Dear all,<br><br>the deadline to submit contributions to the Fourth International Workshop on Optimisation in Muli-Agent Systems (OPTMAS IV) has been extended to February 11th. <br>Below you can find the updated CFP, the programme includes an invited talk by Prof. Sven Koenig. <br>
<br>best,<br>Alessandro.<br><br>=============================================================================<br><br> CFP: Fourth International Workshop on<br><br> Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OPTMAS IV)<br>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^<br><br> To be held in conjunction with the<br><br> Ninth International Conference on Autonomous and Multi-Agent<br>Systems<br> (AAMAS 2011)<br>
3 May 2011<br> cfp at: <a href="http://www.optmas2011.com">http://www.optmas2011.com</a><br><br>=============================================================================<br><br><br><br>
Call<br>----<br><br>This workshop invites works from different strands of the multi-agent<br>systems community that pertain to the design of algorithms, models, and<br>techniques to deal with multi-agent optimisation problems. In so doing,<br>
this workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers to discuss common<br>issues that arise in solving optimisation problems in different areas and<br>elaborate common benchmarks to test their solutions.<br><br>Invited Talk<br>
------------<br><br>Prof. Sven Koenig<br><br>Sven Koenig is an associate professor in computer science at the University of Southern California. Most of his research centers around techniques for decision making (planning and learning) that enable single situated agents (such as robots or decision-support systems) and teams of agents to act intelligently in their environments and exhibit goal-directed behavior in real-time, even if they have only incomplete knowledge of their environment, imperfect abilities to manipulate it, limited or noisy perception or insufficient reasoning speed. Additional information about Sven can be found on his webpages: <a href="http://idm-lab.org">idm-lab.org</a>.<br>
<br><br><br>Background<br>----------<br><br>The number of novel applications of multi-agent systems has followed an<br>exponential trend over the last few years, ranging from online auction<br>design, through in multi-sensor networks, to scheduling of tasks in<br>
multi-actor systems. Multi-agent systems designed for all these<br>applications<br>generally require some form of optimization in order to achieve their<br>goal.<br>Given this, a number of advancements have been made in the design of<br>
winner<br>determination, coalition formation, and distributed constraints<br>optimization<br>algorithms among others. However, there are no general principles<br>guiding<br>the design of such algorithms that would enable researchers to either<br>
exploit solutions designed in other areas or to ensure that their<br>algorithms<br>conform to some level of applicability to real problems.<br><br>This workshop aims to address the above issues by bringing together<br>researchers from different parts of the Multi-Agent Systems research<br>
area to<br>present their work and discuss acceptable solutions, benchmarks, and<br>evaluation methods for generally researched optimization problems.<br><br>In particular, the main issues to be addressed by the workshop include<br>
(but are not limited to):<br><br>1. Techniques to model and solve optimisation problems in which the<br>actors<br>are partly or completely distributed and can only communicate with their<br>peers.<br><br>2. Algorithms to compute solutions to mechanisms that deal with<br>
different<br>stakeholders who may be self interested or may have different<br>computation/communication capabilities from their peers.<br><br>3. Techniques to manage and disseminate relevant information across <br>different agents.<br>
<br>4. Dealing with privacy concerns: solving complex optimization problems<br>while leaking as little private information as possible<br><br>5. Problems that require anytime algorithms.<br><br>6. Algorithms that need to provide guarantees on the quality of the<br>
solution.<br><br>7. Mechanisms whose properties can be significantly affected if the<br>solution computed is not the optimal one.<br><br>8. Techniques to deal with optimizations that have to be repeated with <br>possibly only slight changes in the input data.<br>
<br>9. Techniques to deal with situations where the input data may be<br>uncertain<br>or unreliable, requiring that the solution computed be robust to slight<br>differences from the true values.<br><br>10. Techniques to deal with agents that are tied to physical devices.<br>
This involves computation and communication constraints that need to be<br>considered in the coordination techniques, as well as the possibility of<br>failures of the devices and communication links.<br><br>11. Benchmarks for optimisation algorithms in dynamic environments.<br>
<br>Keywords<br>--------<br><br>Topics include but are not limited to:<br><br>* Distributed Constraints Optimisation/Satisfaction<br>* Winner Determination Algorithms in Auctions<br>* Coalition Formation Algorithms<br>* Algorithms to compute Nash Equilibrium in games<br>
* Optimisation under uncertainty<br>* Optimisation with incomplete or dynamic input data<br>* Algorithms for real-time applications<br><br>Important dates<br>---------------<br><br>* FEBRUARY, 11th, 2011 (Deadline Extended) - Submission of contributions to workshops<br>
* FEBRUARY, 27th 2010 - Workshop paper acceptance notification<br>* MAY 3rd, 2011 - Workshop takes place in conjunction with AAMAS 2011.<br><br>Submission<br>----------<br><br>Submissions should conform to the LNCS Springer format, <br>
Authors are encouraged to use the following style file <a href="ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip">ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip</a><br>or see <a href="http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0">http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0</a> for more details.<br>
<br>Submission should not be more than *16* pages long (excluding appendices and assuming the LNCS format above).<br><br>Authors can submit their papers through the OPTMAS 2011 Easychair<br>submission site:<br><br><a href="http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=optmas11">http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=optmas11</a><br>
<br><br>Reviewing process<br>-----------------<br><br>Papers will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. Criteria for selection<br>of papers will include: originality, readability, relevance to themes,<br>soundness, and overall quality.<br>
<br><br>Publication<br>-----------<br>Best papers from OPTMAS 2008 and OPTMAS 2009 were selected for publication in the<br>special issue on Optimisation in Multi-Agent System of the Journal of Autonomous and Multiagent Systems<br>
<br>We plan to continue this initiative for the 2010 and 2011 edition. Therefore, we<br>will negotiate the publication of selected, best papers in a quality journal.<br><br><br>Organizing committee<br>--------------------<br>
Dr. Alessandro Farinelli (University of Verona, Italy)<br><br>Prof. Nicholas R. Jennings (University of Southampton, UK)<br><br>Dr. Sarvapali D. Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)<br><br>Dr. Juan A. Rodriguez Aguilar (IIIA,CSIC, Spain)<br>
<br>Dr. Jesus Cerquides Bueno (IIIA,CSIC, Spain)<br><br>Dr. Alex Rogers (University of Southampton, UK)<br><br><br>Programme Committee<br>--------------------------------------<br><br>Anna Bazzan, Instituto de Informatica, UFGRS, Brazil<br>
<br>Christian Blum, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain<br><br>Ladislau Boloni, University of Central Florida, USA<br><br>Andrea Giovannucci, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain<br><br>Pedro Meseguer, IIIA-CSIC, Spain<br>
<br>Nikos Komodakis, University of Crete, Greece<br><br>Talal Rahwan, University of Southampton, UK<br><br>Kate Larson, University of Waterloo, Canada<br><br>Beatriz López, University of Girona, Spain<br><br>Onn Shehory, IBM, Israel<br>
<br>Nicolas Stefanovitch, University of Paris 6, France<br><br>Greet Vanden Berghe, KaHo Sint-Lieven, Belgium<br><br>Meritxell Vinyals, IIIA-CSIC, Spain<br><br>Victor Lesser, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA<br><br>
Jason Tsai, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.<br><br>Christopher Kiekintveld, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.<br><br>Kathryn Macarthur, University of Southampton, UK<br><br>Robin Glinton, Robotics Institute CMU, USA<br>
<br>Norman Salazar, IIIA-CSIC, Spain<br><br>Rober N. Lass, Drexel University, USA<br><br>Andrea Roli, Alma Mater Studiorum - Universita' di Bologna, Italy<br><br>Paul Scerri, Robotics Institute CMU, USA<br><br>Evan A. Sultanik, Drexel University, USA<br>
<br>William Yeoh, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.<br><br>Makoto Yokoo, Kyushu University, Japan<br><br>Roie Zivan, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel<br><br>