[agents] Tutorial: Self-Interested Decision Making in Sequential Multiagent Settings at AAMAS-13

[Christopher Amato]

[Feel free to distribute widely and apologies for cross-posting]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Self-Interested Decision Making in Sequential Multiagent Settings
1 day tutorial
At AAMAS 2013
May 6, 2013
http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~mtjspaan/tutorialDMMS/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Register at the following link (early registration ends March 27th!)
http://aamas2013.cs.umn.edu/node/41

*** Note there also is a tutorial on *Cooperative* Decision Making in Sequential Multiagent Settings at AAMAS 2013, see the webpage above for details ***


Summary
----------

Multiagent decision making is a core area of research within the agents community. Of late, this area has witnessed a tremendous growth in interest among the community. Drawing motivation from search and rescue applications in disaster management, the tutorial will span the range of multiagent  interactions of increasing generality, and study a set of optimal and approximate solution techniques to time-extended decision making in these multiagent contexts. By providing an accessible and applications-driven overview of the literature in multiagent decision making, the tutorial will provide an impetus to those interested in researching or practising in this promising area.


Description
--------------

Choosing optimally among different lines of actions is a key aspect of autonomy in agents. The process by which an agent arrives at this choice is complex, particularly in environments shared with other agents. This tutorial will focus on how to make optimal and
approximately optimal decisions in multiagent settings. The tutorial will utilise the well-studied domain of search and human support applications to motivate and provide context for a range of multiagent interactions of increasing generality. The focus of this tutorial will be on decision making in time-extended interactions, which are often encountered in the search and rescue applications. The tutorial will adopt a unique pedagogical style, utilising classroom games to generate intuition and reinforce instruction. The tutorial will be dedicated the adversarial issues.


Structure of the Tutorial
-----------------------------

Part I is designed to provide the necessary background and basic techniques, and Part II discusses both in breadth and depth the major advancements of the multiagent decision making.

Part I: Frameworks for Multiagent Decision Making under Uncertainty Introduction
       - Search and Rescue Applications in Disaster Management
       - Requirements for the multiagent decision model and solution
       - Overview of the basic framework and simple solution methods for them (MDP, POMDP, Bayesian Games)
       
Part II: Self-interested models of decision making
       -Dynamic algorithms that support equilibrium
            --Repeated strategic games of complete information
            --Repeated Bayesian games
            --Partially Observable Stochastic Games
       -Modelling and utilising beliefs of others
            --Interactive POMDPs (I-POMDPs): framework, exact and approximate solution methods, software environments
       -Emerging applications of multiagent decision making
           -TTD-MDPs and multiagent Markov tracking


Target Audience
------------------

The tutorial is aimed at graduate students and researchers who want to enter this emerging field or to better understand recent results in this area and their implications on the design of multi-agent systems. Participants should have a basic knowledge of probability theory, and preferably, utility theory.


Tutors (in alphabetical order)
-----------------------------------

    Christopher Amato, MIT
    Prashant Doshi, University of Georgia
    Frans Oliehoek, Maastricht University
    Zinovi Rabinovich, Mobileye
    Matthijs Spaan, Delft University of Technology
    Stefan Witwicki, INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico

This tutorial is a follow-up to ones at AAMAS 2012, 2011 and 2010.