1st December, 2001
in association with ICLP'01 (Nov 26th -- Dec 1st, 2001)
Multi-agent systems
(MAS) have become an increasingly
important area of research, not least because of the advances in the Internet
and Robotics. However multi-agent systems can become very complicated, and,
consequently, reasoning about the behaviour of such systems can become extremely
difficult. Therefore, it is important to be able to formalise multi-agent
systems and, to do so in such a way that allows automated reasoning about
agents' behaviour. The purpose of this Special Issue is to present techniques,
based on computational logic (CL), for
reasoning about multi-agent systems in a formal way. This is clearly a major and
exciting challenge for computational logic. We have to develop techniques to
deal with real world issues and applications.
We have already organized
CLIMA-I
at CL2000 . At CLIMA-I, we had
eight presentations of papers and two discussion sessions. We will
continue this kind of workshop for further ICLP conferences
so that this research direction is pursued further.
We solicit unpublished papers that address CL-related formal approaches to multi-agent systems. The approaches as well as being formal must make a significant contribution to the practice of multi-agent systems. Relevant techniques include the following (but are not limited to):
We are expecting full papers to describe original, previously
unpublished research, be written in English, not exceed 10 pages (A4
or letter format, up to 3,500 words), and not be simultaneously
submitted for publication elsewhere.
We also require the following issues to be adressed:
| 1. CL: | An introduction that includes statements about how the paper
addresses the exploitation of CL for MAS |
| 2. MAS : | An explanation of which aspect/functionality of MAS the paper formalises, |
| 3. Examples: | Example(s) which give an intuitive motivation and explanation
of the formalisation. |
We are also planning to have a demonstration session where people can present their implemented systems. For people who would like to give a demonstration, they should submit 2 page abstract for a description of their systems.
Please submit a PostScript file or a PDF file of a paper to dix@cs.man.ac.uk by the 20th of August, 2001.
It is the author's responsibility to ensure that the PostScript file or PDF file is printable (and can be ftped if the author provides an address for ftp). Only if electronic submission is impossible, please notify the above address by the 1st of August, 2001.
Workshop proceedings will be available at ICLP'01. We are also considering on-line proceedings.
| Papers Due on: | August 20, 2001 |
| Author Notification: | September 20, 2001 |
| Final version Due on: | October 10, 2001 |
| Workshop: | December 1, 2001 |