[agents] ACAN2011 Call for Papers

[Takayuki Ito]

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ACAN 2011 Call for Papers.
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The Forth International Workshop on 
Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiations (ACAN2011).

To be held in conjunction with 
the Ninth International Conference on 
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2011), 
Taipei, Taiwan, May 2-6,  2010.

http://www-itolab.mta.nitech.ac.jp/ACAN2011/

Submission page: 
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acan2011


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Important Dates
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JANUARY, 30, 2011 - Submission deadline
FEBRUARY 27, 2011 - Acceptance notification
MAY 2-3, 2011 - AAMAS-2011 WORKSHOPS

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Scope and Background
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Complex Automated Negotiations have been widely studied and are becoming an important, emerging area in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.  In general, automated negotiations can be complex, since there are a lot of factors that characterize such negotiations. These factors include the number of issues, dependency between issues, representation of utility, negotiation protocol, negotiation form (bilateral or multi-party), time constraints, etc.  Software agents can support automation or simulation of such complex negotiations on behalf of their owners, and can  provide them with adequate bargaining strategies. In many multi-issue bargaining settings, negotiation becomes more than a zero-sum game, so bargaining agents have an incentive to cooperate in order to achieve efficient win-win agreements. Also, in a complex negotiation, there could be multiple issues that are interdependent. Thus, agent's utility will become more complex than simple utility functions. Further, negotiation forms and protocols could be different in bilateral situations and multi-party situations. To realize such a complex automated negotiation, we have to incorporate advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies including pattern search, CSP, graphical utility models, Bays nets, auctions, utility graphs, predicting and learning methods. Applications could include e-commerce tools, decision-making support tools, negotiation support tools, collaboration tools, etc. We solicit papers on all aspects of such complex automated negotiations in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, including but not limited to:

- Complex Negotiations
- Multi-Issue Negotiations
- Concurrent Negotiations
- Multiple Negotiations
- Sequential Negotiations
- Bilateral Negotiations
- Multilateral negotiation
- Negotiation and Coordination Mechanisms
- Negotiation under Asymmetric Information
- Large Scale Negotiation
- Matchmaking and Brokering Mechanisms
- Coordination for Local and Global Consistency 
- 2-sided Matching
- Predicting Opponent's Behaviors in Negotiation.
- Utility models and Preference models
- Complexity aspects of Multi-issue negotiation
- Negotiation Simulation
- Negotiations in Social Networks
- Preference Elicitation
- Negotiation with Human
- Practices

These issues are being explored by researchers from different communities in Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent systems. They are, for instance, being studied in agent negotiation, multi-issue negotiations, auctions, mechanism design, electronic commerce, voting, secure protocols, matchmaking & brokering, argumentation, and co-operation mechanisms. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from these communities to learn about each other's approaches, form long-term collaborations, and cross-fertilize the different areas to accelerate progress towards scaling up to larger and more realistic applications.

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Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) Special Session
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From 2010, ACAN is tightly cooperating with ANAC (Automated Negotiating Agents Competition). Based on the great success of ANAC2010, the ANAC2011 will be held at AAMAS2011 at Taiwan. This year, we, ACAN, have the ANAC special session, in which the finalists of ANAC will describe their negotiating agents. 

See the ANAC2011 site for more details: http://www.anac2011.com


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Submission
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Submission page: 
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acan2011

Submissions should conform to the ACM SIG style (see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates for more details) and should not be more than 8 pages long (excluding appendices). The workshop welcomes submissions of original works relevant to the topics described above. This year, the workshop will accept submissions of both full papers (maximum 8 pages) and short papers (maximum 4 pages).


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Special Issues
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Selected papers will be published in the special issues in Multiagent and Grid Systems, International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications or the related journal. 

Special issue history:

ACAN2009 - Special Issue in Journal of Computational Intelligence
ACAN2008 - Special Issue in Multiagent and Grid Systems
RRS2007 - Special Issue in the International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications
RRS2006 - Special Issue in Multiagent and Grid Systems

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Post-conference Publications
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Presented papers will be includeed in the post-conference publication to be published by Springer.

Post-conference publication history:
RRS2006, IEEE Computer Society, 2006
RRS2007, Springer, 2008
ACAN2008, Springer, 2010
ACAN2009, Springer, 2010
ACAN2010, Springer, 2011


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Organization
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Organizing Chairs
Takayuki Ito (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan)
Minjie Zhang (University of Wollongong, Australia)
Valentin Robu (University of Southampton, UK)
Shaheen Fatima (Loughborough University, UK)
Tokuro Matsuo (Yamagata University, Japan)
Naoki Fukuta (Shizuoka University, Japan)
Hirofumi Yamaki (Nagoya University, Japan)
Miquel Angel Lopez Carmona (University of Alcala, Spain)
Quan Bai (CSIRO, Australia)
Ivan Marsa-Maestre (Universidad de Alcala, Spain)

Program Committee (TBD)
Scott Buffett (National Research Council Canada)
Brahim Chaib-draa (Laval University, Canada)
Joaquin Delgado (Yahoo, inc., United States)
Enrico Gerding (Southampton, UK)
Hiromitsu Hattori (Kyoto University, Japan)
Mark Klein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States)
Sarit Kraus (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
Katia Sycara (Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), United States)
Paul Scerri (Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), United States)
Guoming Lai (Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), United State)
Xudong Luo (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Miniar Hemaissia (THALES Research & Technology France, France)
Catholijn Jonker (Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands)
Koen Hindriks (Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands)
Zhiqi Shen (Nanyang Technoligical University)
Lotzi Boloni (University Florida, United States)
Kate Larson (University of Waterloo, Canada)