The Fourth International Workshop on
Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL)
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
July 24-26, 1997
http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/mpsingh/activities/atal/
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-97 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-97 will be held over the three days immediately
preceding the AAAI-97 conference, also being held in Providence. The ATAL-97
proceedings will be formally published as volume four 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?
This year there will be a special track on methodologies for agent-based
systems. The track will include both full paper presentations and a panel
session. Questions of interest include: Are variations on object-oriented
techniques appropriate for agent-based systems? Are variations on techniques
for real-time and distributed systems appropriate? What will agent-oriented
requirements and specification techniques look like? What tools are
available for agent-oriented software engineering?
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.
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
chair for their region. 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 if possible) of at least one author.
Formatting instructions are available from Springer, also mirrored here. 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
Munindar Singh. Attendance will, of necessity, be limited.
TIMETABLE
Submissions due April 18, 1997
Notifications sent May 23, 1997
Prefinal versions due July 1, 1997
Workshop July 24-26, 1997
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Munindar P. Singh (GENERAL/AMERICAS CHAIR)
Department of Computer Science Email singh@ncsu.edu
North Carolina State University Tel (+1 919) 515.5677
Raleigh, NC 27695-8206, USA Fax (+1 919) 515.7896
Anand Rao (ASIA/PACIFIC-RIM CHAIR)
Australian AI Institute Email anand@aaii.oz.au
Level 6, 171 La Trobe Street Tel (+61 3) 9663 7922
Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Fax (+61 3) 9663 7937
Michael J. Wooldridge (EUROPEAN CHAIR)
Mitsubishi Electric Digital Library Group Email mjw@dlib.com
18th Floor, Centre Point, 103 New Oxford Str Tel (+44 171) 395 7234
London WC1A 1EB, U.K. Fax (+44 171) 395 7209
Nicholas R. Jennings
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. Fax (+44 1 81) 981 0259
Joerg P. Mueller
Mitsubishi Electric Digital Library Group Email jpm@dlib.com
18th Floor, Centre Point, 103 New Oxford Str Tel (+44 171) 395 7240
London WC1A 1EB, U.K. Fax (+44 171) 395 7209
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Ron Arkin Georgia Tech, USA
Pete Bonasso USA
Hans-Dieter Burkhard Humboldt U, Germany
Cristiano Castelfranchi IP-CNR/U Siena, Italy
John-Jules Ch. Meyer U Utrecht, The Netherlands
Keith Decker U Delaware, USA
Ed Durfee U Michigan, USA
Jacques Ferber LAFORIA, France
Jim Firby U Chicago, USA
Klaus Fischer DFKI, Germany
Michael Fisher Manchester Metropolitan U, UK
Stan Franklin Memphis U, USA
Fausto Giunchiglia IRST, Italy
Piotr Gmytrasiewicz U Texas at Arlington, USA
Afsaneh Haddadi Daimler-Benz, Germany
Henry Hexmoor SUNY Buffalo, USA
Kurt Konolige SRI, USA
Sarit Kraus Bar-Ilan U, Israel
Yves Lesperance York U, Canada
James Lester NCSU, USA
Charles Rich MERL, USA
Jeff Rosenschein AgentSoft/Hebrew U, Israel
Wei-Min Shen ISI, USA
Carles Sierra CSIC, Spain
Devika Subramanian Rice U, USA
Kurt Sundermeyer Daimler-Benz, Germany
Katia Sycara CMU, USA
Milind Tambe ISI, USA
Mario Tokoro Keio U and Sony Labs, Japan
Jan Treur Vrije U of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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METHODOLOGIES FOR AGENT-BASED SYSTEMS
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A Special Track at the Fourth International Workshop on
AGENT THEORIES, ARCHITECTURES, AND LANGUAGES (ATAL)
INTRODUCTION
The technology of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems is
beginning to migrate from research labs to software engineering
centres. As the rate of this migration increases, it will become
increasingly important to develop and make use of principled
techniques for analysing, specifying, designing, and verifying
agent-based systems. Without such techniques, agent technology will
simply not realise the potential it so clearly has. The aim of the
special track on `Methodologies for Agent-Based Systems' at ATAL-97 is
to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in sharing
their experience with such techniques, with the goal of further
understanding the issues and problems associated with agent-system
deployment. The track will include a special session of papers, and a
panel session of invited speakers.
ATAL-97 will be held over the three days immediately preceding the
AAAI-97 conference, also being held in Providence. The ATAL-97
proceedings, including the methodologies track, will be formally
published as volume four of the `Intelligent Agents' series from
Springer-Verlag. Paper submissions for the special track will go
through the standard ATAL reviewing procedure, and all papers in the
special track will subsequently be published in the formal ATAL
proceedings.
METHODOLOGIES TRACK THEMES
Include, but are not restricted to:
* Methodologies for analysis and design of agent-based systems.
* Analysis and design of cooperation, coordination, and negotiation
techniques for multi-agent systems.
* Requirements specification for agent-based systems.
* Approaches and tools for testing and verification of agent systems.
* The relationship between object and agent system analysis and design.
* Refinement and transformation of agent-system specifications.
* Software tools for agent-system analysis and design.
* Rapid prototyping of agent-based systems.
David Kinny (METHODOLOGIES TRACK ORGANISER)
Australian AI Institute Email dnk@aaii.oz.au
Level 6, 171 La Trobe Street Tel (+61 3) 9663 xxx
Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Fax (+61 3) 9663 xxx
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