[agents] CFP: The Automated Negotiating Agents Competition 2020 - Update

[Tim Baarslag]

The Eleventh International Automated Negotiating Agent Competition (ANAC)

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COVID-19 update - New submission deadline: 14 July
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ANAC 2020 will go ahead, with more than 80 registered participants so 
far. ANAC will be held in conjunction with IJCAI 2020, which will be 
held in January 2021. The deadline for submitting agents to each ANAC 
league is postponed until 14th July, 2020.

The winners of each league will be announced in January 2021 during 
IJCAI - either live or digitally. We will announce a set of finalists in 
August 2020 (tentative). A select number of finalists will be invited to 
publish their agent descriptions in the Journal Knowledge Engineering 
Review. We aim to provide student support to travel to IJCAI.

We as the ANAC board are working hard to manage the current situation 
and will continue to keep you updated as we learn more.


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Motivation, impact, and expected outcomes
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The Automated Negotiating Agent Competition (ANAC) brings together 
researchers from the negotiation community and provides a unique 
benchmark for evaluating practical negotiation strategies in multi-issue 
domains.  The ANAC  has the following aims:

* to provide an incentive for the development of effective and efficient 
negotiation protocols and strategies for bidding, accepting and opponent 
modeling for different negotiation scenarios;
* to collect and develop a benchmark of negotiation scenarios, protocols 
and strategies;
* to develop a common set of tools and criteria for the evaluation and 
exploration of new protocols and new strategies against benchmark 
scenarios, protocols and strategies;
* to set the research agenda for automated negotiation.

The previous competitions have spawned novel research in AI in the field 
of autonomous agent design which are available to the wider research 
community. This year, we would like to introduce a variety of 
negotiation research challenges:

* Agent Negotiation and Elicitation (GeniusWeb framework): 
https://ii.tudelft.nl/GeniusWeb/
* Human-Agent Negotiation (IAGO framework): https://myiago.com/
* Werewolf Game (AIWolf Framework): http://aiwolf.org/en/
* Supply Chain Management (NegMas framework): http://www.yasserm.com/negmas/
* HUMAINE (HUman Multi-Agent Immersive NEgotiation): 
https://cisl.rpi.edu/humaine2020

We expect innovative and novel agent strategies will be developed, and 
the submitted ANAC 2020 agents will serve as a negotiating agent 
repository to the negotiation community. The researchers can develop 
novel negotiating agents  and evaluate their agents by comparing their 
performance  with the performance of the ANAC 2020 agents.


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Competition Schedule
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* Deadline for submissions: 14 July, 2020 (Please check the website of 
individual leagues for their specific timeline): 
http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~katfuji/ANAC2020/#leagues
* Announcement of finalists: 15 August, 2020 (tentative)
* ANAC 2020: January; jointly held with IJCAI, 2021 (Japan)
Please check the website of individual leagues for their specific timeline.


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Website URL
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For more details, please visit the competition webpage: 
http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~katfuji/ANAC2020/

ANAC Board Members

* Dr. Reyhan Aydoğan, Ozyegin University & Delft University of Technology
* Dr. Tim Baarslag, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
* Prof. Dr. Katsuhide Fujita, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
* Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker, Delft University of Technology

Demonstrations Chair

* Dr. Johnathan Mell, The University of Southern California

League Organizers

* Agent Negotiation and Elicitation: ANAC Board Members
* Supply Chain Management: Dr. Yasser Mohammad, NEC/AIST; Amy Greenwald, 
Brown University, Mark Klein, MIT, Shinji Nakadai and Dr. Satoshi 
Morinaga, NEC
* Human-Agent Negotiation: Dr. Johnathan Mell, The University of 
Southern California
* Werewolf Game: Dr. Hirotaka Osawa and Dr. Claus Aranha, University of 
Tsukuba
* Humaine League: Rahul Divekar, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and 
Dr. Jeffrey O. Kephart, Dr. Hui Su and Dr. Maira Gatti de Bayser, IBM 
Research

Sponsorship Chair

* Prof. Dr. Takayuki Ito, Nagoya Institute of Technology

Scientific Advisory Board

* Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker, Delft University of Technology (Chair)
* Prof. Dr. Takayuki Ito, Nagoya Institute of Technology
* Prof. Dr. Carles Sierra, IIIA/CSIC
* Prof. Dr. Jonathan Gratch, USC