ATAL-99
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The Sixth International Workshop on
AGENT THEORIES, ARCHITECTURES, AND LANGUAGES (ATAL)
Orlando, Florida, USA
July 15-17, 1999
http://www.elec.qmw.ac.uk/dai/atal
Held in cooperation with AAAI
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NEWS:
- *ONE* MONTH TO SUBMISSION DEADLINE
- INVITED SPEAKERS: John Pollock, Stuart Russell
- Special Tracks on: the evaluation of agent architectures
and agent-oriented software engineering
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Intelligent agents are one of the most important developments in computer
science in the 1990s. Agents are of interest in many important application
areas, ranging from human-computer interaction to industrial process
control. The ATAL workshop series aims to bring together researchers
interested in the agent-level, micro aspects of agent technology.
Specifically, ATAL-99 will address issues such as theories of rational
agency, software architectures for intelligent agents, methodologies and
programming languages for realising agents, and software tools for applying
and evaluating agent systems. ****Papers that consider macro-level, societal
issues of agent-based systems are welcome *only* if they explicitly relate to
the workshop themes***.
ATAL-99 will be held over the three days immediately preceding the
AAAI-99 conference, also being held in Orlando. Note, however, that
there is no formal connection between AAAI-99 and ATAL-99: they are
entirely separate events. The ATAL-99 proceedings will be formally
published as volume six of the Intelligent Agents series from
Springer-Verlag.
WORKSHOP THEMES
As the title suggests, the workshop has three main themes:
* Agent theories: What approaches (e.g., game theory, temporal/modal
logic) are appropriate for agent theory? How do these approaches relate
to one another?
* Agent architectures: What architectures are appropriate for autonomous
agents? How can such architectures be given a formal semantics? How can
different agent architectures be evaluated and compared? What
methodologies can be used to build agent-based applications? How close
are these methodologies to existing formal specification languages or
object-oriented analysis and design methods?
* Agent languages: What programming paradigms are most suitable for
agents? How do agent-oriented languages differ from object-oriented and
logic programming languages? What are efficient implementation
mechanisms for these languages?
In addition, ATAL-99 will include two special paper tracks, and
submissions are particularly welcome on these (more details on the
web pages):
* The evaluation of agent architectures
This track seeks insights on the strengths of various architectures in
different task domains. Relevant issues include: Which types of
architectures work best in uncertain, dynamic or real-time
environments? How can the effectiveness of architectures be
evaluated? When should a hybrid reflective-reactive architecture be
deployed? What are benchmark tasks for various types of environmental
niches? What benchmark tasks require cognitive capabilities?
* Agent-oriented software engineering
This track seeks to examine the credentials of agent-based approaches
as a serious software engineering paradigm. Relevant issues include:
What does an agent-based approach buy a developer over an
object-oriented approach? How do agents help in building complex
software systems? When is an agent-based approach most appropriate or
best avoided? How can an agent-oriented approach be used at various
stages of the software design/maintenance process? What are
appropriate methodologies for this?
Papers that cross theme boundaries are of particular interest. An example
would be a paper that demonstrated how a particular agent architecture
embodied some theory of agency.
INVITED SPEAKERS
++ John Pollock (University of Arizona)
Rational Cognition in OSCAR
++ Stuart Russell (University of California)
Uncertain Agents
SUBMISSION DETAILS
Those wishing to participate in the workshop should submit an original
research paper of up to 5000 words (approximately 13 pages maximum) to
the general chair (Nick Jennings). If you wish your paper to be considered
for one of the special tracks then mark this clearly on the front page.
Electronic submission in PostScript is strongly encouraged, but four
single-sided hard copies will also suffice. The first page should include
the full name and contact details (including email, full postal address,
and telephone number) of at least one author. Formatting instructions are
available from the workshop WWW site (see above). The preproceedings will
be distributed at the workshop; the formal proceedings will be published
shortly afterwards.
Those wishing to attend without presenting a paper should send a brief
summary of their interests in agents to the organising committee chair
Nick Jennings. Attendance will, of necessity, be limited.
TIMETABLE
Submissions due April 5, 1999
Notifications sent May 7, 1999
Prefinal versions due June 11, 1999
Workshop July 15-17, 1999
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Nick Jennings (GENERAL CHAIR)
Department of Electronic Engineering Email N.R.Jennings@qmw.ac.uk
Queen Mary & Westfield College Tel (+44 1 71) 975 5349
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, U.K.
Yves Lesperance (CO-CHAIR)
Department of Computer Science Email: lesperan@cs.yorku.ca
York University Tel: (+1 416) 736-5053
Room 126, Chemistry and Comp. Sc. Bldg.
4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1P3.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Ron Arkin Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Chitta Baral U. of Texas at El Paso, USA.
Pete Bonasso NASA, USA.
Stefan Bussmann Daimler-Benz, Germany.
Lawrence Cavedon RMIT, Australia.
Cristiano Castelfranchi IP-CNR, Italy.
Phil Cohen Oregon Inst of Science, USA.
Rosaria Conte IP-CNR, Italy.
Frank Dignum Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Alexis Drogoul U of Paris VI, France.
Jacques Ferber U of Montpellier II, France.
Klaus Fischer DFKI, Germany.
Michael Fisher Manchester Metropolitan Univ, UK.
Stan Franklin U of Memphis, USA.
Fausto Giunchiglia U of Trento, Italy.
Piotr Gmytrasiewicz U of Texas at Arlington, USA.
Afsaneh Haddadi Daimler-Benz, Germany.
Henry Hexmoor U of North Dakota, USA.
Wiebe van der Hoek Utrecht Univ, Netherlands.
Marc Huber Intelligent Reasoning Systems, USA.
Mark d'Inverno U of Westminster, UK.
Sarit Kraus Bar-Ilan Univ, Israel.
Michael Luck U of Warwick, UK.
David Kinny U of Melbourne, Australia.
John-Jules Meyer Utrecht Univ, Netherlands.
Joerg Mueller John Wiley & Sons, UK.
Martha Pollack U of Pittsburgh, USA.
Anand Rao Mitchell Madison Group, Australia.
Onn Shehory CMU, USA.
Carles Sierra CSIC, Spain.
Munindar Singh North Carolina State Univ, USA.
Liz Sonenberg U of Melbourne, Australia.
Katia Sycara CMU, USA.
Milind Tambe ISI, USA.
Jan Treur Free Univ. Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Mike Wooldridge Queen Mary & Westfield College, UK.
Eric Yu U. of Toronto, Canada.