirable
behaviour (and interactions between agents) is difficult. While the
formal specification of allowable agent behaviour is possible,
unintended effects and purposefully malicious agents mean that other
approaches to regulating the behaviour of agents are needed.  Techniques
such as trust and reputation mechanisms and offline and online mechanism
design (examples of which are social laws and machine interpretable
contracts respectively) are able to regulate agent behaviour
while allowing the agent to remain autonomous. While powerful, these
techniques, and others, are still being refined, and many issues,
including detecting and handling conflicting requirements,
representation of permissible activities, and ways of monitoring and
enforcing behaviour remain.

This symposium will be concerned with theories, methodologies, and
computational issues related to regulating agent behaviour in
multi-agent systems. Papers examining both theory and practise are welcome.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to

  - all aspects of automated contracting
  - online and offline design of behaviour regulation mechanisms
  - social laws
  - behaviour specification
  - behaviour monitoring
  - failure detection
  - normative decision making
  - normative conflict resolution
  - trust and reputation systems
  - mechanism design
  - sanctioning mechanisms

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline: 5 January 2009
Notification of Acceptance: 30 February 2009
Camera Ready Due: 27 February 2009
Symposium: 8 April 2009

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

All papers from the AISB convention will be published in the AISB
proceedings, with an ISBN number. We will further investigate the
possibility of publishing the best papers in journal special issue or
book form.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Nathan Griffiths (University of Warwick)
Martin Kollingbaum (Carnegie Mellon University)
Alessio Lomuscio (Imperial College London)
Michael Luck (King's College London)
Simon Miles (King's College London)
Timothy J. Norman (University of Aberdeen)
Nir Oren (King's College London)
Luke Teacy (University of Southampton)
Wamberto Vasconcelos (University of Aberdeen)
Javier Vazquez (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya)

SYMPOSIUM ORGANISATION

Nir Oren, King's College London, nir.oren at kcl.ac.uk

-- 
Dr Nir Oren                    Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1631
Department of Computer Science Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2851
King's College London          E-mail: nir.oren at kcl.ac.uk
WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom       WWW: http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/oren