[agents] Call for Papers: AAMAS 2020 Nineteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems 9-13 May 2020, Auckland, New Zealand

[Bo An]

# Call for Papers: AAMAS 2020
Nineteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent
Systems
9-13 May 2020, Auckland, New Zealand
https://aamas2020.conference.auckland.ac.nz


## Important Dates (tentative)
Abstract Submission: 12 November 2019 (23:59 UTC-12)
Full Paper Submission: 15 November 2019 (23:59 UTC-12)
Rebuttal Phase: 7-9 January 2020 (23:59 UTC-12)
Author Notification: 15 January 2020 (23:59 UTC-12)
JAAMAS Track Submission: 27 January 2020 (23:59 UTC-12)

## Conference Dates
Tutorials, Doctoral Consortium, Workshops: 9-10 May 2020
Main Conference: 11-13 May 2020


## Scope and Topics
AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous
agents and multi-agent systems.  The AAMAS conference series was initiated
in 2002 as the merging of three respected scientific 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 multi-agent systems.

AAMAS 2020 is the 19th edition of the AAMAS conference, and the first time
AAMAS will be held in New Zealand.  The conference solicits papers
addressing original research on autonomous agents and their interaction,
including agents that interact with humans.  In addition to the main track,
there will be two special tracks: Blue Sky Ideas and JAAMAS.  Specific
details and topics of interest for these tracks appear below.

Topics of interest for the main track include (but are not limited to) the
following 10 areas:

Area 1 – Coordination, Organisations, Institutions and Norms
* Organisations and institutions
* Social networks
* Socio-technical systems
* Normative systems
* Values in multi-agent systems, including privacy, safety, security and
transparency
* Monitoring agent societies
* Coordination and control models for multi-agent systems
* Architectures for social reasoning
* Trust and reputation
* Policy, regulation and legislation
* Self-organisation

Area 2 – Engineering Multi-agent Systems
* Programming frameworks, languages, models and abstractions for all
aspects of MAS
* Formal methods and declarative technologies for specification,
verification and engineering of MAS
* Software engineering methodologies and techniques for agent-based
systems, and development concerns (e.g., deployment, scalability and
complexity)
* Interoperability and integration
* Tools and testbeds for evaluation of MAS
* Empirical studies and industrial experience reports on engineering MAS
applications

Area 3 – Humans and AI / Human-Agent Interaction
* Human-robot/agent interaction
* Socially interactive agents
* Multi-user/multi-agent interaction
* Agents competing and collaborating with humans
* Agent-based analysis of human interactions
* Agents for improving human cooperative activities
* Groups of humans and agents
* Social agent models
* Multimodal interaction
* Social agent architectures

Area 4 – Innovative Applications
* Deployed applications of agent-based systems
* Emerging applications of agent-based systems

Area 5 – Learning and Adaptation
* Reward structures for learning
* Evolutionary algorithms
* Co-evolutionary algorithms
* Multi-agent learning
* Reinforcement learning
* Deep learning
* Adversarial machine learning
* Learning agent capabilities (agent models, communication, observation)
* Learning agent-to-agent interactions (negotiation, trust, coordination)

Area 6 – Markets, Auctions, and Non-Cooperative Game Theory
* Auctions and mechanism design
* Bargaining and negotiation
* Behavioural game theory
* Non-cooperative games: theory & analysis
* Non-cooperative games: computation
* Game theory for practical applications

Area 7 – Modelling and Simulation of Societies
* Social simulation
* Simulation techniques, tools and platforms
* Simulation of complex systems
* Validation of simulation systems
* Modelling for agent-based simulation
* Interactive simulation
* Emergent behaviour
* Analysis of agent-based simulations
* Verification and validation of (simulated) agent-based systems

Area 8 – Reasoning and Planning
* Agent theories and models
* Communication and argumentation
* Ontologies for agents
* Reasoning in agent-based systems
* Logics for agent reasoning
* Distributed problem solving
* Teamwork, team formation, teamwork analysis
* Coalition formation (non-strategic)
* Single and multi-agent planning and scheduling
* Reasoning about action, plans and change in multi-agent systems
* Reasoning about knowledge, beliefs, goals and norms in multi-agent systems

Area 9 – Robotics
* Explainability, trust and ethics for robots
* Human-robot interaction and collaboration
* Knowledge representation and reasoning
* Long-term (or lifelong) autonomy
* Machine learning for robotics
* Mapping and localisation
* Multi-robot systems
* Networked systems and distributed robotics
* Robot control
* Failure recovery for robots

Area 10 – Social Choice and Cooperative Game Theory
* Cooperative games: theory & analysis
* Cooperative games: computation
* Social choice theory

Since the area system is new to AAMAS this year, feedback about the topics
may be sent to the Program Chairs at aamas20-pcchairs at tudelft.nl


## Information for Authors

AAMAS 2020 encourages submission of analytical, empirical, methodological,
technological, or 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 multi-agent 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 multi-agent systems research as evidenced
in, for example, previous AAMAS and related conferences and journals.  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 2020 seeks the submission of high-quality papers limited to 8 pages
in length in the IFAAMAS format, with any additional pages containing only
bibliographic references.  Reviews will be double blind; authors must avoid
including anything that can be used to identify themselves.  Please note
that submitting an abstract is required before submitting 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., must not have appeared in a conference proceedings, book, or journal
and may not be under review for another archival conference.  Papers will
be accepted as either full papers (8 pages + 1 page of references) or
extended abstracts (2 pages + 1 page of references).

Papers submitted to the main track must be designated by the authors into
one of the above 10 areas.  The chairs of this area will have
responsibility for the reviewing process.  In cases where the area chairs
recognise that a submission better fits another area, in consultation with
the program chairs, a submission may be transferred from one area to
another before reviewers are assigned.

In addition to submissions in the main track, AAMAS 2020 solicits papers in
two special tracks, described below.  The review process for the special
tracks will be similar to the main track, but with dedicated program
committee members and review criteria.

Detailed submission instructions can be found on the conference website:
https://aamas2020.conference.auckland.ac.nz

At least one of the authors of each accepted paper is required to register
(by the early registration deadline), attend, and present the paper at the
conference.  A significant number of papers will be invited to submit
extended versions to the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent
Systems (JAAMAS) for fast-track review.

General Chairs:
Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni (LIP6 - Sorbonne University, France)
Gita Sukthankar (University of Central Florida, USA)

Program Chairs:
Bo An (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Neil Yorke-Smith (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)

JAAMAS Track (Chairs: Pinar Yolum, Utrecht University and Rym
Zalila-Wenkstern, University of Texas at Dallas)
AAMAS 2020 will also accept for presentation papers that have appeared in
the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (JAAMAS) in the 12
months period preceding the AAMAS notification date (January 2020).  These
articles also have the option to publish an extended abstract (maximum two
pages in the IFAAMAS format, excluding bibliography) in the
conference proceedings.  The articles must be original and not previously
published as a full paper in an archival conference.  The submission
process for the JAAMAS track is separate from the main paper submission
process, and is later (deadline late January).  Authors of eligible JAAMAS
papers will be contacted by email in the second half of November.  For
details on JAAMAS: http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10458

Blue Sky Ideas Track (Chairs: Alessandro Ricci, University of Bologna and
Juan Rodríguez-Aguilar, IIIA-CSIC)
The emphasis of this special track is on visionary ideas, long-term
challenges, new research opportunities, and controversial debate.  It
serves as an incubator for innovative, risky, and provocative ideas, and
aims to provide a forum for publishing and presenting these without being
constrained by the result-oriented standards followed in the review process
of the main track of the conference.  Research visions and ideas could
cross disciplines, envisioning new ideas and directions relevant for the
AAMAS research community fostered by inter-disciplinary and
trans-disciplinary viewpoints.  We encourage papers to reflect on the
future of the research area and its community within the broader AI and
computer science landscape.  Therefore, we invite submissions to focus on:
novel, overlooked, or under-represented application areas to which agent
research may contribute; potential paths for agent research to contribute
to the state of the art in other AI and CS areas and the other way around;
unexplored theoretical grounds for agent research.  Overall, we aim at
papers that help guide the AAMAS community to achieve in the coming years a
leading position within AI and CS research.  It is worth noting that this
track is not the right place for preliminary work, or for papers reporting
on existing approaches.  Reviewers will assess papers based on the novelty
of the ideas presented, the rigour with which they are developed, and the
level of critical reflection applied in the exploration of these ideas.
Submissions are limited to 4 pages in length in the IFAAMAS format, with
any additional pages containing only bibliographic references.  Accepted
papers will appear in the conference proceedings and will be presented
orally at the conference.

Local Chairs:
Quan Bai (University of Tasmania, Australia)
Jiamou Liu (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Note about publication date: The official publication date is the date the
proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library.  This date may
be up to two weeks prior to the start of the conference.  Authors take note
that the official publication date affects the deadline for any patent
filings related to published work.


## General Information
All full papers accepted to the main track and the special tracks will be
presented in parallel technical sessions.  All accepted papers will be
published in the conference proceedings and indexed in the ACM Digital
Library, and will be permanently available, open access, after the
conference at: www.ifaamas.org/proceedings.html

In addition to the conference tracks, AAMAS 2020 will include:
* Workshops
* Tutorials
* Doctoral consortium
* System demonstrations
* Poster presentations for full papers and extended abstracts
* Invited talks and panel discussions
* Community meeting

The submission processes for the workshops and system demonstrations are
separate from the main technical paper submission process.  Information
will be posted on the relevant web pages at:
https://aamas2020.conference.auckland.ac.nz


## Policies
Policy on multiple and previous submissions
Besides the JAAMAS track, authors may not submit any paper to AAMAS 2020
that has already appeared in an archival forum.  Authors must ensure that
no submission to AAMAS 2020 is under review for another archival forum
between the AAMAS 2020 submission and notification 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:
www.ifaamas.org/harassment.html


For further details about AAMAS 2020 and submission instructions:
https://aamas2020.conference.auckland.ac.nz
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