AGENT THEORIES, ARCHITECTURES, AND LANGUAGES Call for Papers -- An IJCAI-95 Workshop Montreal, Quebec, 19-20 August 1995 http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mike/atal95.html Introduction The past decade has been witness to an explosion of interest in the issues surrounding the design and implementation of agents that can make deci- sions, interact with other agents, and act autonomously and rationally in time-constrained, open, multi-agent environments. The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers interested in the agent-level, micro aspects of this emerging technology. The workshop will address the issues of agent specification via agent theories, the ability of agents to model other agents, and the ability of agents to make decisions in multi-agent environments. Thus, we intend to explore agent architectures, methodologies for realising agents, agent decision-making theories, inter-agent communi- cation and natural language discourse, software tools for programming and experimenting with agents. In particular, the workshop will focus on the link between theories for agents, agent modeling, and agent decision- making, and the realisation of such theories using software architectures or languages. The workshop aims to bring together researchers working in agent design, planning, multi-agent systems, language understanding, and decision theory. Note that we discourage the submission of papers that address macro-level aspects of agent technology (such as cooperative prob- lem solving or cooperation protocols). Such papers address mainstream Dis- tributed AI issues, and there are other more appropriate outlets for such work. The 1995 workshop is to be held at the IJCAI conference in Montreal, Que- bec, on 19 and 20 August 1995. The workshop will build on the success of two workshops held at the 1994 European Conference on AI: the workshop on Decision Theory for DAI Applications, and the workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages. The proceedings of the latter were published by Springer-Verlag, under the title `Intelligent Agents', as Volume 890 of their `Lecture Notes in AI' series. It is expected that polished versions of papers from the 1995 workshop will be published in a similar way. The workshop has the following main themes: o Agent theories: How do the various components of an agent's cognitive makeup conspire to produce rational behaviour? What is the relation- ship between these components? What formalisms are appropriate for expressing aspects of agent theory? Do we need logic-based formalisms? If not, is another type of mathematical framework appropriate? How are we to model bounded rationality? What properties are desirable for an agent communication language? o Agent decision making: What are appropriate formalisms for expressing aspects of agenthood and decision-making in multi-agent situations? What is the relationship between the dimensions of representation (e.g., symbolic versus numeric) and the problem-solving paradigm (search in a problem space, logical inference to prove a goal, rational choice of action in decision theory and game theory) in decision-making? How do results in decision-theoretic planning fit into the framework? How can different decision-making paradigms be combined (e.g., symbolic versus utilitarian approaches)? o Agent modeling: What paradigms and theories should modeling be based on: should it be logical, knowledge-theoretic, decision-theoretic, game-theoretic? Are theoretical models developed for agent modeling of relevance for practical applications, such as intelligent tutoring systems? What are the relationships between models and communicative acts? How do concerns of real-time performance and reactivity change the nature of agent modeling? o Agent architectures: What structure should an agent have? Is reactive behaviour enough, or do we need deliberation as well? How can we integrate reactive and deliberative components cleanly? What is the relationship between an agent's decision-making model and its archi- tecture? How can we synthesise an agent from an agent specification? How are we to reason about reactive systems? o Agent languages: What are the right primitives for programming an intelligent agent? How are these primitives related to the theory of an agent, or its architecture? Can we realistically hope to execute agent specifications in complex, perhaps multi-modal languages? What are the important aspects of an agent language with respect to agent decision-making? What properties are desirable for an agent communica- tion language? Papers that cross theme boundaries are of particular interest. Examples might include a paper that demonstrated how a particular architecture or language embodied some theory of agency, or a paper that gave the semantics for an implemented agent communication language. Topics of Interest Agent Theories Agent Architectures intentions methodologies time, desires, beliefs, and goals architectures & decision-making situated automata theory deliberative architectures specification/verification of agents reactive architectures executing logical agent specifications hybrid architectures agent communication languages BDI architectures Agent Decision-Making Agent Modeling decision models and decision procedures real-time modeling decision-making under uncertainty modeling with incomplete planning and decision theory information rationality & bounded rationality interleaving modeling with performance Agent Languages communicative acts & modeling game-theoretic modeling agent specification languages decision-theoretic modeling the agent-oriented paradigm knowledge-theoretic modeling agent-based computing logical modelling Submission Details Those wishing to participate in the workshop should submit four hard copies of an original paper of up to five thousand words (approximately thirteen pages maximum), to reach the organising committee chair no later than April 3rd, 1995. The first page should include the full name and contact details (including email, full postal address, and telephone number if pos- sible) of at least one author. A detailed description of other formatting requirements, (including a LaTeX style package), is available either from the workshop WWW site (see below) or on request from the organisers. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent no later than May 8th, and will be delivered by email where possible. Pre-proceedings will be distributed at the workshop. It is expected that polished versions of selected papers will be formally published soon after the workshop is held. Those wishing to attend without presenting a paper should send any member of the organising committee a brief summary of their reasons for interest in the workshop. Note that attendance will, of necessity, be limited. Everyone attending the workshop will be required to register for the main conference. Organising Committee Michael Wooldridge (CHAIR) Nicholas Jennings Department of Computing Department of Electronic Engineering Manchester Metropolitan University Queen Mary & Westfield College Chester Street Mile End Road Manchester M1 5GD, U.K. London E1 4NS, U.K. Email M.Wooldridge@doc.mmu.ac.uk Email N.R.Jennings@qmw.ac.uk Tel (+44 1 61) 247 1531 Tel (+44 1 71) 975 5349 Fax (+44 1 61) 247 1483 Fax (+44 1 81) 981 0259 Klaus Fischer Joerg P. Mueller German Research Center for AI German Research Center for AI (DFKI GmbH) (DFKI GmbH) Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 D-66123 Saarbruecken D-66123 Saarbruecken Germany Germany Email kuf@dfki.uni-sb.de Email jpm@dfki.uni-sb.de Tel (+49 681) 302 5328 Tel (+49 681) 302 5331 Fax (+49 681) 302 5341 Fax (+49 681) 302 5341 Piotr Gmytrasiewicz Milind Tambe 306 Nedderman Hall Information Sciences Institute CSE Department University of Southern California University of Texas at Arlington 4676 Admiralty Way Arlington, TX 76019-0015 Marina del Rey, CA 90292 Email piotr@cse.uta.edu Email tambe@isi.edu Tel (+817) 273 3334 Tel (+310) 822 1511 Fax (+817) 273 3784 Fax (+310) 823 6714 Program Committee Michael Beetz (USA) ** Cristiano Castelfranchi (Italy) ** Phil Cohen (USA) Ed Durfee (USA) ** Tim Finin (USA) ** Michael Fisher (UK) John Fox (UK) ** Michael Georgeff (Australia) ** Joachim Hertzberg (D) Lewis Johnson (USA) ** Sarit Kraus (Israel) ** Anand Rao (Australia) Charles Rich (USA) ** Jeff Rosenschein (Israel) ** John Self (UK) Yoav Shoham (USA) ** Candace Sidner (USA) ** Munindar Singh (USA) Donald Steiner (D) ** Kurt Sundermeyer (D) ** Michael Wellman (USA) Further Details See the following WWW page: http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mike/atal95.html If you do not have WWW access, contact any member of the organising commit- tee. -- Michael Wooldridge | email M.Wooldridge@doc.mmu.ac.uk Department of Computing, | http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mikew.html Manchester Metropolitan University | tel (+44 1 61) 247 1531 Chester St., Manchester M1 5GD, UK | fax (+44 1 61) 247 1483