AGENTLINK UPDATE # 28 --- 4 September 2000 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * New Coordinator Details * AgentLink II News * Practical Reasoning Agents Workshop * Summer School Feedback * Agent-related IST Call (open until 31st October) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * New Coordinator Details From 1 September 2000, Michael Luck (the new AgentLink coordinator) has been at the University of Southampton, with contact details as follows: Department of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton Highfield Southampton SO17 1BJ United Kingdom tel : 023 8059 6657 fax : 023 8059 3313 mailto: mml@ecs.soton.ac.uk Note that the agentlink web (www.agentlink.org) and email address (coordinator@agentlink.org) remain exactly as before. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * AgentLink II News The AgentLink II contract has now been negotiated and signed. AgentLink II officially began on 1st August 2000, with a small break between the end of AL1 and the start of AL2. The new site for AL2 is the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and the new AgentLink Coordinator is Michael Luck. Under the dynamic leadership and direction of Mike Wooldridge, and with the support of Hugo Brailsford, AgentLink has come to occupy a very significant place in the agent community. As we move into AL2, and with Mike's continuing contributions to AL2, we aim to build on the success of AL1. While it will inevitably take some time for AL2 to get up to full speed, we hope to do so as soon as possible. Nevertheless, please bear with us - at present we are without a replacement for the publications and events coordinator, and it will be a while before AL2 is fully functional. Email to coordinator@agentlink.org may also take some time to get a reply, but will be addressed in due course. Finally, it is likely that we will need AL2 members to complete new membership applications for AL2, and we will inform you of this separately. We will also be taking new applications for membership for new nodes, and will put out a call shortly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Practical Reasoning Agents Workshop AgentLink is supporting a workshop on Practical Reasoning Agents, to be held at the FAPR (Formal and Applied Practical Reasoning) conference at Imperial College on 20th September. Practical Reasoning Agents have been popularised by the work of Bratman, Georgeff, Rao and others on BDI agents. The modal and temporal logics of practical reasoning can contribute to theories of these architectures, although there are well known problems on grounding, and a variety of heuristic improvements to structure the computational processes. This is a call for abstracts of ongoing work by researchers in the field, for short presentations on the day. The work may be foundational or applied, but work seeking to integrate different forms of intelligence for practical software agents is particularly welcome. To participate in the workshop, abstracts of 1 to 6 pages should be sent to fapr2000@doc.ic.ac.uk by September 6th. Authors are encouraged to provide LaTeX source. Selection will be by ad hoc committee including AgentLink representation. Authors of selected abstracts will be encouraged to provide short papers for a technical report to be published before the end of the year. Details of both the conference and the workshop can be found at http://comma.doc.ic.ac.uk/FAPR2000. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Summer School Feedback AL2 has already begun with a very well attended and excellently organised Second European Agent Systems Summer School, which was held in Saarbruecken between August 14th and 18th. Over the course of the week, the 150 or so students were treated to a top-rate collection of lectures, delivered by leaders in the field. Particular mention must be given to Klaus Fisher and Matthias Klusch who did a fantastic job as local organisers and lecturers, and worked long and hard to ensure the value and success of EASSS'00. As is becoming traditional for EASSS, the weather was great, and the social events (especially the barbecue, band and beer) were outstanding. Thanks must also go to Gerhard Weiss, AgentLink's teaching and training workpackage coordinator, and to Mike Wooldridge for their continuing efforts here. Next year's summer school is to be held in Prague in collaboration with ECCAI. Watch this space for details. If you wrote a report on the summer school, please send a copy to coordinator@agentlink.org. We'll publish the best in AgentLink News. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Agent-related IST Call (open until 31st October) CALL FOR TECHNOLOGY TAKE-UP PROJECT PROPOSALS RELATED TO AGENT TECHNOLOGIES, MIDDLEWARE FOR DISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONS, AND INTEGRATED EMBEDDED VISION AND CONTROL SYSTEMS Subject: Information Society Technologies Programme (IST) Call for Proposals Action Line IST 2000 - IV.2.5 ``Computing, Communications, and Networks - Take-up Measures'' Within Call 4 for the IST Programme, the above-mentioned action line was opened on 25 July 2000 with a closing date of 31 October 2000. To complement research and development work on- going in Europe in the technical areas addressed below, Action Line IV.2.5 is open for technology take-up project proposals of the following types: o TRIALS (for users and suppliers) aiming at the adaption and introduction of leading edge technology (promising but not yet fully established) in industrial/service applications and its joint evaluation (by user and supplier). o BEST PRACTICE (for users) promoting improvements in the practices, processes and operations in industry and services through the take-up of well-founded, mature and established (but insufficiently deployed) methods and technologies, so as to achieve greater efficiency, higher quality and greater economy (in the user organisation). Action Line IV.2.5 covers the following technical areas: (1) Adaptation and introduction of mobile and intelligent agent technologies to new services and industrial applications. This includes for example service creation, information filtering, electronic commerce, or network management applications. Users would be on all levels of the value chain ranging from network operators, to service providers or businesses trading electronically. (2) Adaptation and introduction of middleware for management of process flow in distributed applications with shared resources to new services and industrial applications. This includes for example technologies such as distributed object broker architectures, application and integration servers, or web integration. Applications would cover a broad range including for example web-based distributed applications, or the use of distributed object broker architectures for component-based integration with legacy systems, on corporate or virtual enterprise levels. (3) Introduction and intelligent integration of embedded vision and/or control systems in production environments, with a focus on low cost off-the-shelf components, and integrated networked systems in industrial application in all sectors, e.g. medical, textile, wood, glass, food, paper, advertising, automotive, aerospace, ... Individual take-up projects can only reach a limited proportion of European industries and services directly. Their full impact can only be achieved by a multiplier effect, realised through dissemination of a critical mass of results and experiences gained, and collective, pro-active and focused stimulation of further transfer, replication and re-deployment across borders and industrial/services sectors. Proposers should therefore be prepared to being clustered with successful proposals related to the same theme. In practice, this means that projects addressing a particular theme will be executed under a single contract, with horizontal work packages on dissemination and co-ordination. As a result of a previous Call, two such project clusters are currently being created under the themes Integrated Machine Vision and Technologies for Medical Applications. Depending on the response to Call 4, it is envisaged to possibly extend these clusters and to create new ones within the scope described above. The next and final Call for the above mentioned action line is currently envisaged for early 2001, but plans are not yet finalised. For further information on Action Line IV.2.5, please refer to the Unit INFSO E1 home page http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka4/ipcn/call2000.htm, which also includes regular updates of this document; and to the IST Work Programme 2000 (http://www.cordis.lu/ist/wp2000.htm) under Key Action IV, Action Line IV.2.5, and under Annex 1 for the definitions of Take-up Measures of type TRIAL and BEST PRACTICE. Transparencies from the Information Session on Action Line IV.2.5, 28 June 2000, Brussels are available under http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka4/ipcn/pubreps.htm. If you plan to submit a proposal under Call 4, please refer to the documents under http://www.cordis.lu/ist/calls/200004.htm (Call Text, Guides for Proposers, ...). Please in particular also refer to the Evaluation Manual - Annex I: User-friendly Information Society http://www.cordis.lu/fp5/src/evalman.htm for weights, thresholds and detailed provisions of the evaluation criteria related to take-up. A standard model contract for Accompanying Measures Specific to Technology Take-up can be found under http://www.cordis.lu/fp5/mod-cont.htm. For examples of take-up projects, please refer to the HPCN TTN Network (http://www.hpcn- ttn.org), a take-up initiative in ESPRIT IV. For general information on the IST Programme please refer to the IST Programme home page (http://www.cordis.lu/ist). For any queries related to the content of your proposal, to the composition of consortia, or to budgetary aspects, please contact Tom Clausen or Max Lemke European Commission European Commission DG INFSO-E1 DG INFSO-E1 Tel. (32-2) 29-94942 Tel. (32-2) 29-91575 Fax (32-2) 29-68389 Fax (32-2) 29-68389 tom.clausen@cec.eu.int max.lemke@cec.eu.int For all administrative information or queries related to proposal submission, please contact IST Information Desk Tel. (32-2) 29-68596 Fax (32-2) 29-68388 ist@cec.eu.int ----------------------------------------------------------------------