[agents] FINAL Call for Papers: AAMAS 2017 - Sixteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

Mon Nov 7 05:27:27 EST 2016

Call for Papers: AAMAS 2017
===========================
Sixteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

Important Dates:
----------------

Abstract Submission:    11th of November 2016 (23:59 UTC-12)
Full Paper Submission:    15th of November, 2016 (23:59 UTC-12)
Rebuttal Phase:        9th – 10th of January, 2017 (23:59 UTC-12)
Author Notification:    24th of January, 2017

About AAMAS:
------------

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous
agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was
initiated in 2002 by merging three highly respected meetings: the
International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS); the
International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages
(ATAL); and the International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA).
The aim of the joint conference is to provide a single, high-profile,
internationally respected archival forum for scientific research in
the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multiagent systems.

Information for Authors
-----------------------

AAMAS 2017 encourages the submission of analytical, empirical,
methodological, technological, and perspective papers. Analytical and
empirical papers should make clear the significance and relevance of
their results to the AAMAS community. Similarly, methodological and
technological papers should make clear their scientific and technical
contributions, and are expected to demonstrate a thorough evaluation
of their strengths and weaknesses in practice. It is strongly
encouraged that papers focusing on specific agent capabilities
evaluate their techniques in the context of autonomous agent
architectures or multiagent systems. A thorough evaluation, conducted
from a theoretical or applied basis, is considered an essential
component of any submission. Authors are also requested to pay
particular attention to discussing how their work relates to the state
of the art in autonomous agents and multiagent systems research as
evidenced in, for example, previous AAMAS and related conferences. All
submissions will be rigorously peer reviewed and evaluated on the
basis of the overall quality of their technical contribution,
including criteria such as originality, soundness, relevance,
significance, quality of presentation, and understanding of the state
of the art.

AAMAS 2017, the sixteenth conference in the AAMAS series, seeks the
submission of high-quality papers limited to 8 pages in length, with
any additional pages containing only bibliographic references. Reviews
will be double blind; authors must avoid including anything that can
be used to identify them. Please note that submitting an abstract is
required to submit a full paper. However, the abstracts will not be
reviewed and full papers must be submitted for the review process to
begin.  All work must be original, i.e., it must not have appeared in
a conference proceedings, book, or journal and may not be under review
for another archival conference. In addition to submissions in the
main track, AAMAS 2017 will be soliciting papers in special tracks.
The review process for the special tracks will be similar to the main
track, but with program committee members specially selected for each
track.  All accepted papers for the special tracks will be included in
the proceedings.

JAAMAS Submissions
------------------

AAMAS 2017 will also accept papers for presentation that have appeared
in the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (JAAMAS)
in the 12 months period preceding the AAMAS notification date. These
articles also have the option to publish an extended abstract (maximum
two pages, excluding bibliography) in the AAMAS proceedings. The
articles must be original and not previously published as a full paper
in an archival conference. The submission process for this track is
separate from the main paper submission process. Information will be
posted on the relevant page.

For details on JAAMAS, visit - http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10458

Topics of Interest
------------------

The conference solicits papers addressing original research on
autonomous agents and their interaction. Topics of interest include
(but are not limited to) the following:

Agent Theories and Models:
--------------------------
- Logic and Game Theory
- Logics for agents and multi-agent systems
- Formal models of agency
- Belief-Desire-Intention theories and models
- Cognitive models
- Models of emotions

Communication and Argumentation:
--------------------------------
- Commitments
- Communication languages and protocols
- Speech act theory
- Multi-agent reasoning
- Deductive, rule-based and logic-based argumentation
- Argumentation-based dialogue and protocols

Agent Cooperation:
------------------
- Biologically-inspired approaches and methods
- Collective intelligence
- Distributed problem solving
- Teamwork, team formation, teamwork analysis
- Coalition formation (non-strategic)
- Human-robot/agent interaction
- Multi-user/multi-virtual-agent interaction
- Multi-robot systems

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning:
---------------------------------------
- Ontologies for agents
- Reasoning in agent-based systems
- Single and multi-agent planning and scheduling
- Trust and reputation

Agent Societies and Societal issues:
------------------------------------
- Organizations and institutions
- Socio-technical systems
- Normative systems
- Values in MAS (privacy, safety, security, transparency,…)
- Monitoring agent societies
- Architectures for social reasoning
- Trust and reputation
- Value-sensitive design of multi-agent systems
- Policy, regulation and legislation

Humans and Agents:
------------------
- Human-robot/agent interaction
- Multi-user/multi-virtual-agent interaction
- Agents competing against humans
- Agent-based analysis of human interactions
- Agents for improving human cooperative activities

Learning and adaptation:
------------------------
- Reward structures for learning
- Evolutionary algorithms
- Co-evolutionary algorithms
- Multiagent learning
- Learning agent capabilities (agent models, communication, observation)
- Learning agent-to-agent interactions (negotiation, trust, coordination)

Agents & Mainstream Computing:
------------------------------
- Service-oriented architectures
- Mobile agents
- Autonomic computing
- P2P, web services, grid computing, ...

Agent-based simulation:
-----------------------
- Social simulation
- Simulation techniques tools and platforms
- Complex systems
- Validation of simulation systems
- Modelling for agent based simulation
- Interactive simulation
- Emergent behaviour
- Analysis of agent based simulations

Engineering Multi-Agent Systems:
--------------------------------
- Modelling and specification languages
- Programming languages and frameworks for agents and multi-agent systems
- Development techniques, tools, and platforms
- Methodologies for agent-based systems
- Verification, fault tolerance and resilience of multi-agent systems

Verification and validation of agent-based systems:
---------------------------------------------------
- Testing of agent-based systems, including model based testing
- Verification of agent-based systems, including model checking
- Synthesis of agent-based systems

Systems and organization:
-------------------------
- Autonomic computing
- Complex systems
- Self-organization
- Novel agent and multiagent applications

Economic paradigms:
-------------------
- Auctions and mechanism design
- Bargaining and negotiation
- Behavioral game theory
- Cooperative games: theory & analysis
- Cooperative games: computation
- Noncooperative games: theory & analysis
- Noncooperative games: computation
- Social choice theory
- Game theory for practical applications

General Chairs:
---------------
Kate Larson (University of Waterloo)
Michael Winikoff (University of Otago)

Program Chairs:
---------------
Sanmay Das (Washington University in St. Louis)
Ed Durfee (University of Michigan)

Special Tracks
--------------

As mentioned above, AAMAS 2017 will feature the following four special
tracks. These are:

Innovative and Industrial Applications (Chairs: Paul Scerri and
Pradeep Varakantham)
--------------------------------------

Research from, and relevant to, the AAMAS community has permeated a
variety of domains and applications, both as central to the
application and in key supportive roles. For example, the community
pursues research in topics including resource allocation, constrained
optimization, learning, scheduling, agent-based simulation, and
game-theoretic equilibrium computation, and applies them in domains
ranging from security to biomedicine to robotics to financial and
internet market design. Ideas and technologies from this research are
responsible for significant revenue-generation and cost-saving, as
well as for supporting important public policy and business strategy
decision-making.

We are interested in hearing about how research makes it into practice
and what the current problems of interest are. This special track
provides the ideal forum to present, discuss, and demonstrate
compelling applications, agent system deployment experiences, and new
business ideas. The goal is to promote the fostering of
mutually-beneficial relationships between those doing foundational
scientific research and those using autonomous agents and multiagent
systems in real-world commercial, non-profit, and government
applications.

We invite papers across two sub-tracks:

1 "Industrial Applications" sub-track: This is primarily for industry
practitioners and researchers to present application work that is more
mature, commercially deployed and uses agents/multiagent systems
technology in practice. Submitted material will be evaluated based on
the use of agent/multiagent systems technology for real problems over
a reasonable duration (minimum of 3 months), evidence of impact, and
lessons for the agents/multi-agents community of what worked and what
did not.

2 "Innovative Applications" sub-track: This is open to all researchers
to showcase promising new applications of agent/multiagent systems
technology that are at an early stage, with no requirement of
deployment. Papers will be evaluated on innovativeness of the proposed
application, use of agent/multiagent methods and evidence of possible
improvement, either in simulation or by other qualitative means.

Accepted papers of both sub-tracks will automatically get an
opportunity to present a demonstration at the conference.

Papers accepted to the “Industrial Applications” sub-track will
receive a special award for taking agents to the real world.
Submission Instructions
-----------------------

For the industrial applications sub-track, authors should submit a
presentation of their work in whatever electronic medium best shows
the AAMAS relevant features of the application, whether a video, PPT,
deployment, webpage or software.  Acceptance to the track will be
determined based on both the degree to which interesting agent
technologies feature in and improve the deployed system, as well as
the benefit to the community to understanding the challenges and
solutions in the application.  Authors must submit a single page
document accompanying the primary submission, briefly summarizing what
interesting agent technologies are featured in the deployed system and
the impacts those technologies have had.

For the innovative applications sub-track, authors need to follow the
same paper submission instructions as used for submitting to the main
track (maximum of 8 pages, excluding references, in AAMAS format).

Robotics (Chairs: Christopher Amato and Alessandro Farinelli)
--------

We invite papers that advance theory and application of single and
multiple robots. Papers on the interaction between robots and agents
(broadly defined) are particularly welcome, but all papers at the
intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics are welcome.

Papers are solicited in all areas, including, but not restricted to:
* Human-robot interaction
* Robot communication and teamwork
* Machine learning for robotics
* Mapping, localization and exploration
* Architectures for teams of robots
* Networked robot/sensor systems, distributed robotics
* Robot planning and plan execution (including action and motion planning)
* Robot teams, multi-robot systems, robot coordination
* Robotic agent languages and middleware for robot systems
* Swarms and collective behaviour
* Modular robotics

Embodied Virtual Agents and Human-Agent Interaction (Chair: Catherine Pelachaud)
---------------------------------------------------

Virtual agents are embodied agents that emulate autonomous human-like
behavior in simulated interactive or physical environments. We
encourage papers on the design, implementation, and evaluation of
virtual agents as well as challenging applications featuring them. Of
particular interest are papers addressing how humans interact with
virtual agents. The goal is to provide an opportunity for continued
interaction and cross-fertilization between the AAMAS community and
researchers working on virtual agents and to strengthen links between
the two communities.

Papers are solicited in all areas, including, but not restricted to:

- Embodied cognition
- Multimodal agent interaction
- Affective behaviour
- Socio-cultural behaviour
- Verbal and non-verbal behaviour
- Human(s)-virtual agent(s) interaction
- Virtual agents in games and education
- Virtual agents for improving human activities
- Agent-based analysis of human interactions

Blue Sky Ideas (Chair: Vincent Conitzer)
--------------

The emphasis of this track is on visionary ideas, long-term
challenges, and new research opportunities. This track is designed to
overcome the constraints of the traditional review process, and will
serve as an incubator for innovative approaches, risky and provocative
ideas, and to propose challenges and opportunities for the field in
the near future.

General Information
-------------------

All full papers accepted to the main track and the special tracks will
be presented in parallel technical sessions. All the papers will be
published in the conference Proceedings and will be permanently
available after the conference at
http://www.ifaamas.org/proceedings.html.

In addition, AAMAS 2017 will include:

- Workshops
- Demonstrations
- Poster presentations for full papers and extended abstracts
- Invited talks and panel discussions

The submission processes for the workshops and demonstrations are
separate from the main paper submission process. Information will be
posted on the relevant pages.

Policies
--------

Policy on multiple and previous submissions.
--------------------------------------------
Authors may not submit any paper to AAMAS 2017 that has already
appeared in an archival forum. Authors must ensure that no submission
to AAMAS 2017 is under review for another archival forum between the
AAMAS 2017 submission and decision dates.

Policy on harassment at the conference environment.
---------------------------------------------------
IFAAMAS is committed to organising the AAMAS conference and its
affiliated events in an environment that is free of harassment for
everyone involved: delegates, organisers, conference workers, and
reviewers. All participants in IFAAMAS events are asked to embrace our
intention to foster a harassment-free scientific community, and to
understand that IFAAMAS will respond appropriately to incidents of
harassment if they occur. The complete IFAAMAS harassment policy is
available at http://www.ifaamas.org/harassment.html.

For further details about AAMAS 2017, please visit the website at
<http://www.aamas2017.org>

Please also follow us on Twitter (@AAMAS2017) and like us on Facebook
(www.facebook.com/aamas2017).