Technical Description
AAMAS is the premier international conference for agent-based research. Theoretical and algorithmic contributions have been made in areas such as decision theory, game theory, distributed constraints, market-based systems and biologically-inspired models among others. The practice of building agents has also been valued through featured industry and demonstration tracks. The call for papers for the first AAMAS conference eschewed addressing "isolated agent capabilities" and encouraged ideas that were "placed in the overall context of autonomous agent architecture or of MAS organization and performance". However, in today's agents community, theory and practice seem to be walking separate paths with no clear feedback between the two.
In this workshop, we hope to bridge this gap by fostering an exchange where the lessons learned from taking theory to practice and are used to understand the limitations of the theoretical models and the lessons learned directly from practice and used to discover the issues that theoretical models need to address.
Over the last several years, members of the agents community have been involved with real-world systems in robotics, decision-support agents, personal-assistant agents in military, space and commercial domains. Many of the lessons learned from these endeavors involve the surprises, difficulties and flaws. These lessons are often not shared because they bring about questions for which an answer is not apparent. Nevertheless, it is important for our community to know and discuss these challenges if we are to produce the ideas and technology that are transformative and ultimately, utilized by practitioners.
Some of these challenges may include:
An important aspect of this workshop is not only to discuss these challenges, but also to develop directions for existing and new theoretical models so that algorithms and approaches that result can actually function in practice. We hope to build a forum where we can discuss the barriers to transferring agent-based theories and algorithms to practitioners and transform the models and assumptions made within the agent community to make all our work more relevant.
Why and to whom the workshop is of interest
Many members of the AAMAS community have been developing their ideas in the context of real-world systems. This includes the CALO personal assistant agent project, the COORDINATORS decision-support agent project, the RoboCup challenge, the Landroids robotic ad-hoc communication network project, NASA projects, and various unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles. The community also shares a variety of common theoretical frameworks such as Decentralized and Multiagent MDPs and POMDPs, DCSP/DCOP and Auctions-Based Mechanisms.
While many researchers in the community have engaged in these projects and these frameworks, a broader dialogue has not been achieved. The agents community is more vested than most to see their ideas transferred to practitioners. This workshop will be of interest to the large subsection of our community that have been involved with these projects and approaches along with a larger portion of the community who may feel that the current set of approaches have not served them well. We hope to provide a forum where the needs of both communities can be served.
AAMAS is the premier international conference for agent-based research. Theoretical and algorithmic contributions have been made in areas such as decision theory, game theory, distributed constraints, market-based systems and biologically-inspired models among others. The practice of building agents has also been valued through featured industry and demonstration tracks. The call for papers for the first AAMAS conference eschewed addressing "isolated agent capabilities" and encouraged ideas that were "placed in the overall context of autonomous agent architecture or of MAS organization and performance". However, in today's agents community, theory and practice seem to be walking separate paths with no clear feedback between the two.
In this workshop, we hope to bridge this gap by fostering an exchange where the lessons learned from taking theory to practice and are used to understand the limitations of the theoretical models and the lessons learned directly from practice and used to discover the issues that theoretical models need to address.
Over the last several years, members of the agents community have been involved with real-world systems in robotics, decision-support agents, personal-assistant agents in military, space and commercial domains. Many of the lessons learned from these endeavors involve the surprises, difficulties and flaws. These lessons are often not shared because they bring about questions for which an answer is not apparent. Nevertheless, it is important for our community to know and discuss these challenges if we are to produce the ideas and technology that are transformative and ultimately, utilized by practitioners.
Some of these challenges may include:
- Giving users a language to compactly communicate their problems; problem description
- Translating a problem description into a chosen formalism; modeling
- The lack of information to populate a model
- The effects of bounded memory and processing on algorithms
- Real-world communication channels
- Communicating with a human user, e.g., giving instructions, receiving updates
- Getting real information from the environment; sensing
- User error or misinterpretation of instructions
An important aspect of this workshop is not only to discuss these challenges, but also to develop directions for existing and new theoretical models so that algorithms and approaches that result can actually function in practice. We hope to build a forum where we can discuss the barriers to transferring agent-based theories and algorithms to practitioners and transform the models and assumptions made within the agent community to make all our work more relevant.
Why and to whom the workshop is of interest
Many members of the AAMAS community have been developing their ideas in the context of real-world systems. This includes the CALO personal assistant agent project, the COORDINATORS decision-support agent project, the RoboCup challenge, the Landroids robotic ad-hoc communication network project, NASA projects, and various unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles. The community also shares a variety of common theoretical frameworks such as Decentralized and Multiagent MDPs and POMDPs, DCSP/DCOP and Auctions-Based Mechanisms.
While many researchers in the community have engaged in these projects and these frameworks, a broader dialogue has not been achieved. The agents community is more vested than most to see their ideas transferred to practitioners. This workshop will be of interest to the large subsection of our community that have been involved with these projects and approaches along with a larger portion of the community who may feel that the current set of approaches have not served them well. We hope to provide a forum where the needs of both communities can be served.
Agent Design : Advancing from Practice to Theory
ADAPT 2011
AAMAS 2011 Workshop
Symposium Organizers
Alessandro Farinelli, University of Verona
Rajiv Maheswaran, University of Southern California
Janusz Marecki, IBM
Nathan Schurr, Aptima
Alessandro Farinelli, University of Verona
Rajiv Maheswaran, University of Southern California
Janusz Marecki, IBM
Nathan Schurr, Aptima
Tuesday, May 3, 2011, Taipei, Taiwan
Submission Information
Submission deadline: February 21st (Now extended)
Acceptance notification: February 27th
Authors can submit their papers via email to nschurr@aptima.com
Submissions should conform to the LNCS Springer format. Authors are encouraged to use the following style file
ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip
or see the Springer web site for more details http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 .
Submission should be between 4 - 12 pages long (excluding appendices and assuming the LNCS format above).
Each paper will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. Criteria for selection of papers will include: originality, readability, relevance to themes, soundness, and overall quality.
Submission deadline: February 21st (Now extended)
Acceptance notification: February 27th
Authors can submit their papers via email to nschurr@aptima.com
Submissions should conform to the LNCS Springer format. Authors are encouraged to use the following style file
ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip
or see the Springer web site for more details http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 .
Submission should be between 4 - 12 pages long (excluding appendices and assuming the LNCS format above).
Each paper will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. Criteria for selection of papers will include: originality, readability, relevance to themes, soundness, and overall quality.