[agents] 2nd CFP for CARE 2009: COLLABORATIVE AGENTS -- RESEARCH and DEVELOPMENT

[Tim Finin]

============================================================
International Workshop on
COLLABORATIVE AGENTS -- RESEARCH and DEVELOPMENT (CARE) 2009
1. December, Melbourne, Australia
*** Deadline might be shifted to the end of October!!! ***

Abstract submission
October 10, 2009

Full paper submission
October 15, 2009

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~xtg/CARE2009/
============================================================

NEWS
19/08/2009 – Invited Speaker PROFESSOR MICHAEL LUCK (King’s College, United Kingdom)
15/08/2009 – Announcement: BEST PAPER AWARD of 250$

CARE 2009 Submissions open at easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=care2009


Summary
=======

Collaboration is required when multiple agents achieve complex goals that are difficult or impossible to attain for an individual agent. This collaboration takes place under conditions of incomplete information, uncertainty, and bounded rationality, much of which has been previously studied in economics and artificial intelligence. However, many real world domains are characterised by even greater complexity, including the possibility of unreliable and non-complying collaborators, complex market and incentive frameworks, and complex transaction costs and organisational structures. This workshop’s thematic focus is on collaborative and autonomous agents that plan, negotiate, coordinate, and act under this complexity.

This workshop aims to foster discussions on computational models of collaboration in distributed systems, addressing a range of theoretical and practical issues. We seek contributions of members in research and industry that use the agent paradigm to approach their problems.

Some issues of interest of this workshop are:
* How to enable agents to reach and maintain joint agreements in complex organisational and market driven domains.
* How to develop a comprehensive agreement formation/maintenance framework applicable to many application domains.
* How to build and extend MAS that work efficiently in partially regulated markets (instead of free or fully regulated markets).
* How to identify and represent conceptual/formal components of organisational structures (e.g., health care and other service-oriented domains).
* How organisational structures influence the negotiation of agents and the distribution/execution of tasks.
* Similarly, what are the implications of a partially regulated market on negotiation/distribution/execution of tasks.
* How to design markets that are adequate for agents to act with incomplete and uncertain information of the behaviour of collaborating agents. * How to cope with unreliable and non-conformant collaborators, where agreements are made but are not always conformed with.
* Which measures of optimality and efficiency are useful in evaluating models of collaboration by means of theory and simulation.
* How can interventions and incentive structures assist in reaching and maintaining agreements.
* How to assign transaction costs to actions in the planning, assignment, and execution stages (e.g., costs incurred by reaching and maintaining agreements). * How can transaction costs influence the social outcome of the system which is further influenced by the organisational context under which the collaboration takes place. * Can lessons learnt in game theoretic computation inform collaborative agent settings.
* How can agents collectively acquire knowledge about their social and physical environment, and their collaborative tasks.

The one day workshop will feature a mixture of invited talks, discussions and submitted contributions describing current work or work in progress in collaborative agent research and technology. The workshop will foster open discussions among all participants, particularly encouraging students to discuss their research topics and to seek feedback from senior agent researchers.

The workshop is held in conjunction with the 22nd Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence AI09 (http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/about/news/conferences/ai09/)


Contact
=======

CARE organisers
care2009 at easychair.org


Important Dates
===============
*** Deadline might be shifted to the end of October!!! ***

Abstract submission
October 10, 2009

Full paper submission
October 15, 2009

Notification
November 10, 2009

Camera ready
November 20, 2009


Topics of Interest include (but are not limited to):
====================================================

RESEARCH
* Collaboration frameworks
* Models of teamwork and joint action
* Organisation/Institutes/Norms
* Auctioning/Negotiation
* Task/Resource allocation
* Behaviour modelling/monitoring
* Adherence/Intervention mechanisms
* Incentive frameworks
* Intervention mechanisms
* Agreement technology
* Contract networks/formation
* Cloud computing

APPLICATION AREAS
* Collaborative care planning/management * Disaster planning/management
* Traffic planning/management
* Transport/Logistics
* Applications in primary and preventative healthcare * Chronic disease planning/management
* Epidemiological agent models
* Unmanned air/land vehicles
* Robotic soccer/Robotic rescues
* Weather forecast
* Artificial and natural immune systems
* Social networks (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook,...)
* Smart grid network (e.g., electricity/gas metering)


Submission and Publication
==========================

Submission is to be done electronically at EasyChair at: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=care2009. Submissions should be formatted according to LNCS specification and submitted as a PDF file. Instructions and templates can be found at: www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

CARE 2009 seeks two types of submissions.
- Full paper of 8-12 pages.
- Short paper of 2-4 pages (such as position and early result papers) are welcome with the option of extending it to a full paper for the post-proceedings.

Submissions will be peer-reviewed by three reviewers per paper. Selection criteria will include relevance, significance, impact, originality, technical soundness, quality of presentation. Some preference may also be given to papers which address emergent trends or important common themes, or which enhance balance of workshop topics. Since this workshop is associated with the AI'09 conference, accepted papers should be relevant to the AI research community.

Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. CARE 2009 plans to offer a best paper award for the best full paper submission, and a selection of papers is planned to be published as post-proceedings with a major international publisher, subject to an appropriate number and quality of submissions.

Workshop Officials
==================

GENERAL CHAIR
Christian Guttmann (Monash University, Australia)

CO-CHAIRS
Michael Georgeff (PrecedenceHealthCare, Australia)
Frank Dignum (University Utrecht, Netherlands)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Philippe Pasquier (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Iyad Rahwan (British University of Dubai, United Arab Emirates)
Kobi Gal (Harvard University, United States of America)
Simon Thompson (British Telecom Research Laboratories, United Kingdom)
Cees Witteveen (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
Mathijs de Weerdt (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
Gord McCalla (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Andrew Gilpin (Hg Analytics, United States of America)
David Morley (SRI International, United States of America)
Kumari Wickramasinghe (Monash University, Australia) Liz Sonenberg (Melbourne University, Australia)
Sascha Ossowski (University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Samin Karim (Accenture, Australia)
Lawrence Cavedon (NICTA and RMIT University, Australia)
Michael Winikoff (University of Otago, New Zealand)
Rafael Bordini (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Wayne Wobcke (University of New South Wales, Australia)
Marcelo Blois Ribeiro (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
more to be announced...


Sponsors
========

School of Primary Health Care, Monash University, Australia
The Finkel Foundation, Australia
PrecedenceHealthCare, Australia

-- Christian Guttmann, PhD http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~xtg/ +61 (0) 417375679