Call for Papers

Main Track and Special Tracks

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 2017 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 2017, the sixteenth 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 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 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 2017 will be soliciting papers in special tracks. The review process for the special tracks will be similar to the main track, but with program committee members specially selected for each track. All accepted papers for the special tracks will be included in the proceedings.

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

General Chairs:
Kate Larson (University of Waterloo)
Michael Winikoff (University of Otago)

Program Chairs:
Sanmay Das (Washington University in St. Louis)
Ed Durfee (University of Michigan)

Special Tracks

As mentioned above, AAMAS 2017 will feature the following four special tracks. These are:

JAAMAS Submissions (Chair: Kate Larson)

AAMAS 2017 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, excluding bibliography) in the AAMAS proceedings. The articles must be original and not previously published as a full paper in an archival conference. The submission process for this track is separate from the main paper submission process, and is later (deadline in January). Authors of eligible JAAMAS papers will be contacted by email in the second half of November.

Information to participate.

For details on JAAMAS, visit http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10458.

Innovative and Industrial Applications (Chairs: Paul Scerri and Pradeep Varakantham)

Research from, and relevant to, the AAMAS community has permeated a variety of domains and applications, both as central to the application and in key supportive roles. For example, the community pursues research in topics including resource allocation, constrained optimization, learning, scheduling, agent-based simulation, and game-theoretic equilibrium computation, and applies them in domains ranging from security to biomedicine to robotics to financial and internet market design. Ideas and technologies from this research are responsible for significant revenue-generation and cost-saving, as well as for supporting important public policy and business strategy decision-making.

We are interested in hearing about how research makes it into practice and what the current problems of interest are. 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 using autonomous agents and multiagent systems in real-world commercial, non-profit, and government applications.

We invite papers across two sub-tracks:

“Industrial Applications” sub-track: This is primarily for industry practitioners and researchers to present application work that is more mature, commercially deployed and uses agents/multiagent systems technology in practice. Submitted material will be evaluated based on the use of agent/multiagent systems technology for real problems over a reasonable duration (minimum of 3 months), evidence of impact, and lessons for the agents/multi-agents community of what worked and what did not.
“Innovative Applications" sub-track: This is open to all researchers to showcase promising new applications of agent/multiagent systems technology that are at an early stage, with no requirement of deployment. Papers will be evaluated on innovativeness of the proposed application, use of agent/multiagent methods and evidence of possible improvement, either in simulation or by other qualitative means.

Accepted papers of both sub-tracks will automatically get an opportunity to present a demonstration at the conference.

Papers accepted to the “Industrial Applications” sub-track will receive a special award for taking agents to the real world.

Submission Instructions for the Innovative and Industrial Applications Special Track

For the industrial applications sub-track, authors should submit a presentation of their work in whatever electronic medium best shows the AAMAS relevant features of the application, whether a video, PPT, deployment, webpage or software. Acceptance to the track will be determined based on both the degree to which interesting agent technologies feature in and improve the deployed system, as well as the benefit to the community to understanding the challenges and solutions in the application. Authors must submit a single page document accompanying the primary submission, briefly summarizing what interesting agent technologies are featured in the deployed system and the impacts those technologies have had.

For the innovative applications sub-track, authors need to follow the same paper submission instructions as used for submitting to the main track (maximum of 8 pages, excluding references, in AAMAS format).

Robotics (Chairs: Christopher Amato and Alessandro Farinelli)
We invite papers that advance theory and application of single and multiple robots. Papers on the interaction between robots and agents (broadly defined) are particularly welcome, but all papers at the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics are welcome.

Papers are solicited in all areas, including, but not restricted to:

Human-robot interaction
Robot communication and teamwork
Machine learning for robotics
Mapping, localization and exploration
Architectures for teams of robots
Networked robot/sensor systems, distributed robotics
Robot planning and plan execution (including action and motion planning)
Robot teams, multi-robot systems, robot coordination
Robotic agent languages and middleware for robot systems
Swarms and collective behaviour
Modular robotics

Embodied Virtual Agents and Human-Agent Interaction (Chair: Catherine Pelachaud)
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.

Papers are solicited in all areas, including, but not restricted to:

Embodied cognition
Multimodal agent interaction
Affective behaviour
Socio-cultural behaviour
Verbal and non-verbal behaviour
Human(s)-virtual agent(s) interaction
Virtual agents in games and education
Virtual agents for improving human activities
Agent-based analysis of human interactions

Blue Sky Ideas (Chair: Vincent Conitzer)
The emphasis of this track is on visionary ideas, long-term challenges, and new research opportunities. 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 www.ifaamas.org/proceedings.html.In addition, AAMAS 2017 will include:

Workshops
Demonstrations
Poster 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. Information will be posted on the relevant pages.

Policies

Policy on multiple and previous submissions.

Authors may not submit any paper to AAMAS 2017 that has already appeared in an archival forum. Authors must ensure that no submission to AAMAS 2017 is under review for another archival forum between the AAMAS 2017 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 at www.ifaamas.org/harassment.html.

For further details about AAMAS 2017, please visit the website at http://www.aamas2017.org