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(apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call) CALL FOR PAPERS The Eighth International Joint Conference on AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (AAMAS-09) Budapest, Hungary May 10--15, 2009 http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/ INTRODUCTION AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was initiated in 2002 by merging highly respected individual conferences: - the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS); - the International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL); - 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. See http://www.ifaamas.org for more information. AAMAS-09 is the Eighth conference in the AAMAS series, following enormously successful previous conferences at Bologna, Italy (2002), Melbourne, Australia (2003), New York, USA (2004), Utrecht, The Netherlands (2005), Hakodate, Japan (2006), Honolulu, USA (2007) and Estoril, Portugal (2008). AAMAS-09 will be held at the Europa Congress Center, Budapest, Hungary. INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS AAMAS-09 encourages the submission of *original* papers covering theoretical, experimental, methodological, and application issues in autonomous agents and multiagent systems. Authors are discouraged to submit papers describing work that has already been published in previous AAMAS workshops with post-proceedings publications and/or published as short papers in previous AAMAS proceedings, unless that the authors *clearly* demonstrate significant new content with respect to the previous publication. The main theme of AAMAS-09, based on feedback from previous conferences, will be reinforcing the rich panorama of *interconnections* in the field. We encourage the community, and the authors in particular, to reflect about their work not as belonging to just a niche in a long list of topics, but rather as a point in an abstract topological space defined by three complementary axes: (i) the *focus* of the work, i.e., what is the AAMAS topic or contribution of the work (ii) the *description level*, i.e., whether this contribution is mostly in the theoretical, experimental, method/language, or application level (iii) the intellectual *inspiration source*, i.e., what scientific domain has given the main ideas for the contribution Every paper will be evaluated appropriately with respect to each of these three axes. Moreover, the use of this topological space will help this year and future AAMAS conference organizers to better stress some particular points in this space to be highlighted in the program, as it was the case of the special tracks presented in AAMAS-08 and will be the case of the special area tracks in AAMAS-09. DESCRIPTION LEVEL AXIS AAMAS-09 encourages the submission of papers in several descriptive styles: (i) theoretical, (ii) experimental/empirical (architectures/systems/simulations/data), (iii) methodologies/languages (design/software engineering/programming-oriented), and (iv) applications. Every paper should make clear its contribution to the AAMAS field, place itself in the context of relevant related work, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of its approach. Theoretical papers should make clear the significance and application-relevance of the results to the AAMAS community. Experimental papers should address issues clearly in the context of autonomous agents or multi-agent systems architectures, simulations, or performance. Methodological and language papers should propose advances in MAS analysis/design methodologies, process and process models for agent-oriented software development, frameworks for MAS specific properties (like cooperation, coordination etc...), agent verification and validation techniques/tools, and multi-agent programming languages, deployment platforms and development tools. Application papers should provide a motivation for why an agent- or multi-agent approach was used, a clear description of the design and implementation of the system, and a thorough evaluation of the system. INSPIRATION SOURCE AXIS AAMAS-09 welcomes papers from many intellectual approaches, including artificial intelligence, distributed systems, economics, social/management sciences, (multi-)robotics, and biologically-inspired approaches. FOCUS AXIS Broadly speaking, the AAMAS community-specific topics of interest are focused in individual agents, their environment, their interactions, and their social/organizational structure. Agent Focus: contributions are focussed on the elements for structuring/defining/analyzing individual processing entities: - agent architectures - agent reasoning/deliberation/decision mechanisms - agent perception and action - believable agents - agents models of emotion, motivation, personality, etc. Environment Focus: contributions are focused on the elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the the external world (including humans) and its information exchange with the processing entities: - environmmental entities - agent-human interaction - interface agents - architectures Interaction Focus: contributions are focused on the elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the information and control exchange between the processing entities - agent communication languages - interaction protocols - ontological / semantic interactions - conflict resolution and negotiation - argumentation theories - mechanism design - multi-agent learning - multi-agent planning - auctions and related structures - coordination mechanisms - reputation and trust - privacy and security Social/Organizational Structure Focus: costributions are focused on elements for structuring/defining/analyzing the identity and properties of multiple processing entities - groups and teams - norms and normative behavior - commitments - autonomy - organizations and institutions - organizational learning - organizational planning - organizational reputation and trust - coalition formation - open systems - collective decision making - emergent behavior Comprehensive/Cross-cutting Focus: contributions dealing with all or more than one of the previous focus - complete applications demonstrating several different significant foci - agent-oriented software engineering (multiple foci) - agent and multi-agent programming languages (multiple foci) - multi-agent based simulation (multiple foci) - evaluation techniques - ethical and legal issues - standardization efforts in industry and commerce - meta-papers (on the state of agent research, on the conference, etc.) SPECIAL AREA TRACKS Particularly this year, we are strongly encouraging papers that focus on some of the issues located in the topological space described above: Inspiration source axis: - (Multi-)Robotics - Social Sciences Description level axis: - Methodologies/languages - Applications Focus axis: - (Virtual) Agents - Social/Organizational Structure In addition to conventional conference papers, AAMAS-09 will also include a demonstration track for work focusing on implemented systems, software, or robot prototypes; and an industry track for descriptions of industrial applications of agents. The submission processes for the demonstration and industry tracks will be separate from the main paper submission process. SUBMISSION DETAILS This year the conference is soliciting regular papers (8 pages) and extended abstracts (2 pages). Extended abstracts are encouraged as a mechanism for the timely reporting of interesting but preliminary work, that may not as yet have the level of evaluation or detail that would be expected for a regular paper. The program chairs may, at their discretion, accept papers that were submitted as regular papers as extended abstracts, if the authors have explicitly agreed to this when registering their papers. Accepted regular papers will receive a slot for oral presentation in the conference. In addition, both regular and extended abstracts will be presented in poster sessions and appear in the conference proceedings. Reviews will be double blind, therefore authors are requested to avoid including anything that can be used to reveal their identity. Submissions will be peer reviewed rigorously and evaluated on the basis of adherence, originality, soundness, significance, presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall quality of their technical contribution. More details about the review process can be found in the conference page. Authors should refer to the conference page to download the adequate paper style files and access the detailed instructions to access the Confmaster system. http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/submission.html ORGANIZING COMMITTEE General Chairs: Carles Sierra, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish Research Council (Spain) Cristiano Castelfranchi, ISTC-CNR (Italy) Program Chairs: Jaime Simão Sichman, Politecnic School, University of São Paulo (Brazil) Keith S. Decker, Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware (USA) A more complete list of other members of the AAMAS-09 Organizing Committee may be found in http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/. IMPORTANT DATES Oct 10, 2008 EDT (GMT-4): electronic abstract submission deadline Oct 14, 2008 EDT (GMT-4): electronic paper submission deadline Dec 19, 2008: paper notification Feb 06, 2009: camera-ready copy submission deadline -- Dr Simon Miles Agents and Intelligent Systems Group Department of Computer Science Kings College London, UK