[agents] Last CfP: EMAS @ AAMAS 2021: deadline 5 March, 2021!

Wed Feb 24 12:32:54 EST 2021

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C a l l   f o r   P a p e r s

9th International Workshop on

Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2021)

Co-located with AAMAS 2021

3-4 May 2021, London, UK

https://emas.in.tu-clausthal.de/2021

Submission deadline: *5 March, 2021*

Regular papers (16 pages LNCS - excluding references)
Short papers (8 pages LNCS - excluding references)
Student papers (6 pages LNCS - excluding references)
Tools and testbeds (4 pages LNCS - excluding references)

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A key unifying theme underlying Artificial Intelligence and Machine 
Learning is the idea of an intelligent agent able to reason, act, 
interact, and learn. This metaphor has stimulated much research in AI 
and particularly in Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), 
giving rise to research in agent-oriented software engineering, 
programming multi-agent systems, and declarative agent languages and 
technologies.

Despite the substantial body of knowledge and expertise developed in the 
design and development of multi-agent systems (MAS), the systematic 
development of large-scale and open MAS still poses many challenges. 
Even though various languages, models, techniques and methodologies have 
been proposed in the literature, researchers and developers are still 
faced with fundamental questions attaining MAS engineering, such as:

* How to specify, design, implement, verify, test and validate 
large-scale and open MAS?
* How to ensure and control the global behaviour of decentralised, 
large-scale and open MAS?
* How to express the requirements for MAS and how to translate these 
requirements into agent goals?
* Which (multi-)agent architectures and languages are most suitable for 
MAS in different domains?
* How to seamlessly integrate AI and machine learning techniques into 
design/programming languages and tools for agent-based systems?
* How to engineer agent and multi-agent systems that are secure and 
protect the privacy concerns of users?
* How to scale to the complexity of real-world application domains?
* What are the implications of MAS engineering in the context of 
continuous development and deployment?
* How can MAS be applied in specific application areas, such as 
Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things?
* How to seamlessly integrate MAS engineering with mainstream software 
engineering models, languages, frameworks and tools?
* Which processes and methodologies can integrate the above and provide 
a disciplined approach to the engineering of MAS?

EMAS 2021 will provide a forum for researchers and practitioners in the 
domains of agent-oriented software engineering, programming multi-agent 
systems, declarative agent languages and technologies, artificial 
intelligence, and machine learning to present and discuss their research 
and emerging results in engineering MAS.  The overall purpose of the 
workshop is to facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas and 
experiences in these fields to:

* enhance our knowledge of the theory and practice of engineering 
intelligent agents and multi-agent systems, and advance the state of the 
art;
* demonstrate how MAS methodologies, architectures, languages and tools 
can be used in the engineering of deployed large-scale and open MAS;
* define new directions for engineering MAS by drawing on results and 
recommendations from related research areas; and
* encourage PhD and Masters students to become involved in and 
contribute to the area.

In the event that an 'in-person' format is not possible (or not possible 
for all participants), a virtual format a similar to that adopted for 
EMAS 2020 will be used.

TOPICS

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

- Formal methods and declarative technologies for specification, 
verification, and engineering of MAS
- Software engineering methodologies and techniques for MAS
- Programming frameworks, languages, models and abstractions for all 
aspects of MAS
- Tools and testbeds
- Empirical studies and (industrial) experience reports on engineering 
MAS applications

For a detailed list of subtopics, see the website: 
https://emas.in.tu-clausthal.de/2020

SUBMISSIONS

We solicit four types of submission:

1. Regular papers should: (1) clearly describe innovative and original 
research; or (2) report a survey on a research topic in the field; or 
(3) explain how existing techniques have been applied to a real-world 
case. (16 pages (excluding references) in LNCS format).

2. Short papers should: (1) describe novel and promising ideas and/or 
techniques that are in an early stage of development; or (2) present a 
vision for some part of the field, including challenges, and research 
opportunities (see the AAMAS Blue Sky Track CFP (*) for more information 
on these sort of papers). (8 pages (excluding references) in LNCS 
format). (*) https://aamas2021.soton.ac.uk/calls/blue-sky-ideas-track/

3. Student papers should describe MSc or PhD research in the field of 
engineering multi-agent systems. The paper should clearly describe the 
problem tackled and why it is important, the research method, the 
(expected) contributions of the research, and the evaluation. The lead 
author on the paper should be the student. (6 pages (excluding 
references) in LNCS format).

4. Tool, testbed and demo papers should describe a novel tool or 
demonstration in the field of engineering multi-agent systems. 
Submission may range from early prototypes to in-house or 
pre-commercialised products. Authors of other EMAS 2020 papers are also 
welcome to submit an accompanying tool/demo paper. The paper should 
provide a link to supplementary material that allows the reviewers to 
evaluate the submission such as website or movie (4 pages (excluding 
references) in LNCS format).

Submission policy: all papers should be original and not be submitted 
elsewhere. The review process is single blind: submissions should not be 
blind, reviewers will be.

The LNCS formatting style is available via:
http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

The Easychair submission page can be found here: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=emas2021

Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit revised and 
extended versions of the EMAS papers for inclusion in the 
post-proceedings that we will be published as a volume in Springer's 
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline: 5 March, 2021
Author notification: 10 April, 2021
Camera-ready deadline: 20 April, 2021
EMAS: 3-4 May, 2021

COMMITTEES

Organising Committee

Natasha Alechina, Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
https://www.uu.nl/medewerkers/NAAlechina
n.a.alechina at uu.nl

Matteo Baldoni, Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy)
http://www.di.unito.it/∼baldoni
baldoni at di.unito.it

Brian Logan, University of Nottingham (UK)/ Utrecht University (The 
Netherlands)
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/∼pszbsl/
b.s.logan at uu.nl

EMAS Steering Committee

Matteo Baldoni
Rafael Bordini
Mehdi Dastani
Jürgen Dix
Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni
Brian Logan
Jörg P. Müller
Ingrid Nunes
Alessandro Ricci
M. Birna Van Riemsdijk
Danny Weyns
Michael Winikoff
Rym Zalila-Wenkstern