AGENTLINK UPDATE # 14 --- 28 February 1999 This is the email newsletter of AgentLink -- Europe's Network of Excellence for Agent-based Computing. The AgentLink WWW site is http://www.AgentLink.org/ IMPORTANT: Please take the time to ensure that every member of your group receives a copy of the AgentLink update. If you have a group mail alias, why not get this alias to be added to the mailing list? To subscribe/unsubscribe to this mailing list simply send a request to mailto:coordinator@agentlink.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: * Location & other information for April SIG meetings * AgentLink-CompulogNet Joint one-day Workshop on the Future of Logical-based Agents. * AgentLink Plenary Day - 23 April 1999 * Universal Information Ecosystems Initiative -- Announcement! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Location & other information for April SIG meetings ...is now available via the AgentLink www site. Follow the sidebar link to "What's happening", then click on the link to the SIG meetings www page. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * AgentLink-CompulogNet Joint one-day Workshop on the Future of Logical-based Agents. Registration for the AgentLink/CompulogNet workshop on agents is now possible via the workshop WWW site (see below). A nominal fee of 20 pounds is being charged, to cover refreshment costs etc. The full programme is below. **ALL ARE WELCOME** (but please register!). Date: 8 March, 1999 Venue: Department of Computing, Imperial College, London http://www.cs.unitn.it/~pgiorgio/workshop/ 9:00-9:15 Registration 9:15-9:30 Opening of the Workshop (Fausto Giunchiglia) 9:30 Session I, Moderator: Francesca Toni 9:30-10:00 Michael Wooldridge, Logic and Agent-based Software Engineering 10:00-10:30 Fausto Giunchiglia, Model Checking Multiagent Systems 10:30-11:00 Luis M. Pereira, Lisbon's views on the future of logic based agents 11:00-11:30 Coffee break 11:30 Session II, Moderator: Fariba Sadri 11:30-12:00 Klaus Fischer, Basic Concepts of a Theory for Hybrid Agent Architectures 12:00-12:30 Juergen Dix and Thomas Eiter (joint presentation), The IMPACT System for Heterogeneous Agents 12:30-13:00 Maurizio Martelli, Combining logical agents with rapid prototyping for engineering distributed applications 13:00-14:30 Lunch 14:30 Session III, Moderator: Paolo Giorgini 14:30-15:00 Carles Sierra, Multicontext argumentative agents 15:00-15:30 Manuel Hermenegildo, Some Strengths and Weaknesses of (Constraint) Logic Programming Systems for Agent-Based Applications 15:30-16:00 Fariba Sadri and Francesca Toni (joint presentation), Abductive logic programming for agent communication and protocols 16:00-16:30 Coffee break 16:30-18:00 Panel: The future of Logic-based agents Research and applications Moderator: Dov Gabbay Speakers: Keith Clark Michael Fisher Bob Kowalski John-Jules Meyer Murray Shanahan 18:00-18:30 General discussion ___________________________________________________________________________ * AgentLink Plenary Day - 23 April 1999 Following the SIG meetings in April, there will be an plenary day on 23 April, to which all SIG delegates are invited. This day will give the network the opportunity to discuss its future direction, and to give the network management feedback... 9.00-9.15 Welcome & AgentLink news [Mike Wooldridge, UK] 9.15-9.30 News from the Commission [Leonardo Flores, Belgium] 9.30-9.50 Report on the Electronic Commerce SIG [Carles Sierra, Spain] 9.50-10.10 Report on the Software Engineering SIG [Jan Treur, The Netherlands] 10.10-10.30 COFFEE BREAK 10.30-10.50 Report on the Information Agents SIG [Matthias Klusch, Germany] 10.50-11.10 Report on the Agent-based Simulation SIG [Rosaria Conte, Italy] 11.10-11.30 Report on the Agents for Telecoms SIG [Sahin Albayrak, Germany] 11.30-11.50 Report on the Real-time Agents SIG [John Perram, Denmark] 11.50-2.00 LUNCH 2.00-3.00 Special session [details soon] 3.30-3.30 COFFEE BREAK 3.30-4.30 Open Discussion: continuation, where is the network going, etc. ___________________________________________________________________________ * Universal Information Ecosystems Initiative -- Announcement! [THE TEXT BELOW IS PART OF A PRESS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION. CLEARLY, THE UIE INITIATIVE IS A MAJOR OPPORTUNITY FOR EUROPEAN AGENT RESEARCH -- MANY OF US ARE ALREADY WORKING TO REALISE THIS VISION! THERE WILL BE BOTH FORMAL AND INFORMAL DISCUSSIONS ON THE UIE INITIATIVE AT THE AGENTLINK MEETINGS IN APRIL - MIKE W.] A Strategic Research Initiative to be launched under the New European Programme on "Future and Emerging Technologies" Over the years to come, an ever-growing segment of the world population will be connected to the global information infrastructure and many aspects of life will increasingly take place through or within it. A complex, dynamic and heterogeneous infrastructure environment will emerge, where "infohabitants" (people, organisations, as well as virtual entities acting on their behalf, smart appliances, smart buildings, etc.) will communicate, cooperate, negotiate, self-organise, create and offer new intermediation services, taking advantage of a dynamic set of information and communication resources to achieve their objectives or those of their owners. "Universal Information Ecosystems" (UIE) is a research initiative expected to be launched in March 1999 by the "Future and Emerging Technologies" part of the European programme in "Information Society Technologies" (http://www.cordis.lu/ist/). It stems from the vision of an open global infrastructure environment that constantly evolves in an attempt to best meet the changing demands of its dynamic population of "infohabitants". This would be an environment where, at any point in time, the knowledge and capabilities of every single infohabitant could be effectively enhanced and dynamically recombined with that of all others in an efficient manner, and where new infohabitants with new demands or offering new services could be seamlessly introduced. For this highly decentralized and heterogeneous environment to be as responsive as possible, its infohabitants would need at any point in time to be globally, yet selectively, aware of (or "sense") the opportunities in the environment that are most relevant to their objectives and activities. Adaptation to changing conditions would take place through the decentralized creation, deletion, reconfiguration, migration and/or recombination/reorganisation of infohabitants and/or through the activation of self- regulating mechanisms in the ecosystem. The process of reacting and adapting to a constantly changing environment will always in part be triggered by decisions directly made by people or organizations. In order to take full advantage of the emerging information ecosystem, UIE seeks to explore ways of automating parts of this process and to effectively support the delegation and realization of many of these decisions. Significant progress towards this vision of a Universal Information Ecosystem demands going beyond incremental extrapolations of current technological paradigms. UIE will seek to support research projects aimed at exploring and validating new technologies and scenarios for a Universal Information Ecosystem. Success is expected to depend on taking a broad and interdisciplinary perspective, pulling together expertise from areas as diverse as for example, distributed systems, software engineering, computational logic, artificial intelligence and human computer interaction as well as economics, life sciences, organisational theory or fundamental social science. By breaking across traditional boundaries, the initiative also hopes to help foster the creation of a new trend-setting research community to lead Europe to the forefront of this interdisciplinary area. Parties interested in finding out more about the initiative and in possibly responding to the future call for proposals are invited to attend an information day to be held in Brussels on March 18, 1999 - see http://www.cordis.lu/ist/fetinfo1.htm for details on this event. For more information on the initiative, please contact either: Leonardo Flores Tel: +32(2)299-1825 Fax: +32(2)296-8397 Leonardo.Flores @cec.be Or Loretta Anania Tel: +32(2)296-3491 Fax: +32(2)295-6937 Lan@postman.dg13.cec.be