Multiagent Systems are computational systems in which several
semi-autonomous agents interact or work together to perform some set
of tasks or satisfying some set of goals. These systems may involve
computational agents that are homogeneous or heterogeneous, they may
involve activity on the part of agents having common goals or goals
that are distinct, and they may involve participation on the part of
humans and intelligent computational agents. Research and practice on
these systems generally focuses on problem solving, communication, and
coordination aspects, as distinct from low-level parallelization or
synchronization issues that are more the focus of distributed
computing.
The design, implementation, and assessment of multiagent systems
raises many specific issues. These include how to develop
coordination strategies that enable groups of agents to solve problems
effectively, negotiation mechanisms that serve to bring a collection
of agents to an acceptable state, conflict detection and resolution
strategies, protocols by which agents may communicate and reason about
inter-agent communications, and mechanisms whereby agents can maintain
autonomy while still contributing to overall system effectiveness.
Researchers and developers in many areas of the world have contributed
to multiagent systems over the last decade. The First International
Conference on Multiagent Systems will be held in June of 1995 in San
Francisco. Organized as a joint effort of the North American
Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) community, the Japanese
Multi-Agent and Cooperative Computing (MACC) community, and the
European Modeling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World (MAAMAW)
community, this conference solicits papers concerning multiagent
systems.
ICMAS-95 will be a three-day conference combining a strong technical
program of submitted papers with plenary sessions that serve to
encourage synthesis of ideas from multiple segments of this
interdisciplinary area. There will also be tutorials on June 11, the
day before the official start of the conference. The program committee
wishes to encourage representation of a broad spectrum of perspectives
in the conference program. Topics of interest include but are not
limited to:
Agent architectures
Artificial life (from a multiagent perspective)
Cooperation, coordination, and conflict
Communication issues
Conceptual and theoretical foundations of multiagent systems
Development and engineering methodologies
Distributed artificial intelligence
Distributed consensus and algorithms for multiagent
interaction
Distributed search
Evaluation of multi-agent systems
Integrated testbeds and development environments
Intelligent agents in enterprise integration systems
and similar types of applications
Multiagent cooperative reasoning from distributed heterogeneous
databases
Multiagent planning and planning for multiagent worlds
Negotiation strategies - in both competitive and cooperative
situations
Organization, organizational knowledge, and organization self-design
Practical applications of multi-agent systems (enterprises,
robotics, sensing, manufacturing, etc.)
Resource allocation in multiagent systems
Social structures and their significance in multiagent systems
User interface issues for multiagent systems
Submissions
Authors should submit five (5) copies of papers and an email version
of the abstract by December 1, 1994 to one of the conference
co-chairs. All papers will be reviewed by the program committee and
authors will be notified of acceptance by March 1, 1995. Each paper
should clearly indicate the nature of its scientific contribution, and
the problems, domains, or environments to which it is applicable.
Paper Format for Review
Submitted papers must be printed on 8 1/2" x 11"or A4 paper using 12
point type (10 characters per inch for typewriters). Each page must
have no more than 38 lines and an average of 75 characters per line.
(This corresponds to LaTex article style, 12 point.) Each paper
should have a single title page which includes a 150-word abstract and
up to two topic areas covered by the paper. (These will be used to
focus reviewing and ultimately to structure the technical program.)
The body of the paper, including all figures, tables, and diagrams but
excluding title page and bibliography must be no more than 12 pages in
length. Papers that do not conform to these guidelines will be
rejected without review and no electronic submissions will be
accepted.
General Chair:
Victor R. Lesser
Computer and Information Science Department
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
(413) 545-1322
lesser@cs.umass.edu
Program Co-Chairs:
North America:
Susan E. Conry
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Clarkson University
Box 5720
Potsdam, NY 13676-5720
(315) 268-6510
conry@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
Europe:
Yves Demazeau
Laboratoire LIFIA/IMAG
46 Avenue Felix Viallet
F-38031 Grenoble cx
FRANCE
+33 76574654
Yves.Demazeau@imag.fr
Pacific Rim:
Mario Tokoro
Keio University / Sony CSL
Department of Computer Science
3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku
Yokohama 223 JAPAN
+81-45-560-1153
mario@mt.cs.keio.ac.jp
Local Arrangements:
Evangelos Simoudis
Lockheed AI Center
o/96-20, B/254F
3251 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(415) 3554-5271
simoudis@aic.lockheed.com
Advisory Committee:
John Campbell (England)
Christiano Castelfranchi (Italy)
Susan E. Conry (USA)
Yves Demazeau (France)
Edmund Durfee (USA)
Jacques Ferber (France)
Les Gasser (USA)
Michael Georgeff (Australia)
Carl Hewitt (USA)
Michael N. Huhns (USA)
Toru Ishida (Japan)
Victor Lesser (USA)
Jean-Pierre Muller (Switzerland)
Jeffrey Rosenschein (Israel)
Evangelos Simoudis (USA)
Katia Sycara (USA)
Mario Tokoro (Japan)
Program Committee:
John Campbell (England)
Christiano Castelfranchi (Italy)
Helder Coelho (Portugal)
Phil Cohen (USA)
Edmund Durfee (USA)
Jacques Ferber (France)
Mark Fox (Canada)
Les Gasser (USA)
Michael Georgeff (Australia)
Carl Hewitt (USA)
Bernardo Huberman (USA)
Michael Huhns (USA)
Toru Ishida (Japan)
Nick Jennings (England)
Sarit Kraus (Israel)
Christian Lemaitre (Mexico)
Frank von Martial (Germany)
Jean Pierre Muller (Switzerland)
Hideyuki Nakashima (Japan)
Van Parunak (USA)
Jeffrey Rosenschein (Israel)
Evangelos Simoudis (USA)
Luc Steels (Belgium)
Toshiharu Sugawara (Japan)
Katia Sycara (USA)