Workshop06-IMASC2016

Paper Submission Deadline: July 29, 2016 - Extended

Submissions could be for full papers, short papers, poster papers, or posters

SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) has grown into an interdisciplinary field that includes various tracks and embraces many previously disparate research areas. Particularly, multi-agent coordination, a sub-area of MAS, investigates how multiple intelligent computational agents work together to achieve high-level goals beyond the capabilities of single agents. Many different approaches have been investigated, such as the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), task structure analysis, coordination communication protocols, game theory, synergy, etc. Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS) have evolved significantly as well. These tend to investigate the design and development of effective environments or tools that help human users work together in a distributed collaborative, possibly virtual, fashion. Some notable examples of CTS include Collaboratories, collaborative design/editing, and on-line collaboration tools and environments. CTS is beginning to address the challenges of supporting coordinated, purposive activities. MAS is still facing challenges of scaling to large numbers of entities and real-world tasks (see, for example, James Hendler's inquiry, “where are all the intelligent agents?"¹).

This workshop will explore potential overlap between CTS and MAS, and coordination because they share a common ground: how multiple entities - intelligent agents or humans alike - work together to carry out potentially related tasks. We will ask questions of whether and how to design and develop collaboration systems, promoting coordinated human activity, could be enhanced by incorporating insights from MAS. Collaboration technologies embody practical considerations from the human users' points of view, allowing users to ignore how the underlying (agent) infrastructure is implemented. Meanwhile, MAS/coordination investigates intelligent agents’ underlying algorithms and mechanisms and, in some cases, how artificial agents can interact with people as peers. Conversely, intelligent agents will not see significant acceptance, nor will they be able to manage the complexity and knowledge-intensity of meaningful practical applications, without developing some understanding of how to make effective use of human contributions throughout the specification, execution, evaluation, and refinement stages of the software lifecycle.

This workshop solicits papers that discuss issues underpinning overlaps between MAS and CTS, possible advantages/disadvantages of hybrids between them for designing and developing modern distributed collaborative software systems, and research and/or real-world experience and/or applications and/or lessons learned that involve both CTS and MAS. That is, any paper that addresses both CTS and MAS, preferably in one or a set of applications that share similar underlying research challenges, is of special interest to this workshop. An example could be: the design and development of a collaboration environment (i.e., a distributed planning tool) that enables multiple heterogeneous, human experts and agents to work in combination across complex computer networks on courses of actions in response to cyber attacks. Another example might be systems or interfaces supporting the division of labor between CTS and MAS elements during execution.

I-MASC Workshop topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

MAS: Coordination of and by Computational Agents

• Agent Communication, Languages and Protocols

• Agent Models and Architectures

• Multi-Agent Coordination and Cooperation

• Human-Agent Interaction

• Multi-User/Multi-Agent Interaction

• Teamwork, Coalition Formation, Coordination

• Peer to Peer Coordination

• Modeling the Dynamics of MAS

• Agent-based System Development

• Collective Decision Making

• Bargaining and Negotiation

• Auction and Mechanism Design

• Cooperative and Non-Cooperative Agents

• Complex MAS

• Virtual Agents Applications

• Conversational Agents

• Distributed Task Planning and Execution

• Cooperation with Humans and Robots

• Collective Intelligence

• Agent Reasoning

• Mining Agents

• Learning coordination strategies

• Learning synergies among participants

• Security Agents

CTS: Agent Technologies and Systems Supporting Collaboration Among Humans

• Architectures and Design of Collaborative Systems

• Frameworks and Methodologies for Collaboration

• Cognitive and Psychological Issues in Collaboration

• Collaborative Human-Centered Systems

• Cultural Aspects & Human Factors in Collaboration

• Interfaces for Collaborative Work

• Social Software Based Collaboration

• Visualization of Collaborative Processes

• Web Infrastructure for Collaborative Applications

• Information Infrastructure for Collaboration

• Management of Metadata for Collaboration

• Mobile and Wireless Collaboration Systems

• Modeling and Simulation of Collaboration

• Platforms for Collaboration

• Collaboration in Domain Applications

Important: A submitted paper must have keywords from BOTH lists of MAS and CTS!

Synergies of CTS and MAS topics are of interest with respect to any phase of a human or software systems lifecycle: specification, implementation, testing, evaluation, and deployment.

PAPER SUBMISSION

You are invited to submit original and unpublished research works on above and other topics related to Collaborative Technologies and Multi-Agent Systems. Submitted papers must not have been published or simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Submissions could be for full papers, short papers, poster papers, or posters (please specify). For Regular papers, please submit a PDF copy of your full manuscript, not to exceed 8 double-column formatted pages per template, and include up to 6 keywords and an abstract of no more than 400 words. Additional pages will be charged additional fee. Submission should include a cover page with authors' names, affiliation addresses, fax numbers, phone numbers, and all authors email addresses. Please, indicate clearly the corresponding author(s) although all authors are equally responsible for the manuscript. Short papers (up to 4 pages), poster papers and posters (please refer to http://cts2016.cisedu.info/1-call-for-papers/call-for-posters for posters submission details) will also be considered. Please specify the type of submission you have. Please include page numbers on all preliminary submissions to make it easier for reviewers to provide helpful comments.

Submit a PDF copy of your full manuscript to the workshop EasyChair paper submission site at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=imasc2016. Acknowledgement will be sent within 48 hours of submission. If the submission is for a poster paper or short paper, indicate that as well on the manuscript and in the submission form's Notes field.

Please note, (1) only PDF files will be accepted; (2) papers should have the following name format for easy identification: ‘Surname_Initial_1.PDF’, where the Surname is that of the first author; and (3) follow the Easy Chair website instructions to login into the system (or create your account if necessary) and upload your paper accordingly.

Only PDF files will be accepted, uploaded to the submission link above. Each paper will receive a minimum of three reviews. Papers will be selected based on their originality, relevance, significance, technical clarity and presentation, and references. Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register and present the paper, if accepted. At least one of the authors of each accepted paper will have to register and attend the CTS 2016 conference to present the paper at the workshop.

Proceedings

Accepted papers will be published in the Conference proceedings. Instructions for final manuscript format and requirements will be posted on the CTS 2016 Conference web site. It is our intent to have the proceedings formally published in hard and soft copies and be available at the time of the conference. The proceedings is projected to be included in the IEEE Digital Library and indexed in all major indexing services accordingly.

If you have any questions about paper submission or the workshop, please contact the organizers.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission Deadline: ------------------------- July 29, 2016 - Extended

Acceptance Notification: ----------------------------- August 19, 2016

Camera Ready Papers and Registration Due: ----- September 02, 2016

Conference Dates: ----------------------------------- October 31 - November 04, 2016

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

Maria Gini

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, MN, USA

Phone: +1 (612) 625 5582

Email: gini AT cs.umn.edu

Henry Hexmoor

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Carbondale, IL 62901, USA

Phone: +1 (618) 453-6047

FAX: +1 (618) 453 6044

Email: hexmoor AT cs.siu.edu

Haibin Zhu

Department of Computer Science

Nipissing University

100 College Drive, Box 5002, North Bay, ON, Canada

Phone: +1 (705) 474-3450 ext. 4434

FAX: +1 (705) 474-1947

Email: haibinz AT nipissingu.ca

International Program Committee*:

All submitted papers will be rigorously reviewed by the workshop technical program committee members following similar criteria used in CTS 2016 and will be published as part of the CTS 2016 Proceedings.

• Myriam Abramson, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA

• Costin Badica, University of Craiova, Romania

• Rem Collier, University College Dublin, Ireland

• Keith S. Decker, University of Delaware, DE, USA

• Samer Hassan, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

• Xiaolin Hu, Georgia State University, Georgia, USA

• Marc-Philippe Huget, University of Savoy, France

• Fernando Koch, SAMSUNG Research Institute, Brazil

• Robert Neches, The Robert Neches Consulting Services, California, USA

• Muaz Niazi, Bahria University, Pakistan

• Roger Nkambou, Université de Montréal, QC, Canada

• Andrea Omicini, Università di Bologna, Italy

• Domenico Rosaci, University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Italy

• Pankaj Telang, CISCO Systems Inc., NC, USA

• Rainer Unland, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

• Giuseppe Vizzari, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

For information or questions about Conference's paper submission, tutorials, posters, workshops, special sessions, exhibits, demos, panels and forums organization, doctoral colloquium, and any other information about the conference location, registration, paper formatting, etc., please consult the Conference’s web site at URL:http://cts2016.cisedu.info/ or contact one of the Conference's organizers or Co-Chairs.