Papers

Important Dates

Abstract Submission:         November 13, 2015 (23:59 UTC-12)

Full Paper Submission:     November 17, 2015 (23:59 UTC-12)

Rebuttal Phase                   January 11-12, 2016 (23:59 UTC-12)

Author Notification:          January 26, 2016

About AAMAS

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was initiated in 2002 by merging three highly respected meetings: the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS); the International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL); and 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.

Information for Authors

AAMAS 2016 encourages the submission of analytical, empirical, methodological, technological, and perspective papers. Analytical and empirical papers should make clear the significance and relevance of their results to the AAMAS community. Similarly, methodological and technological papers should make clear their scientific and technical contributions, and are expected to demonstrate a thorough evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses in practice. It is strongly encouraged that papers focusing on specific agent capabilities evaluate their techniques in the context of autonomous agent architectures or multiagent systems. A thorough evaluation, conducted from a theoretical or applied basis, is considered an essential component of any submission. Authors are also requested to pay particular attention to discussing how their work relates to the state of the art in autonomous agents and multiagent systems research as evidenced in, for example, previous AAMAS and related conferences. All submissions will be rigorously peer reviewed and evaluated on the basis of the overall quality of their technical contribution, including criteria such as originality, soundness, relevance, significance, quality of presentation, and understanding of the state of the art.

AAMAS 2016, the fifteenth conference in the AAMAS series, seeks the submission of high-quality papers limited to 8 pages in length with any additional pages containing only bibliographic references*. Reviews will be double blind; authors must avoid including anything in their papers that can be used to identify them. Please note that submitting an abstract is required to submit a full paper. However, the abstracts will not be reviewed and full (8-page) papers must be submitted for the review process to begin. All work must be original, i.e., it must not have appeared in a conference proceedings, book, or journal and may not be under review for another archival conference. In addition to submissions in the main track, AAMAS 2016 will be soliciting papers in special tracks. The review process for the special tracks will be similar to the main track, but with programme committee members specially selected for each track. All accepted papers for the special tracks will be included in the proceedings.

JAAMAS Submissions

Finally, AAMAS 2016 will also accept papers for presentation that have appeared in the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (JAAMAS) in the 12 months period preceding the AAMAS notification date. These articles also have the option to publish an extended abstract (maximum two pages) in the AAMAS proceedings. The articles must be original and not previously published as a full paper in an archival conference. For details on JAAMAS, visit - http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10458.

Further submission instructions are available at: (https://sis.smu.edu.sg/aamas2016?itemid=10796).

Topics of Interest

The conference solicits papers addressing original research on autonomous agents and their interaction. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

Agent Theories and Models:

- Logic and Game Theory
- Logics for agents and multi-agent systems
- Formal models of agency
- Belief-Desire-Intention theories and models
- Cognitive models
- Models of emotions

Communication and Argumentation:

- Commitments
- Communication languages and protocols
- Speech act theory
- Multi-agent reasoning
- Deductive, rule-based and logic-based argumentation
- Argumentation-based dialogue and protocols

Agent Cooperation:

- Biologically-inspired approaches and methods
- Collective intelligence
- Distributed problem solving
- Teamwork, team formation, teamwork analysis
- Coalition formation (non-strategic)
- Human-robot/agent interaction
- Multi-user/multi-virtual-agent interaction
- Multi-robot systems

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning:

- Ontologies for agents
- Reasoning in agent-based systems
- Single and multi-agent planning and scheduling
- Trust and reputation

Agent Societies and Societal issues:

- Organizations and institutions
- Socio-technical systems
- Normative systems
- Values in MAS (privacy, safety, security, transparency,…)
- Monitoring agent societies
- Architectures for social reasoning
- Trust and reputation
- Value-sensitive design of multi-agent systems
- Policy, regulation and legislation

Humans and Agents:

- Human-robot/agent interaction
- Multi-user/multi-virtual-agent interaction
- Agents competing against humans
- Agent-based analysis of human interactions
- Agents for improving human cooperative activities

Learning and adaptation:

- Reward structures for learning
- Evolutionary algorithms
- Co-evolutionary algorithms
- Multiagent learning
- Learning agent capabilities (agent models, communication, observation)
- Learning agent-to-agent interactions (negotiation, trust, coordination)

Agents & Mainstream Computing:

- Service-oriented architectures
- Mobile agents
- Autonomic computing
- P2P, web services, grid computing, ...

Agent-based simulation:

- Social simulation
- Simulation techniques tools and platforms
- Complex systems
- Validation of simulation systems
- Modelling for agent based simulation
- Interactive simulation
- Emergent behaviour
- Analysis of agent based simulations

Engineering Multi-Agent Systems:

- Modelling and specification languages
- Programming languages and frameworks for agents and multi-agent systems
- Development techniques, tools, and platforms
- Methodologies for agent-based systems
- Verification, fault tolerance and resilience of multi-agent systems

Verification and validation of agent-based systems:

- Testing of agent-based systems, including model based testing
- Verification of agent-based systems, including model checking
- Synthesis of agent-based systems

Systems and organization:

- Autonomic computing
- Complex systems
- Self-organization
- Novel agent and multiagent applications

Economic paradigms:

- Auctions and mechanism design
- Bargaining and negotiation
- Behavioral game theory
- Cooperative games: theory & analysis
- Cooperative games: computation
- Noncooperative games: theory & analysis
- Noncooperative games: computation
- Social choice theory
- Game theory for practical applications

Conference Chairs

General Chairs:

Catholijn Jonker (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
Stacy Marsella (Northeastern University, USA)

Program Chairs:

Karl Tuyls (University of Liverpool, UK)
John Thangarajah (RMIT University, Australia)

Special Tracks

In addition to the above, AAMAS 2016 will feature the following four special tracks and a JAAMAS Track.

Innovative Applications (Chairs: Onn Shehory and Noa Agmon)
Due to the growing maturity of the field, there are now agent-based applications in widespread use across many domains, responsible for the generation of significant revenues, or the saving of major costs, or for supporting important public policy and business strategy decision-making. This special track provides the ideal forum to present, discuss, and demonstrate compelling applications, agent system deployment experiences, and new business ideas. The goal is to promote the fostering of mutually-beneficial relationships between those doing foundational scientific research and those making autonomous agents and multiagent systems a commercial or public policy reality.

Robotics (Chairs: Francesco Amigoni and Roderich Gross)
Papers that advance theory and applications of single and multiple robots are welcome, specifically those focusing on real robots that interact with their environment. Papers should clearly explain how the work addresses challenges in robotics, opportunities for novel applications, and fundamental research issues in autonomous robotic systems. The goal is to demonstrate the synergy achieved from integration of research in agents and robotics.

Embodied Virtual Agents and Human-Agent Interaction
(Chairs: Tim Bickmore and Hannes Vilhjálmsson)
Virtual agents are embodied agents that emulate autonomous human-like behavior in simulated interactive or physical environments. We encourage papers on the design, implementation, and evaluation of virtual agents as well as challenging applications featuring them. Of particular interest are papers addressing how humans interact with virtual agents. The goal is to provide an opportunity for continued interaction and cross-fertilization between the AAMAS community and researchers working on virtual agents and to strengthen links between the two communities.

Blue Sky Ideas (Chair: Frank Dignum)
The emphasis of this track is on visionary ideas, long-term challenges, and new research opportunities that are outside the current mainstream of the field. This track is designed to overcome the constraints of the traditional review process, and will serve as an incubator for innovative approaches, risky and provocative ideas, and to propose challenges and opportunities for the field in the near future.

General Information

All full papers accepted to the main track and the special tracks will be presented in parallel technical sessions. All the papers will be published in the conference Proceedings and will be permanently available after the conference at  

<http://www.ifaamas.org/proceedings.html>.

In addition, AAMAS 2016 will include:

• Workshops
• Demonstrations
• Posters presentations for full papers and extended abstracts
• Invited talks and panel discussions

The submission processes for the workshops and demonstrations are separate from the main paper submission process. Relevant information will be posted on the relevant pages.

Policies

Policy on multiple and previous submissions.

Authors may not submit any paper to AAMAS 2016 that has already appeared in an archival forum. Authors must ensure that no submission to AAMAS 2016 is under review for another archival forum between the AAMAS 2016 submission and decision dates.

Policy on harassment at the conference environment.

IFAAMAS is committed to organising the AAMAS conference and its affiliated events in an environment that is free of harassment for everyone involved: delegates, organisers, conference workers, and reviewers. All participants in IFAAMAS events are asked to embrace our intention to foster a harassment-free scientific community, and to understand that IFAAMAS will respond appropriately to incidents of harassment if they occur. The complete IFAAMAS harassment policy is available here.

For further details about AAMAS 2016, please visit the website at <http://sis.smu.edu.sg/aamas2016> or aamas16pcchairs@gmail.com