WOA 2021

22nd Workshop “From Objects to Agents”
Bologna, Italy, 01/09/2021–03/09/2021

The 22nd edition of the Workshop “From Objects to Agents” (WOA) will be held in Bologna as a blended event to serve as a forum for researchers and practitioners working on all aspects of agents and multi-agent systems (MAS). Following the significant interest that all facets of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been recently obtaining, the topic for WOA 2021 is

Multi-agent systems in the machine learning era Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, along with both its symbolic and sub-symbolic branches. While symbolic AI played a central role in the early days of AI, the last decade has been characterised by the explosion of data-driven, machine-learning-based intelligent systems. Nowadays, the exploitation of machine learning (ML) and big data processing is so pervasive that novel results and applications are being proposed at an unprecedented pace.

While multi-agent systems (MAS) have been entangled with symbolic AI since the very beginning, it is undoubted that they have been extensively exploited in several data-intensive domains including – but not limited to – robotics, telecommunications, simulation, decision support systems, and economics.

MAS and ML have the potential to benefit from each other. In fact, on the one side, it is becoming increasingly complex for agent designers to forecast all possible operating situations, so learning from data is fundamental for next-generation MAS—in order to adapt to the intricacies of an increasingly complex world. On the other side, modern ML-based solutions may easily struggle when different data-driven solution – possibly attained from disparate data sources – must be integrated, combined, reconciled or explained. Under such a perspective, MAS have certainly a role to play to advance the state of the art of data-driven AI towards integration and explainability.

The intertwining between MAS and ML, therefore, aims at bringing about huge benefits to the field of data-driven AI, both at the theoretical and the practical level; however, a well-grounded integration in terms of methodologies and systems properties is far from being reached and acknowledged.

WOA 2021 will bring together researchers to discuss those issues and to suggest future research questions and perspectives laying at the intersection among MAS and ML. Therefore, the workshop aims at working as an interdisciplinary hub for thinkers, students, researchers, and developers who wish to understand and exploit the impact and potential of MAS in the future of ML, and viceversa.

topics of interest
  • Agents theory and technology related to human-centred intelligent systems 
  • Software engineering techniques for human-centred intelligent systems
  • Languages and tools for agent-oriented human-centred intelligent systems
  • Agent-oriented architectures for human-centred intelligent systems
  • Responsabile and ethical AI in agent-oriented models and architectures
  • Responsabile and ethical AI in agent-based simulations and applications
  • MAS for interpretability and explainability of intelligent systems
  • Trust, security, and privacy in human-centred intelligent systems
works as
origin event for publication
page_white_acrobat Preface (editorial/introduction/preface, 2021) — Roberta Calegari, Giovanni Ciatto, Enrico Denti, Andrea Omicini, Giovanni Sartor
page_white_acrobat Special Issue for the 22nd Workshop “From Objects to Agents'' (WOA 2021) (editorial/introduction/preface, 2022) — Roberta Calegari, Giovanni Ciatto, Andrea Omicini, Giuseppe Vizzari
page_white_acrobat On the Design of PSyKE: A Platform for Symbolic Knowledge Extraction (paper in proceedings, 2021) — Federico Sabbatini, Giovanni Ciatto, Roberta Calegari, Andrea Omicini
page_white_acrobat WOA 2021 – 22nd Workshop “From Objects to Agents” (edited volume, 2021) — Roberta Calegari, Giovanni Ciatto, Enrico Denti, Andrea Omicini, Giovanni Sartor
page_white_acrobat Symbolic knowledge extraction from opaque ML predictors in PSyKE: Platform design & experiments (article in journal, 2022) — Federico Sabbatini, Giovanni Ciatto, Roberta Calegari, Andrea Omicini
page_white_acrobat Selected papers from the 22nd Workshop “From Objects to Agents'' (WOA 2021) (special issue, 2022) — Roberta Calegari, Giovanni Ciatto, Andrea Omicini, Giuseppe Vizzari
page_white_acrobat Graph Neural Networks as the Copula Mundi between Logic and Machine Learning: A Roadmap (paper in proceedings, 2021) — Andrea Agiollo, Giovanni Ciatto, Andrea Omicini
page_white_acrobat Towards cooperative argumentation for MAS: An actor-based approach (paper in proceedings, 2021) — Giuseppe Pisano, Roberta Calegari, Andrea Omicini
hosting event for talk
page_white_powerpoint On the Design of PSyKE: A Platform for Symbolic Knowledge Extraction (WOA 2021, 01/09/2021) — Federico Sabbatini (Federico Sabbatini, Giovanni Ciatto, Roberta Calegari, Andrea Omicini)
page_white_powerpoint Graph Neural Networks as the Copula Mundi between Logic and Machine Learning: a Roadmap (WOA 2021, 02/09/2021) — Andrea Agiollo (Andrea Agiollo, Giovanni Ciatto, Andrea Omicini)
page_white_powerpoint Towards cooperative argumentation for MAS: an Actor-based approach (WOA 2021, 03/09/2021) — Roberta Calegari (Giuseppe Pisano, Roberta Calegari, Andrea Omicini)
source event for
series event