AGENTLINK UPDATE # 69 – 31st January 2005 This is the email newsletter of AgentLink -- Europe's Co-ordination Action 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * AAMAS Industry Track paper submission open (Submission deadline: 28th February, 2005) * TF2 - 2nd AgentLink III Technical Forum Web Site On-line (28th February, 2005 - Ljubljana, Slovenia) * Program for EASSS 05 (18th-22nd July, 2005 – Utrecht, The Netherlands) * Books available for Review for future AgentLink NEWS Newsletter Issues * Standards Activities - Working Draft: SPARQL Protocol for RDF * Agentlink III: Call for Research Event Support Proposals ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * AAMAS Industry Track paper submission open (Submission deadline: 28th February, 2005) AAMAS 2005 Industry Track (http://www.aamas2005.nl/industry_track.php) has been open for submission. The AAMAS Industry Track is a special track at the AAMAS-05 conference that will run in parallel to the regular AAMAS scientific track. It will feature presentations and demonstrations from industrial participants, giving them an opportunity to showcase the state of the art in technology and industrial application of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems to AAMAS delegates and to publish associated papers in a high quality, formal proceedings. The industry track aims to foster mutually beneficial links between those engaged in foundational scientific research and those working to make autonomous agents and multi-agent systems a commercial reality. This enables industrially-based software agent developers and practitioners to participate in AAMAS in a meaningful way and to present their technology and applications to both their peers and the associated scientific community. The deadline for submission: February 28th http://www.aamas2005.nl/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * TF2 - 2nd AgentLink III Technical Forum Web Site On-line (28th February, 2005 - Ljubljana, Slovenia) The program and details of the second AgentLink III Technical Forum meeting have been published on the AgentLink Web site, and can be found at: http://www.agentlink.org/activities/al3-tf/tf2/index.html There will be six TFGs, listed below. Details on these TFGs, as well as registration and location will appear on the web site shortly, and will be published through the AgentLink RSS news feed. Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) - http://www.pa.icar.cnr.it/%7Ecossentino/al3tf2/ Massimo Cossentino ICAR-CNR Italian Research Council Italy TFG Description The purpose of the Technical Forum Group on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE TFG) is to collaborate towards a common framework for the application and evaluation of agent-oriented methodologies. Given the diversity of methodological approaches in the area, andtaking into consideration the current work in FIPA, it seems to all participants that we should consider some kind of harmonization and integration of the diverse knowledge in the area. Main interest topics include but are not limited to: MAS meta-models, methodologies and their evaluation, modeling languages. Environments for Software Engineering (ENV) - http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/%7Edistrinet/events/e4mas/tfg2005/index.php Danny Weyns AgentWise DistriNet Labs Belgium TFG Description There is a general agreement in the multiagent systems research community that the environment where agents are situated in is an essential part of any multiagent system. Yet, most researchers and developers minimize the environment's role to message transport or broker infrastructure, neglecting a rich potential of possibilities for the paradigm of multiagent systems. The overall goals of the ENV TFG are: (1) to promote the environment as a first-order abstraction in multiagent systems; and (2) to put forward the environment as a trategic research direction for multiagent systems. Thespecific aim of this TFG meeting is to drawn up an action plan for the future of environments for multiagent systems. Programming Multi-Agent Systems (PROMAS) - http://www.cs.uu.nl/%7Emehdi/al3promas.html Mehdi Dastani Utrecht University The Netherlands TFG Description PROMAS is focused on the implementation of multi-agent systems. More practical than theoretic, this group presents and discusses current approaches of multi-agent system developments, always paying attention to the industrial applications. Academy attendants may obtain benefits from contacting companies that promote agents in real implementations, and reviewing how engineers understand agent theory. Industry partners can get a picture of what is going on the research community and, perhaps, visualize new solutions for their current developments.Sessions tend to be participative, not just presentation-question format, but more oriented towards discussions. Lecturers will be carefully selected so that the group offers a balanced perspective of industry and academy points of view. This group has a strong link with other groups, concretely with AOSE. Mullti-Agent Resource Allocation (MARA) - http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/%7Eue/MARA/ Ulle Endriss Imperial College London UK TFG Description Negotiation over the allocation of resources is widely regarded as one of the central research issues in the multiagent systems community. The TFG on Multiagent Resource Allocation aims at providing a venue for the exchange of ideas in this area and puts special emphasis on the knowledge transfer between microeconomics and social choice theory on the one hand and computer science and AI on the other. Towards Semantic Web Agents: Knowledge Web and AgentLink (SWA) Valentina Tamma University of Liverpool UK TFG Description This technical forum aims to foster discussion, and promote collaboration among researchers working in the strictly intertwined areas of multi-agent systems and Semantic Web applications in EU funded initiatives. The Semantic Web is based on the idea of dynamic, heterogeneous, shared knowledge sources providing machine-readable content in a similar way to that in which information is shared on the World Wide Web. Integral to this vision was a synergy with Multi-Agent Systems technology. The TFG is meant to provide researchers involved in the EU funded projects AgentLink and Knowledge Web with the opportunity to meet and identify common research issues. Self-organisation in Multi-Agent Systems (SELFORG) Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo University of Geneva Switzerland Marie-Pierre Gleizes University Paul Sabatier France Anthony Karageorgos University of Thessaly Greece TFG Description The aim of the SELF-ORG TFG is to establish the context for systematically applying self-organisation in MAS. Self-organisation refers to a process where a system changes its internal organisation without explicit external control to adapt to changes in its goals and environmental conditions. Self-organisation is an attractive approach to tackle the openness and dynamism of contemporary agent applications. The work continues from the previous meeting which elaborated on fundamental definitions and identified representative case studies. The aim of this meeting is to apply different self-organisation mechanisms on selected case studies and to assess their effectiveness and quality using suitable criteria. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Program for EASSS 05 (18th-22nd July, 2005 – Utrecht, The Netherlands) The EASSS-board is very happy to announce a preliminary program for the Agent Systems Summer School, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 18 - 22 July. Call for registration is anticipated for the beginning of March. Keep an eye on www.agentlink.org/happenings/easss/2005/index.html Preliminary Program: Methodologies for Agent-Oriented Software Engineering - Onn Shehory, Arnon Sturm, Leon Sterling and Lin Padgham Coordination & Development in Individual Modular Agents - Joanna Bryson BDI Agents in Service-oriented and Model-Driven System Design - Klaus Fischer Agent System Development - Hands-on Exercise - Michal Pechoucek and Jiri Vokrinek Programming Languages for Multi-Agent Systems - Mehdi Dastani, Rafael Bordini and Birna van Riemsdijk Organization Oriented Programming in MAS - Olivier Boissier and Jaime Simao Sichman Scaling up learning agents to real-world problems - Daniel Kudenko and Matthew Ground Verification of Multiagent systems via model checking - Dr A Lomuscio, and Prof W Penczek Multi-agent manufacturing control and coordination - Paul Valckenaers Natural Language Generation for Embodied Agents - Emiel Krahmer and Paul Piwek Agent Communication Languages - Frank Dignum Computational Models for Argumentation in MultiAgent Systems - Guillermo Simari and Carlos Chesnevar Semantic Web Service Frameworks for Agents - Terry Payne and John Domingue E-commerce - Juan Antonio Rodriguez Logics for MAS - John-Jules Meyer Game Theory for Agent Systems - Marc Pauly Planning in MAS - Cees Witteveen (to be confirmed) Introduction to MAS - To be announced Robotics (anticipated) - To be announced EASSS board * Mehdi Dastani * Michael Luck * Peter McBurney * Onn Shehory * Carlos Sierra * Wiebe van der Hoek * Gerhard Weiss * Michael Wooldrdidge ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Books available for Review for future AgentLink NEWS Newsletter Issues The following books have recently been published, and AgentLink has copies available for review. If you are interested in reviewing this book for a future issue of the AgentLink News Newsletter, please contact editor@agentlink.org Autonomy Oriented Computing: From Problem Solving to Complex Systems Modeling – Liu, Jiming, Jin, XiaoLong, Tsui, Kwok Ching Constraint Satisfaction Techniques for Agent-Based reasoning – Nicholeta Neagu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Standards Activities: Working Draft: SPARQL Protocol for RDF http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-rdf-sparql-protocol-20050114/ The RDF Data Access Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of the SPARQL Protocol for RDF. The draft describes RDF data access and transmission of RDF queries from clients to processors. The protocol is compatible with the SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") and is designed to convey queries from other RDF query languages as well. Visit the Semantic Web home page. Related Documents: - SPARQL Query Language for RDF http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/ - Semantic Web Home Page http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Agentlink III: Call for Research Event Support Proposals (Call open March 2004 October 2005) The Agentlink III project is committed to supporting European Research activities in the area of Agent Technology and under its research coordination action is able to provide various types of support for research and scientific events related to Agent technology. The objective of this support is to pump-prime research in strategically important areas, support emerging new areas, encourage inter-disciplinary links and support access to leading events in particular for students from under-resourced regions. Further information on event support can be found at: http://www.agentlink.org/activities/eventsupport/index.html