ALAMAS+ALAg 2008

Adaptive Learning Agents and Multi-Agent Systems is an emerging multi-disciplinary area encompassing Computer Science, Software Engineering, Biology, as well as Cognitive and Social Sciences.

As its name says, the workshop is a merger of ALAMAS and the ALAg series which is usually held at AAMAS.

The goal of this workshop is to increase awareness and interest in adaptive agent research, encourage collaboration and give a representative overview of current research in the area of adaptive and learning agents. It aims at bringing together not only scientists from different areas of computer science (e.g., agent architectures, reinforcement learning, evolutionary algorithms) but also from different fields studying similar concepts (e.g., game theory, bio-inspired control, mechanism design).

The workshop will serve as an inclusive forum for the discussion on ongoing or completed work in both theoretical and practical issues of adaptive and learning agents and multi-agent systems.

This workshop will focus on all aspects of adaptive and learning agents and multi-agent systems with a particular emphasis on how to modify established learning techniques and/or create new learning paradigms to address the many challenges presented by complex real-world problems. The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Novel combinations of reinforcement and supervised learning approaches
• Integrated learning approaches that work with other agent reasoning modules like negotiation, trust models, coordination, etc.
• Supervised multi-agent learning
• Reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems
• Distributed Learning
• Adaptation and learning in dynamic environments
• Evolution of agents in complex environments
• Co-evolution of agents in a multi-agent settin
• Cooperative exploration and learning to cooperate and collaborate
• Learning trust and reputation
• Communication restrictions and their impact on multi-agent coordination
• Design of reward structure and fitness measures for coordination
• Scaling learning techniques to large systems of learning and adaptive agents
• Emergent behavior in adaptive multi agent systems
• Game theoretical analysis of adaptive multi agent systems
• Neuro control in multi agent systems
• Bio-inspired multi agent systems
• Applications of adaptive and learning agents and multi agents systems to real world complex systems Learning of Co-ordination

Best papers of the workshop will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Agent Technologies and Systems (IJATS).

• M. Grzes, D. Kudenko: Plan-based Reward Shaping for Reinforcement Learning
• R. P. Barbosa, O. Belo: An Intelligent USD/JPY Trading Agent
• M. Grzes, D. Kudenko: Learning Potential for Reward Shaping in Reinforcement Learning with Tile Coding
• P.Trigo, H. Coelho: Teamwork decision-making with MDP and BDI
• U. Richter, M. Mnif: Learning to Control the Emergent Behaviour of a Multi-agent System
• D. Hennes, K. Tumer, K. Tuyls: A multiagent approach to hyperredundant manipulators
• O. Romero, A. Jimenez: Bio-inspired Cognitive Architecture for Adaptive Agents based on an Evolutionary Approach (short presentation)
• Y. Guo, A. Zeman, R. Li: A Reinforcement Learning Approach to Setting Multi-Objective Goals for Energy Demand Management (short presentation)
• R. Arrabales, A. Ledezma, A. Sanchis: Criteria for Consciousness in Artificial Intelligent Agents (short presentation)
• M. E. Taylor, N. K. Jong, and P. Stone: Transferring Instances for Model-Based Reinforcement Learning (short presentation)
• A. Servin, D. Kudenko: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Intrusion Detection: A case study and evaluation (short presentation)
• F. Stonedahl, W. Rand, U. Wilensky: Multi-Agent Learning on Networks (short presentation)
• G. Hines, K. Larson: Learning When to Take Advice (short presentation)
• S. Airiau, L. Padham, S. Sardina, S. Sen: Incorporating Learning in BDI Agents (short presentation)
• P. Mukherjee, S. Sen, S. Airau: Norm emergence with biased agents (short presentation)

Franziska Klügl

Sandip Sen

Karl Tuyls

If you have any questions about the ALAMAS+ALAg workshop, please contact the chairs by email: alamas.alag@ki.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de.

The ALAMAS+ALAg workshop will be held at AAMAS 2008, the seventh International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent System which will take place in Estoril, Portugal.

All accepted papers - independently from the time the authors have to present their contribution - are in the form of extended abstracts of up to 8 pages in length. Please modify your paper according to the reviewers comments and re-submit papers by email in pdf format to alamas.alag@ki.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de with in the subject line: "Camera Ready ALAMAS+ALAg". Deadline for Camera Ready Submission is March 8th. Papers should be submitted in ACM proceedings format.

Best papers of the workshop will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Agent Technologies and Systems (IJATS). A review cycle is schedule for summer 2008, details will be given on the workshop site. Only papers presented at the workshop are eligable for inclusion into the special issue.

All actually presented papers (full and short!) are invited for re-submission for being included in a special issue of the International Journal of Agent Technologies and Systems (IJATS). We currently plan the following time line for producing the ALAMAS+ALAg 2008 post proceedings:

• Re-submission: July 15th
• Notification: August 10th
• Camera ready: September 1st
• Publication of Special Issue as Issue 1, January 2009

Eduardo Alonso, City University, UK
Bikramjit Banerjee, The University of Southern Mississippi, USA
Ana L.C. Bazzan, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, BR
Zahia Ghuessoum, University of Paris 6, FR
Amy Greenwald, Brown University, USA
Daniel Kudenko, University of York, UK
Akira Namatame, National Defense Academy, Japan
Ann Nowe, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, BE
Liviu Panait, Google Inc Santa Monica, USA
Lynne Parker, University of Tennessee, USA
Enric Plaza, Institut d'Investigacio en Intelligencia Artificial, Spain
Jeffrey Rosenschein, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Michael Rovatsos, Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications, UK
Matt Taylor, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Goran Trajkovski, South University, Savannah, GA, USA
Kagan Tumer, Oregon State University, USA
Katja Verbreek, KaHo Sint-Lieven, Belgium

For inquiries please feel free to contact the program chair by e-mail: alamas.alag@ki.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de.