[agents] Second CFP for ADAPT 2009 workshop at AAMAS

[Alessandro Farinelli]

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*Second Call For Papers for **ADAPT 2009 Workshop
Agent Design: Advancing from Theory to Practice
AAMAS 2009

Web Site:
http://nathanschurr.googlepages.com/motivation

Submission deadline:
February 12

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MOTIVATION*

AAMAS is the premier international conference for both theoretical and
applied agent-based research. However, in today's agents community, theory
and practice seem to be walking separate paths with no clear feedback
between the two.

The ADAPT workshop hopes to bridge this gap by fostering an exchange where
the lessons learned from taking theory to practice are used to understand
the limitations of the theoretical models and the lessons learned directly
from practice and used to discover the issues that theoretical models need
to address.

Over the last several years, members of the agents community have been
involved with real-world systems in robotics, decision-support agents,
personal-assistant agents in military, space and commercial domains. Many of
the lessons learned from these endeavors involve the surprises, difficulties
and flaws. These lessons are often not shared because they bring about
questions for which an answer is not apparent. Nevertheless, it is important
for our community to know and discuss these challenges if we are to produce
the ideas and technology that are transformative and ultimately, utilized by
practitioners.

Some of these challenges may include:

    * Giving users a language to compactly communicate their problems;
problem description
    * Translating a problem description into a chosen formalism; modeling
    * The lack of information to populate a model
    * The effects of bounded memory and processing on algorithms
    * Real-world communication channels
    * Communicating with a human user, e.g., giving instructions, receiving
updates
    * Getting real information from the environment; sensing
    * User error or misinterpretation of instructions

An important aspect of this workshop is not only to discuss these
challenges, but also to develop directions for existing and new theoretical
models so that algorithms and approaches that result can actually function
in practice.

*SHORT PAPER SUBMISSION*

We are soliciting papers that discuss lessons learned from taking theory to
practice or extracting lessons about theory from practice, particularly
those that can identify issues with existing theoretical formulations or
suggest new directions or approaches.

Papers can be up to 5 single-spaced pages in standard LaTeX article format
or Word with 1-inch margins in 12 point font. The papers will be reviewed by
the Organizing Committee on the ability to further the goals and discussion
that align with the motivation of the workshop. Position papers are also
welcome. Please e-mail your submissions to <maheswar at isi.edu> by the
deadline.

*BEST PAPER AWARD
*
A best paper award will be chosen by the organizing committee. The winning
authors will receive one free registration to the workshop.

*PRESENTATIONS
*
All accepted papers will be invited to give short presentations on their
experiences and ideas.
In addition, we will have the following invited speakers:

* *Nick Jennings*, University of Southampton
* *Gal Kaminka*, Bar-Ilan University
* *Pedro Szekely*, Information Sciences Institute
* *Milind Tambe*, University of Southern California

*DEADLINES
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Submission:        Feb 12, 2009
Notification:        March 1, 2009
Camera-Ready:    March 12, 2009

*ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
*
Rajiv Maheswaran
Research Scientist, Information Sciences Institute
Research Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University of Southern California
E-mail: <maheswar at isi.edu>

Nathan Schurr
Human-Agent Collaboration Scientist
Aptima, Inc.
Email: <nschurr at aptima.com>

Alessandro Farinelli
Research Fellow, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
Email: <af2 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>