[agents] 2nd CFP: PRIMA 2009 - 12th International Conference on Principles of Practice in Multi-Agent Systems

[Valentin Robu]

==================================
2nd CALL FOR PAPERS
==================================
The 12th International Conference on Principles of Practice in Multi-Agent
Systems  (PRIMA2009).
Nagoya Congress Center, Japan Dec 13-16, 2009.
http://www.prima2009.org/

*** Highlights ***
Multimedia submissions,
Call for Workshop and Tutorial Proposals,
Springer LNCS/LNAI publication,
Demonstration session,
and Interactive sessions.
******************

=======================================================
IMPORTANT DATES:
=======================================================
Tutorial and Workshop Proposal due: July 1st, 2009(Wed) *** approaching ***
Multimedia format submissions due: July 3rd, 2009(Fri) *** approaching ***
Multimedia format submissions author notification: July 17th, 2009 (Fri)
Papers due: July 31st, 2009 (Fri)
Author notification: September 15th, 2009 (Tue)
Camera-ready papers due: September 30th, 2009 (Wed)
Early registration deadline: October 16th, 2009 (Fri)
Registration deadline: December 1, 2009 (Tue)
Tutorial and Workshop date : December 13, 2009 (Sun)
Conference dates: December 14 - 16, 2009 (Mon - Wed)

=======================================================
INTRODUCTION
=======================================================
PRIMA is the leading scientific conference for research on intelligent
agent systems and multi-agent systems, attracting high quality,
state-of-the-art research from all over the world. The conference
endeavors to bring together researchers, developers, and academic and
industry leaders, active and interested in agents and multi-agent systems,
their practices and related areas. The conference is specifically focused
on becoming the premier forum for prototype and deployed agent systems.
The conference offers an exceptional opportunity for presentation of
original work, technological advances, practical problems and concerns of
the research community.
PRIMA2009 will build on the success of its predecessor workshops and
conferences held in Hanoi, Bangkok, Guilin, Kuala Lumpur, Auckland, Seoul,
Tokyo, Taipei, Melbourne, Kyoto, and Singapore. Since 2007, due to the
need for an additional high-quality forum for international researchers
and practitioners to meet and share ther work, the meeting has been
expanded from a workshop to a full-fledged conference.
Agent computing and technology is an exciting, emerging paradigm expected
to play a key role in many society-changing practices from disaster
response to manufacturing to agriculture.  Agent and multi-agent
researchers are focused on building working systems that bring together a
broad range of technical areas from market theory to software engineering
to user interfaces.   Agent systems are expected to operate in real-world
environments, with all the challenges complex environments present. PRIMA
particularly encourages reports on development of prototype and deployed
agent and multiagent systems and experiments that demonstrate the
capability of agents to handle real-world challenges.
Papers addressing methodological or theoretical aspects or particular
aspects of agent development are also encouraged. A broad range of topics
are of interest but all papers should clearly identify how the
contribution brings the promise of practical multi-agent systems closer
and identify their scientific and/or technical contributions to the PRIMA
community.
The PRIMA demonstration session encourages demonstrations on practice of
prototype and deployed agent and multiagent systems. The PRIMA
demonstration session will be held as a part of the main conference. The
goal of the PRIMA demonstrations is to give participants an opportunity to
present the functionality of their systems, tools and simulations. Authors
of accepted papers to the main conference or the industrial track with a
demonstrable system are strongly encouraged to apply.
For the first time PRIMA is giving authors an option to present their
accepted papers in an interactive session, rather than as a formal oral
presentation.  In this interactive session, authors can take time to show
their work either electronically or as a poster and discuss their work in
depth with conference attendees.  The interactive session is separate from
the demonstration session and available to any author having a full paper
accepted to the conference.  The aim is to give authors the opportunity to
present their work in the most compelling way, to best share the results
of their research. Authors can choose a presentation type, oral
presentation or interactive presentation when submitting their papers. 
Regardless of the presentation type, high-quality papers will not be
distinguishable in the proceedings and will be cited identically.
The conference will also feature a doctoral mentoring program, which is
focused on supporting the doctoral students with their research by
providing them peer support. Senior and distinguished researchers
attending the conference are expected to be available for interaction with
the young and promising researchers.
As with previous PRIMA events, there will be tutorials covering a range of
important topics. A special industry track will showcase progress in the
use of real agent systems in important environments.
The conference will be located in Nagoya, at the center of Japan (West of
Tokyo, 2 hours, E of Osaka, 1.5 hours, and E of Kyoto 1 hours by express
train). Nagoya has a castle originally built by the first Tokugawa shogun,
as well as one of Japan's most important Shinto shrines, Atsuta shrine.
The conference site, Nagoya Congress Center, is one of the most
sophisticated and beautiful congress sites in Japan.

=======================================================
SPECIAL MULTIMEDIA SUBMISSION FORMAT
=======================================================
For some multiagent systems, especially those that aim for broad, useful
functionality, it can be challenging to convey the research contributions
of the world compellingly in a traditional paper format. For example,
often game theory research can be presented in a compelling way in a paper
format. On the other hand, the novelty and contribution of some
distributed robotic or agent systems cannot be made clear in a paper
format, but might be compelling with a Powerpoint presentation or video. 
Programming languages or tools might be best explained via a tutorial or
software package showing their power. In recognition of this, PRIMA'09, in
addition to regular paper submissions, encourages multimedia (non-paper)
electronic submissions of technical contributions. This type of work can
be submitted in whatever electronic format best conveys the research
contributions of the work, from Powerpoint presentations, to videos, to
working code to websites.  These submissions will be reviewed by an
experienced group of Multiagent researchers and be provisionally accepted
or rejected.  If accepted, authors are required to submit a
“traditional” paper via the normal submission process.  These
provisionally accepted papers will be reviewed and then treated like
journal papers “accepted with revisions” – authors must make changes
as suggested by the reviewers and camera ready papers will be checked to
ensure that appropriate changes have been made and the paper meets high
quality standards.  Papers accepted via this submission process will be
indistinguishable from “normal” papers in the proceedings.  In
addition, the electronic submission will be made available to conference
participants via DVD. The aim of this novel process is to ensure that
high-quality Multiagent research is shared with the community, even in
cases where a traditional paper format might not highlight contributions
of the work.  Of specific interest under this submission process are
contributions such as:
-	Agent based simulation where the space in a paper constrains the large
amount of interesting data that might be generated.
-	Tools for building agents or multi-agent systems
-	Intelligent, interactive agent-based systems or interfaces, where the
interesting functionality cannot be easily explained in a text format
-	Complex, interesting multi-agent behavior that is best shown in a video
format.
-	Robotics, humanoids, or intelligent vehicles.
-	Enterprise systems based on agents or multi-agent systems
-	Web-based agent systems or multi-agent systems
Notice that the criteria for accepting work through this submission
process are still the research aspects of the work.  Well engineered, but
not novel or research oriented systems are not encouraged.  The aim is
specifically and narrowly to provide a mechanism to get interesting
research shared with the community even when its merit is difficult to
convey in a traditional paper format.



============================================================================
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTION (Multimedia Submissions, Due date is July 3rd, 2009):
===========================================================================-
The deadline is July 3rd, 2009 (Hawaii-Aleutian time zone at
www.time.gov).
- The authors must send an e-mail which includes the following information to

  prima2009-multimedia at itolab.mta.nitech.ac.jp

  1) Title (mandatory)
  2) Authors and affiliations (mandatory)
  3) How do you submit your contribution? sftp? mail? e-mail? etc.
(mandatory)
  4) Description (highly recommended)

- The preferred format for multimedia submissions is video, encoded with a
commonly available codec. Videos should highlight and make clear the
research contribution of the work and not simply show system behavior. 
For example, a video of robots simply playing a RoboCup game is not
appropriate.   Powerpoint presentations or web pages are also an
acceptable format, provided the focus is on the research contribution of
the work.
- Executable code will be accepted, provided it can be easily run on a
common platform.  Sending a tool or simulator without a tutorial or other
guidance that will allow a reviewer to quickly understand the research
significance of the work is not recommended.
- Multimedia submissions should allow a reviewer to understand and
evaluate the research contribution of the work in approximately the same
amount of time it would take to review a paper covering the same topic.
- A one page description of research contribution, potentially including
references to related work, is highly recommended.
- An sftp server will be provided for uploading of multimedia submissions
and media such as DVDs may be sent by regular mail to:
 Takayuki Ito
 Nagoya Institute of Technology,
 Gokiso, Showaku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan.
 TEL +81-52-735-7968 FAX +81-52-735-7407
==========================================================================
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTION (Papers Submissions, Due date is July 31th, 2009):
=========================================================================-
The deadline is July 31th, 2009 (Hawaii-Aleutian time zone at
www.time.gov).
- Submission instruction is described in the PRIMA2009 homepage
(www.prima2009.org).
- All paper submissions, except multimedia submissions, are managed by
Springer OCS (Online Conference Services).



=======================================================
TOPICS OF INTEREST:
=======================================================
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Agent-based system development:
Agent-oriented software engineering
Agent development environments
Agent languages
Case studies and implemented systems

WWW and Semantic Web Agents
Web-based agents
Ontology agents
Semantic Web agents
Internet Bots
Human Agent Interaction

Agent-based simulations:
Emergent behavior Simulation-specific issues Learning:
Learning (single and multi-agent)
Computational architectures for learning Evolution, adaptation

Agent Reasoning:
Reasoning (single and multi-agent)
Planning (single and multi-agent)
Cognitive models
Ontological reasoning

Interface Agents:
Practices of Interface Agents
Interface Multi-Agents
Virtual Agents
Collaborative Interface Agents
Autonomous Interface Agents

Agent societies and social networks:
Artificial social systems
Trust and reputation
Social and organizational structure
Privacy, safety and security
Ethical and legal issues

Agent communication:
Communication languages
Communication protocols
Agent commitments
Network structures and analysis

Agent Cooperation and Negotiation:
Teamwork
Cooperation
Coalition formation
Coordination
Distributed problem solving
Formal models for modeling other agents and self
Argumentation
Negotiation and Bargaining
Persuasion

Agent Systems:
Software agents
Mobile agents
Agent-Based Assistants
Agent-Based Virtual Enterprise
Embodied Agents and Agent-Based Systems Applications
Socially Situated Planning Software and Pervasive Agents

Real-world Robotics:
Coordination in multi-robot systems
Modeling and analysis of multi-robot systems
Tools that are relevant for multi-robot studies
Applications of multi-robot systems to real-world problems

Other Related Areas:
Collective intelligence
Service science
P2P, Grid computing
Financial markets and algorithm trades
Ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence
Programming Languages
Knowledge and Data Intensive Systems
Perceptive Animated Interfaces
Scalability
Tools and Standards
Ubiquitous Software Services
Virtual Humans

The conference also welcomes relevant papers from related fields as long
as the link is made to relevance and work within the agent community.

=======================================================
Demonstration Session:
=======================================================
The PRIMA demonstration session encourages demonstrations on practice of
prototype and deployed agent and multiagent systems. The PRIMA
demonstration session will be held as a part of the main conference. The
goal of the PRIMA demonstrations is to give participants an opportunity to
present their latest practices on agent and multiagent systems. Authors of
accepted papers to the main conference or the industrial track with a
demonstrable system are strongly encouraged to apply.

=======================================================
Interactive Session:
=======================================================
The PRIMA interactive session is giving authors an option to present their
accepted papers in an interactive session, rather than as a formal oral
presentation.  In this interactive session, authors can take time to show
their work either electronically or as a poster and discuss their work in
depth with conference attendees.  The interactive session is separate from
the demonstration session and available to any author having a full paper
accepted to the conference.  The aim is to give authors the opportunity to
present their work in the most compelling way, to best share the results
of their research. Authors can choose a presentation type, oral
presentation or interactive presentation when submitting their papers. 
Regardless of the presentation type, high-quality papers will not be
distinguishable in the proceedings and be will be cited identically.

=======================================================
Industrial Practices Session (Industrial Track) :
=======================================================
The PRIMA Conference Industry Track is dedicated to collect, present and
discuss contributions reporting on industrial and commercial deployment of
software agent technologies and practices. If you are working to
commercialize agent technologies, or developing real-world practices based
on the agent technologies, you are invited to submit papers on your
current works.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
Experiences gained from commercialization attempts
Investment analysis of agent technologies
Insights into markets appropriate for agent technologies
Commercial application of agents
Application case studies
Practices on agent-based e-government
Practices on agent-based automation and logistics
Practices on agent-based telecommunication, media and entertainment
Practices on agent-based healthcare systems
Practices on agent-based smart living, ambient intelligence.
Practices on biotechnology
Practices on monitoring and maintenance, and surveillance
Practices on managing large scale infrastructures
Practices on software development
Other practices of agents, such as in the non-profit sector
Barriers to adoption or adoption facilitators


=======================================================
PUBLICATION:
=======================================================
All accepted papers are going to be published from Springer LNCS/LNAI.


=======================================================
CALL FOR TUTORIALS:
=======================================================
The PRIMA2009 Tutorial Program offers conference attendees attractive and
informative tutorials considering current topics in intelligent agent and
multi-agent systems.
We invite proposals for half-day or whole-day tutorials.

Proposal Guideline:
The proposals of a tutorial should be described in English, in no more
than 2 pages and contain the following information:
The title, goals/objectives, topics to be discussed, a detailed outline of
the tutorial.
Target audience information and prerequisite knowledge of the audience: a
brief description of why and to whom the tutorial is important and
interesting.
Major references of the tutorial.
Contact information of instructors of the tutorial.
For each instructor,
name, affiliation, web page, email address, and short description of
his/her experience relevant to the tutorial.

Submission instructions:
Please send your submissions in PDF to the Tutorial Co-Chairs
Tsunenori Mine (mine at acm.org) and Bui The Duy (duybt at vnu.edu.vn)

Important dates:
Tutorial proposal : July 1st, 2009.
Tutorial notification : July 7th, 2009.
Tutorial final note completion: October 1st, 2009 (will be produced as a
simple booklet).

=======================================================
CALL FOR WORKSHOPS:
=======================================================
The Program Committees of the 12th International Conference on Princples
of Practis in Multi-Agent Systems invite proposals for Workshops. The
Workshops will be held before the Conference, December 13, 2009 at Nagoya,
Japan. The main goal of the PRIMA2009 workshops is to stimulate and
facilitate active exchange, interaction and comparison of approaches,
methods and ideas related to specific topics (both theoretical and
Applied) in the general areas related to intelligent agent systems and
multi-agent systems. The workshops will provide a forum for participants
to introduce their research work and discuss issues on topics of current
interest. Proposals that promote exploration of new research areas and
application fields of agent systems and multi-agent systems are highly
welcome.

The workshop organizers will be responsible for advertising the workshop,
forming the program committees, reviewing and selecting the papers, and
guaranteeing a high quality worthy of the prestige and range of the
Conference. The workshop organizers will also have the discretion of
editing selected papers (after their expansion and revision) into books or
special journal issues. Workshops may be full-day or half-day. A full-day
workshop should select 10-14 regular papers, while a half-day workshop
should select 5-7 regular papers, from a large number of submissions. The
workshop organizers should ensure the presence of authors of accepted
papers at the workshops. We expect the workshop organizers to actively
engage the audience and help them gain a deeper understanding of the
issues. We also encourage the workshops to foster discussion and exchange
of ideas by including mechanisms other than traditional paper
presentations.

Each workshop subject will focus on new research challenges and
initiatives in intelligent agent system and multi-agent systems. The
workshops should provide an informal and vibrant forum for researchers and
industry practitioners to share their research results and practical
development experiences in these two fields.

Workshop Proposal Submission
Workshop proposals should include the following elements:
- Title of the workshop
- The organizers name, affiliation, mailing address and e-mail address
- A description of the topic of the workshop (not exceeding 200 words)
- Type of the workshop (full-day or half-day)
- A description of how the workshop will contribute to the field of agent
systems and multi-agent systems
- A short description on how the workshop will be advertised so as  to
ensure a sufficiently wide range of authors and high quality papers

After the acceptance of a workshop proposal the organizer(s) should:
- Create a Call for papers/participation for the workshop
- Create a Web page for the workshop, the link of which will be
  published on the Conference Web site
- Create a Board of Reviewers (Program Committee)
- Review and select papers
- Schedule the workshop activities

Those papers selected by a workshop organizer will also be reviewed by the
Workshop Co-Chairs for final acceptance. All submitted papers will be
reviewed on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance, and
clarity. The above described workshop proposals must be submitted via
e-mail to both quan.bai at csiro.au & fukuta at cs.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
We look forward to your support in making PRIMA 2009 workshops an exciting
event.

Important Dates (updated on May 28, 2009)
Workshop proposal submission due : Jul. 1, 2009
Notification to workshop proposers : Jul. 7, 2009
Each Workshop Organizer Sends out Call for Workshops Papers : Jul. 9, 2009
Due date for full workshop papers submission : Sep. 15, 2009
Final acceptance by Workshop Co-Chairs : Oct. 1, 2009
Camera-ready papers due : Oct. 31, 2009
Early registration deadline : Nov. 4, 2009
Registration deadline :Dec. 1, 2009
Workshop date :Dec. 13, 2009

=======================================================
SPECIAL EVENTS:
=======================================================
- Agent School
- RoboCup

======================================================SPONSORS:
======================================================- MACC (Multi Agent
and Cooperative Computing Workshop)
- IEEE Computer Society (Approval pending)
- Arches, Inc. (http://www.arches.co.jp)

======================================================SUPPORTERS:
======================================================- Commemorative
Organization for the Japan World Exposition '70
  (http://www.expo70.or.jp/e/)
- SCAT (Support Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology Research )
- Kayamori Foundation

=======================================================
ORGANIZATION:
=======================================================
General Chairs:
	Jung-Jin Yang (Catholic University of Korea, Korea),
	Makoto Yokoo (Kyushu University, Japan)
Program Chairs:
	Takayuki Ito (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan),
	Zhi JIN (Peking Univ., China),
	Paul Scerri (Carnegie Mellon University, US)
Industry Track Program Chairs:
	Satoshi Kurihara (Osaka University, Japan),
	Minjie Zhang (University of Wollongong, Australia)
Publicity Cochairs:
	Shigeo Matsubara (Kyoto University, Japan)
	Tony Bastin Roy Savarimuthu (University of Otago, New Zealand)
Sponsorship Chairs:
	Nirmit V Desai (IBM, India),
	Akihiko Ohsuga (The University of Electro-Communications, Japan)
Tutorial / Interactive session Chair:
	Tsunenori Mine (Kyushu University, Japan)
	Buy The Duy (Vietnam National University, Vietnam)
Workshop Chair:
	Quan Bai (CSIRO, Australia)
	Naoki Fukuta (Shizuoka University, Japan)
Financial Chair:
	Tokuro Matsuo (Yamagata University, Japan)
	Valentin Robu (Southampton University, England)
Publications Chair:
	Takahiro Uchiya (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan)
	Gita Sukthankar (University of Central Florida, US)
Agent School & Doctoral Mentoring Track Chair:
	Hiromitsu Hattori (Kyoto University, Japan)
	Jane Hsu (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
Local Arrangement Chair:
	Hirofumi Yamaki (Nagoya University, Japan)
	Shohey Kato (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan)
Agent Event Chair: (RobuCup)
	Itsuki Noda (AIST, Japan)
	Xiaoping Chen, (USTC, China)
	Oliver Obst, (CSIRO, Australia)

Advisory committee members:
	Toru Ishida (Kyoto University, Japan),
	Hideyuki Nakashima (Future University of Hakodate, Japan),
	Chengqi Zhang (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia),
	Muninder P. Singh (North Carolina State University, US),
	Alexis Drogoul (University of Paris 6, France),
	Von Won Soo (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan),
	R. Sadananda (University of New South Wales, Australia)



--
 Valentin Robu
 Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Research Group
 School of Electronics and Computer Science
 University of Southampton
 SO17 1BJ Southampton, UK
 Phone: +44 (0)23 8059 2774
 Web: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/vr2