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CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Track on Agents, Interactions, Mobility, and Systems (AIMS)

to take place during

The 17th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2002)
March 10 - 14, 2002, Madrid, Spain
http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2002

*************************************************************************

SAC'02
~~~~~~
For the past sixteen years the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC)
has been a primary forum for applied computer scientists, computer
engineers and application developers to gather, interact, and present
their work. SAC is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied
Computing (SIGAPP); its proceedings are published by ACM in both printed
form and CD-ROM; they are also available on the web through ACM's Digital
Library. More information about SIGAPP and past SACs can be found at
http://www.acm.org/sigapp/.

Special Track on Agents, Interactions, Mobility, and Systems
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An agent is a computational entity that interacts with one or more
counterparts or real-world systems with the following key features to
varying degrees: (a) autonomy, (b) reactiveness, (c) pro-activeness, and
(d) social abilities. An agent may also be mobile, in which case the agent
migrates along with its associated data, state and logic to another host
to interact with local resources, other agents, and remote hosts to
perform a given task. Mobile agents offer several capabilities such as
bandwidth-efficient and low latency communication, disconnected operation,
and support for development of highly dynamic and flexible systems.
Several agents can collectively form a multi-agent system with
decentralized data and a varying degree of global system control
(potentially none at all). In this track we are interested in the combined
issues of mobile and multi-agent systems (MMS). One of the key features of
consideration is the social rationality principle, which is often utilized
instead of the individual rationality principle. Under social rationality,
agent preference for actions account for group utility. Examples of
naturally occurring and man-made multi-agent systems are e-commerce,
complex space missions, the game of soccer, and ant colonies. Business
benefits from study of multi-agency include (a) tools and techniques for
modeling existing organizations and their dynamics by modeling the
interactions among individuals, (b) approaches to modeling and engineering
electronic societies that extend automation in service of mankind, and (c)
new tools for distributed knowledge-ware. While considered by many to be
one of the more interesting approaches to the development and
implementation of large complex systems, MMS are not uncontroversial.
There are those who view them as just a fad that in the long run will not
be able to bring a significant breakthrough in the development of large
complex systems. Finally, there are those who believe that these systems
are just a repackaging of old ideas, and claim that while nothing
particularly new is being brought to the table, there is potential in this
approach from the application developer's viewpoint.

Areas of interest
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Internet has provided a natural proving ground for the MMS. We are
interested in all aspects of multi-agency and agent mobility including
the following (this list should not be treated as exclusive and other
research areas can also be represented):

* niche applications such as e-commerce, mobile business applications,
  robotics, defense, manufacturing, and aerospace
* system architectures and software engineering
* languages and protocols for communication and coordination
* mobile agent systems security, fault tolerance and reliability
* programming languages for design, implementation, and evaluation
* game theoretic and decision theoretic agents
* autonomy, delegation and control in multiagent systems
* theories of inter-agent interaction and sociality including issues of
  sociability, benevolence, preference, power, trust, teaming, norms,
  roles, teamwork, etc
* applications that benefit from features unique to mobile agents
* applications that provide quantitative measurements of mobile agent
  performance
* requirements for applications that are currently not satisfied by
  mobile agent systems
* designing applications and systems to support interfacing with agent
  systems and mobile agents
* integrating mobile agents with existing legacy systems

We exclude from this CFP, mobile communication networks, wireless
multimedia, and discussions of devices that are hand-held, mobile, or
embedded unless they appear in the context of agent systems.

We would like to extend invitation to the critics of the MMS approach that
can scientifically demonstrate why the MMS framework will not lead to
realistic breakthroughs. We are also interested in submissions from
researchers of foundations of MMS and developers of niche applications. We
particularly welcome papers that approach the MMS-related issues from
different perspectives e.g. decision theory versus belief, desire, and
intention.

While we are open to the submissions dealing primarily with the
theoretical considerations, it should be stressed that this track appears
in the context of the conference devoted to applied computing. Thus, we
are slightly biased toward submissions that are more applied in nature.

Track structure
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There will be paper presentations and a moderated panel for discussion.

Track Program Chairs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Henry Hexmoor           [log in to unmask]
Marcin Paprzycki                [log in to unmask]
Niranjan Suri           [log in to unmask]


Program Committee
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Witold Abramowicz (Poznan Univ. of Economics, Poland)
Ishfaq Ahmad (Hong Kong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., HK)
Dia Ali (Univ. of Southern Mississippi, USA)
Mark Baker (Univ. of Portsmouth, UK)
Jeffrey Bradshaw (IHMC/Univ. of West Florida, USA)
Sviatoslav Braynov (SUNY at Buffalo, USA)
Frances Brazier (Vrije Univ. Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Ciaran Bryce (Univ. of Geneve, Switzerland)
Maria Cobb (Univ. of Southern Mississippi, USA)
Scott DeLoach (Kansas State Univ., USA)
Rino Falcone (Insti. of Cognitive Sci. & Tech., CNR, Italy)
Dario Alvarez Gutierrez (Univ. of Oviedo, Spain)
Hai Jin (Huazhong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., China)
Michael Luck (Univ. of Southampton, UK)
Hanh Pham (SUNY New Paltz, USA)
Gian Pietro Picco (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
George Samaras (Univ. of Cyprus, Cyprus)
Sandip Sen (Univ. of Tulsa, USA)
Cesare Stefanelli (Univ. of Ferrara, Italy)
Chai Keong Toh (Georgia Insti. of Tech., USA)
Anand Tripathi (Univ. of Minnesota, USA)
Iakovos Venieris (National Tech. Univ. of Athens, Greece)
Thomas Wagner (Univ. of Maine, USA)
Niek Wijngaards (Vrije Univ. Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Jie Xu (Univ. of Durham, UK)
Arkady Zaslavsky (Monash Univ., Australia)

Track Web Site
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Most recent information about this track may be found at the AIMS 2002 web
site at http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/aims2002.

Submission Guidelines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Original papers from the above-mentioned or other related areas will be
considered. This includes three categories of submissions: 1) original
and unpublished research; 2) reports of innovative computing applications
in the arts, sciences, engineering, business, government, education and
industry; and 3) reports of successful technology transfer to new problem
domains. Each submitted paper will be fully refereed and undergo a blind
review process by at least three referees. Accepted papers in all
categories will be published in the ACM SAC'02 proceedings. Submission
guidelines must be strictly followed:

Submit six (6) copies of original manuscripts to
AIMS-2002 Submissions
University of West Florida
40 S. Alcaniz St.
Pensacola, FL 32501
USA
(850) 202-4462

Alternatively, submit your paper electronically to [log in to unmask] in
uuencoded compressed postscript format; this is strongly encouraged. Fax
submissions will not be accepted. The author(s) name(s) and address(es)
must not appear in the body of the paper, and self-reference should be in
the third person. This is to facilitate blind review. The body of the
paper should not exceed 5,000 words (approximately 15 pages,
double-spaced). A separate cover sheet (in the case of electronic
submission this should be sent separately from the main paper) should show
the title of the paper, the author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s), and the
address (including e-mail, telephone, and FAX) to which correspondence
should be sent. Anyone wishing to review papers for this special track
should contact the Track Program Chair(s) at the address shown above.

Important Dates
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sept 1, 2001:           Submission of papers
Oct 15, 2001:           Notification of Acceptance/Rejection
Nov 1, 2001:            Camera-Ready copies of accepted papers
Mar 10-14, 2002:        SAC 2002 takes place

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