[robocup-worldwide] CFP: The 12th International Conference on Principles of Practice in Multi-Agent Systems

[Paul Scerri]

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1st CALL FOR PAPERS
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The 12th International Conference on Principles of Practice in 
Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA2009).
Nagoya, Japan Dec 14-16, 2009
http://www.prima2009.org/


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INTRODUCTION
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PRIMA is the leading scientific conference for research on intelligent 
agent systems and multi-agent systems, attracting high quality, 
state-of-the-art research from all over the world. The conference 
endeavors to bring together researchers, developers, and academic and 
industry leaders, active and interested in agents and multi-agent 
systems, their practices and related areas. The conference is 
specifically focused on becoming the premier forum for prototype and 
deployed agent systems. The conference offers an exceptional opportunity 
for presentation of original work, technological advances, practical 
problems and concerns of the research community.
PRIMA2009 will build on the success of its predecessor workshops and 
conferences held in Hanoi, Bangkok, Guilin, Kuala Lumpur, Auckland, 
Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Melbourne, Kyoto, and Singapore. Since 2007, due 
to the need for an additional high-quality forum for international 
researchers and practitioners to meet and share their work, the meeting 
has been expanded from a workshop to a full-fledged conference.
Agent computing and technology is an exciting, emerging paradigm 
expected to play a key role in many society-changing practices from 
disaster response to manufacturing to agriculture. Agent and multi-agent 
researchers are focused on building working systems that bring together 
a broad range of technical areas from market theory to software 
engineering to user interfaces. Agent systems are expected to operate in 
real-world environments, with all the challenges complex environments 
present. PRIMA particularly encourages reports on development of 
prototype and deployed agent and multiagent systems and experiments that 
demonstrate the capability of agents to handle real-world challenges.
Papers addressing methodological or theoretical aspects or particular 
aspects of agent development are also encouraged. A broad range of 
topics are of interest but all papers should clearly identify how the 
contribution brings the promise of practical multi-agent systems closer 
and identify their scientific and/or technical contributions to the 
PRIMA community.
The PRIMA demonstration session encourages demonstrations on practice of 
prototype and deployed agent and multiagent systems. The PRIMA 
demonstration session will be held as a part of the main conference. The 
goal of the PRIMA demonstrations is to give participants an opportunity 
to present the functionality of their systems, tools and simulations. 
Authors of accepted papers to the main conference or the industrial 
track with a demonstrable system are strongly encouraged to apply.
For the first time PRIMA is giving authors an option to present their 
accepted papers in an interactive session, rather than as a formal oral 
presentation. In this interactive session, authors can take time to show 
their work either electronically or as a poster and discuss their work 
in depth with conference attendees. The interactive session is separate 
from the demonstration session and available to any author having a full 
paper accepted to the conference. The aim is to give authors the 
opportunity to present their work in the most compelling way, to best 
share the results of their research. Authors can choose a presentation 
type, oral presentation or interactive presentation when submitting 
their papers. Regardless of the presentation type, high-quality papers 
will not be distinguishable in the proceedings and will be cited 
identically.
The conference will also feature a doctoral mentoring program, which is 
focused on supporting the doctoral students with their research by 
providing them peer support. Senior and distinguished researchers 
attending the conference are expected to be available for interaction 
with the young and promising researchers.
As with previous PRIMA events, there will be tutorials covering a range 
of important topics. A special industry track will showcase progress in 
the use of real agent systems in important environments.
The conference will be located in Nagoya, at the center of Japan (West 
of Tokyo, 2 hours, E of Osaka, 1.5 hours, and E of Kyoto 1 hours by 
express train). Nagoya has a castle originally built by the first 
Tokugawa shogun, as well as one of Japan's most important Shinto 
shrines, Atsuta shrine. The conference site, Nagoya Congress Center, is 
one of the most sophisticated and beautiful congress sites in Japan.

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SPECIAL MULTIMEDIA SUBMISSION FORMAT
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For some multiagent systems, especially those that aim for broad, useful 
functionality, it can be challenging to convey the research 
contributions of the world compellingly in a traditional paper format. 
In recognition of this, PRIMA’09, in addition to regular paper 
submissions, encourages multimedia (non-paper) electronic submissions of 
technical contributions. This is because some valuable researches are 
difficult to be summarized as a traditional paper format. For example, 
Game theory researches can be summarized in a paper format very well. On 
the other hand, in particular, in terms of real dynamic world robotics, 
a video or a power point file has much information and impacts. Also, in 
terms of programming languages, like a ruby-on-rails video which shows 
10-minutes-website creation, it is very impressive to show it in a video 
format and source codes. These submissions can be in whatever electronic 
format best conveys the research contributions of the work, from 
Powerpoint presentations, to videos, to working code to websites. These 
submissions will be reviewed by an experienced group of Multiagent 
researchers and be provisionally accepted or rejected. If accepted, 
authors are required to submit a “traditional” paper via the normal 
submission process. These provisionally accepted papers will be reviewed 
and then treated like journal papers “accepted with revisions” – 
authors must make changes as suggested by the reviewers and camera ready 
papers will be checked to ensure that appropriate changes have been made 
and the paper meets high quality standards. Papers accepted via this 
submission process will be indistinguishable from “normal” papers in 
the proceedings. In addition, the electronic submission will be made 
available to conference participants via DVD. The aim of this novel 
process is to ensure that high-quality Multiagent research is shared 
with the community, even in cases where a traditional paper format might 
not highlight contributions of the work. Of specific interest under this 
submission process are contributions such as:
- Agent based simulation where the space in a paper constrains the large 
amount of interesting data that might be generated.
- Tools for building agents or multi-agent systems
- Intelligent, interactive agent-based systems or interfaces, where the 
interesting functionality cannot be easily explained in a text format
- Complex, interesting multi-agent behavior that is best shown in a 
video format.
- Robotics, humanoids, or intelligent vehicles.
- Enterprise systems based on agents or multi-agent systems
- Web-based agent systems or multi-agent systems
Notice that the criteria for accepting work through this submission 
process are still the research aspects of the work. Well engineered, but 
not novel or research oriented systems are not encouraged. The aim is 
specifically and narrowly to provide a mechanism to get interesting 
research shared with the community even when its merit is difficult to 
convey in a traditional paper format.


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TOPICS OF INTEREST:
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Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Agent-based system development:
Agent-oriented software engineering
Agent development environments
Agent languages
Case studies and implemented systems

WWW and Semantic Web Agents
Web-based agents
Ontology agents
Semantic Web agents
Internet Bots
Human Agent Interaction

Agent-based simulations:
Emergent behavior Simulation-specific issues Learning:
Learning (single and multi-agent)
Computational architectures for learning Evolution, adaptation

Agent Reasoning:
Reasoning (single and multi-agent)
Planning (single and multi-agent)
Cognitive models
Ontological reasoning

Interface Agents:
Practices of Interface Agents
Interface Multi-Agents
Virtual Agents
Collaborative Interface Agents
Autonomous Interface Agents

Agent societies and social networks:
Artificial social systems
Trust and reputation
Social and organizational structure
Privacy, safety and security
Ethical and legal issues

Agent communication:
Communication languages
Communication protocols
Agent commitments
Network structures and analysis

Agent Cooperation and Negotiation:
Teamwork
Cooperation
Coalition formation
Coordination
Distributed problem solving
Formal models for modeling other agents and self
Argumentation
Negotiation and Bargaining
Persuasion

Agent Systems:
Software agents
Mobile agents
Agent-Based Assistants
Agent-Based Virtual Enterprise
Embodied Agents and Agent-Based Systems Applications
Socially Situated Planning Software and Pervasive Agents

Real-world Robotics:
Coordination in multi-robot systems
Modeling and analysis of multi-robot systems
Tools that are relevant for multi-robot studies
Applications of multi-robot systems to real-world problems

Other Related Areas:
Collective intelligence
Service science
P2P, Grid computing
Financial markets and algorithm trades
Ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence
Programming Languages
Knowledge and Data Intensive Systems
Perceptive Animated Interfaces
Scalability
Tools and Standards
Ubiquitous Software Services
Virtual Humans

The conference also welcomes relevant papers from related fields as long 
as the link is made to relevance and work within the agent community.

=======================================================
Demonstration Session:
=======================================================
The PRIMA demonstration session encourages demonstrations on practice of 
prototype and deployed agent and multiagent systems. The PRIMA 
demonstration session will be held as a part of the main conference. The 
goal of the PRIMA demonstrations is to give participants an opportunity 
to present their latest practices on agent and multiagent systems. 
Authors of accepted papers to the main conference or the industrial 
track with a demonstrable system are strongly encouraged to apply.

=======================================================
Interactive Session:
=======================================================
The PRIMA interactive session is giving authors an option to present 
their accepted papers in an interactive session, rather than as a formal 
oral presentation. In this interactive session, authors can take time to 
show their work either electronically or as a poster and discuss their 
work in depth with conference attendees. The interactive session is 
separate from the demonstration session and available to any author 
having a full paper accepted to the conference. The aim is to give 
authors the opportunity to present their work in the most compelling 
way, to best share the results of their research. Authors can choose a 
presentation type, oral presentation or interactive presentation when 
submitting their papers. Regardless of the presentation type, 
high-quality papers will not be distinguishable in the proceedings and 
be will be cited identically.

=======================================================
Industrial Practices Session (Industrial Track) :
=======================================================
The PRIMA Conference Industry Track is dedicated to collect, present and 
discuss contributions reporting on industrial and commercial deployment 
of software agent technologies and practices. If you are working to 
commercialize agent technologies, or developing real-world practices 
based on the agent technologies, you are invited to submit papers on 
your current works.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
Experiences gained from commercialization attempts
Investment analysis of agent technologies
Insights into markets appropriate for agent technologies
Commercial application of agents
Application case studies
Practices on agent-based e-government
Practices on agent-based automation and logistics
Practices on agent-based telecommunication, media and entertainment
Practices on agent-based healthcare systems
Practices on agent-based smart living, ambient intelligence.
Practices on biotechnology
Practices on monitoring and maintenance, and surveillance
Practices on managing large scale infrastructures
Practices on software development
Other practices of agents, such as in the non-profit sector
Barriers to adoption or adoption facilitators

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PUBLICATION:
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All accepted papers are going to be published from IEEE (approval pending).


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IMPORTANT DATES:
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Multimedia format submissions due: July 3rd, 2009(Fri)
Multimedia format submissions author notification: July 17th, 2009 (Fri)
Papers due: July 31st, 2009 (Fri)
Author notification: September 15th, 2009 (Tue)
Camera-ready papers due: September 30th, 2009 (Wed)
Early registration deadline: October 16th, 2009 (Fri)
Registration deadline: December 1, 2009 (Tue)
Conference dates: December 14 - 16, 2009 (Mon - Wed)

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SPECIAL EVENTS:
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- Doctoral Mentoring Session
- Agent School
- RoboCup

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ORGANIZATION:
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General Chairs:
Jung-Jin Yang (Catholic Univ. of Korea, Korea),
Makoto Yokoo (Kyushu Univ., Japan)
Program Chairs:
Takayuki Ito (NIT/MIT, Japan/US),
Zhi JIN (Peking Univ., China),
Paul Scerri (CMU, US)
Industry Track Program Chairs:
Satoshi Kurihara (Osaka Univ., Japan),
Minjie Zhang (U. Wollongong, Australia)
Publicity Cochairs:
Shigeo Matsubara (Kyoto Univ., Japan)
Tony Bastin Roy Savarimuthu (New Zealand)
Sponsorship Chairs:
Nirmit V Desai (IBM, India),
Akihiko Ohusuga (Japan)
Tutorial / Interactive session Chair:
Tsunenori Mine (Kyushu Univ., Japan)
Buy The Duy (Vietnam)
Workshop Chair:
Quan Bai (CSIRO, Australia)
Naoki Fukuta (Shizuoka Univ., Japan)
Financial Chair:
Tokuro Matsuo (Yamagata Univ., Japan)
Valentin Robu (England)
Publications Chair:
Takahiro Uchiya (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan)
Gita Sukthankar (U. Florida, US)
Agent School & Doctoral Mentoring Track Chair:
Hiromitsu Hattori (Kyoto Univ., Japan)
Jane Hsu (Taiwan)
Local Arrangement Chair:
Hirofumi Yamaki (Nagoya Univ., Japan)
Shohey Kato (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan)
Agent Event Chair: (RobuCup)
Itsuki Noda (AIST, Japan)
Xiaoping Chen, (USTC, China)
Oliver Obst, (CSIRO, Australia)

Advisory committee members:
Toru Ishida (Japan),
Hideyuki Nakashima (Japan),
Chengqi Zhang (Australia),
Muninder P. Singh (US),
Alexis Drogoul (France),
Von Won Soo (Taiwan),
R. Sadananda (Thailand)