[agents] CFP: Fourth International Workshop on Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OPTMAS IV)

[Alessandro Farinelli]

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

                CFP: Fourth International Workshop on

           Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OPTMAS IV)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

                     To be held in conjunction with the

    Tenth International Conference on Autonomous and Multi-Agent
Systems
                            (AAMAS 2011)
                          2 or 3 May 2011
                cfp at: http://www.optmas2011.com

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



Call
----

This workshop invites works from different strands of the multi-agent
systems community that pertain to the design of algorithms, models, and
techniques to deal with multi-agent optimisation problems. In so doing,
this workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers to discuss common
issues that arise in solving optimisation problems in different areas and
elaborate common benchmarks to test their solutions.


Background
----------

The number of novel applications of multi-agent systems has followed an
exponential trend over the last few years, ranging from online auction
design, through in multi-sensor networks, to scheduling of tasks in
multi-actor systems. Multi-agent systems designed for all these
applications
generally require some form of optimisation in order to achieve their
goal.
Given this, a number of advancements have been made in the design of
winner
determination, coalition formation, and distributed constraints
optimisation
algorithms among others. However, there are no general principles
guiding
the design of such algorithms that would enable researchers to either
exploit solutions designed in other areas or to ensure that their
algorithms
conform to some level of applicability to real problems.

This workshop aims to address the above issues by bringing together
researchers from different parts of the Multi-Agent Systems research
area to
present their work and  discuss acceptable solutions, benchmarks, and
evaluation methods for generally researched optimisation problems.

In particular, the main issues to be addressed by the workshop include
(but are not limited to):

1. Techniques to model and solve optimisation problems in which the
actors
are partly or completely distributed and can only communicate with their
peers.

2. Algorithms to compute solutions to mechanisms that deal with
different
stakeholders who may be self interested or may have different
computation/communication capabilities from their peers.

3. Techniques to manage and disseminate relevant information across
different agents.

4. Dealing with privacy concerns: solving complex optimisation problems
while leaking as little private information as possible

5. Problems that require anytime algorithms.

6. Algorithms that need to provide guarantees on the quality of the
solution.

7. Mechanisms whose properties can be significantly affected if the
solution computed is not the optimal one.

8. Techniques to deal with optimisations that have to be repeated with
possibly only slight changes in the input data.

9. Techniques to deal with situations where the input data may be
uncertain
or unreliable, requiring that the solution computed be robust to slight
differences from the true values.

10. Techniques to deal with agents that are tied to physical devices.
This involves computation and communication constraints that need to be
considered in the coordination techniques, as well as the possibility of
failures of the devices and communication links.

11. Benchmarks for optimisation algorithms in dynamic environments.

Keywords
--------

Topics include but are not limited to:

* Distributed Constraints Optimisation/Satisfaction
* Winner Determination Algorithms in Auctions
* Coalition Formation Algorithms
* Algorithms to compute Nash Equilibrium in games
* Optimisation under uncertainty
* Optimisation with incomplete or dynamic input data
* Algorithms for real-time applications

Important dates
---------------

* JANUARY, 30th, 2011 - Submission of contributions to workshops
* FEBRUARY, 27th 2011 - Workshop paper acceptance notification
* MAY 2nd or 3rd, 2011 - Workshop takes place in conjunction with AAMAS
2011.

Submission
----------

Submissions should conform to the LNCS Springer format,
Authors are encouraged to use the following style file
ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip
or see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 for more
details.

Submission should not be more than *16* pages long (excluding appendices and
assuming the LNCS format above).

Authors can submit their papers through the OPTMAS 2011 Easychair
submission site:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=optmas11


Reviewing process
-----------------

Papers will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. Criteria for selection
of papers will include: originality, readability, relevance to themes,
soundness, and overall quality.


Publication
-----------
Best papers from OPTMAS 2008 and OPTMAS 2009 were selected for publication
in the
special issue on Optimisation in Multi-Agent System of the Journal of
Autonomous and Multiagent Systems

We plan to continue this initiative for the 2010 and 2011 edition.
Therefore, we
will negotiate the publication of selected, best papers in a quality
journal.


Organising committee
--------------------
Dr. Alessandro Farinelli (University of Verona, Italy)

Prof. Nicholas R. Jennings (University of Southampton, UK)

Dr. Sarvapali D. Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)

Dr. Juan A. Rodriguez Aguilar (IIIA,CSIC, Spain)

Dr. Jesus Cerquides Bueno (IIIA,CSIC, Spain)

Dr. Alex Rogers (University of Southampton, UK)


Programme Committee
--------------------------------------

Anna Bazzan, Instituto de Informatica, UFGRS, Brazil

Christian Blum, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain

Ladislau Boloni, University of Central Florida, USA

Andrea Giovannucci, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Pedro Meseguer, IIIA-CSIC, Spain

Nikos Komodakis, University of Crete, Greece

Talal Rahwan, University of Southampton, UK

Kate Larson, University of Waterloo, Canada

Beatriz López, University of Girona, Spain

Andrea Roli, Universita' di Bologna, Italy

Onn Shehory, IBM, Israel

Nicolas Stefanovitch, University of Paris 6, France

Greet Vanden Berghe, KaHo Sint-Lieven, Belgium

Meritxell Vinyals, IIIA-CSIC, Spain

Victor Lesser, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

Jason Tsai, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.

Christopher Kiekintveld, University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
USA.

Kathryn Macarthur, University of Southampton, UK

Robin Glinton, Robotics Institute CMU, USA

Norman Salazar, IIIA-CSIC, Spain