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A 2-days agent school will be organized before the workshop. The location of the Agent school is: Room 212, E3 Building, College of Technology, Vietnam National University, Hanoi 144 Xuan Thuy, Cau Giay, Hanoi
Chair: Hiromitsu Hattori, Japan Email: hatto@i.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Applicants from Asia and Pacific Rim countries are welcome. Applicants will be selected for a place at the school based on their CV. People interested in attending the school are asked to send a CV to Ms. Tran Thu Hien (email: tran.thi.thu.hien@auf.org) before the 22th November 2008. Applicants will be informed of their acceptance before the 25th December 2008.
Lecturers: + Paul Scerri, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Schedule: December 11, 2008 08:30-09:00 Registration & Opening School 09:00-12:00 Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems, Iyad Rahwan, Informatics Institute at the British University in Dubai, UAE 12:00-14:00 Lunch Time 14:00-17:00 Advanced Software Design Techniques for Agent Systems Serge Stinckwich, Universite de Caen Basse Normandie, France 17:30-20:30 Reception party
December 12, 2008 09:00-12:00 Auctions and Mechanism Design Shigeo Matsubara, Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan 12:00-14:00 Lunch Time 14:00-17:00 Cooperative, Large-Scale Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems Paul Scerri, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 17:00 Close School
Lectures: - Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems, by Iyad Rahwan In recent years, argumentation has been gaining
increasing importance in multiagent systems, mainly as a means
for facilitating rational interaction (i.e., interaction which
involves the giving and receiving of reasons). Argumentation has
made key contributions to the practice of multiagent dialogues.
Application domains include: legal disputes, business
negotiation, labour disputes, team formation, scientific
inquiry, deliberative democracy, ontology reconciliation, and
risk analysis. This talk will give an overview of the main
formal models of argumentation in multiagent systems, and the
main research challenges faced by the community. The talk will
also cover the use of game-theoretic techniques to analyse
strategic aspects of argumentation. Finally, the talk will give
a brief overview of the recently proposed Argument Interchange
Format and its potential applications. Dr. Iyad Rahwan is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Informatics, at the British University in Dubai, UAE, and an Honorary Fellow at the 5*-rated School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He obtained a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Liz Sonenberg at the University of Melbourne, which has been ranked 1st in Australia and 19th in the world by the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2005. Iyad co-leads the Dubai Agents & Multi-Agent Systems (DAMAS) research group together with Sherief Abdallah. Dr. Rahwan worked on research projects supported by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian Research Council (ARC), Hewlett Packard and Tejari. His research focuses on supporting and automating complex multi-party decision-making using techniques from Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS).
- Advanced Software Design Techniques for
Agent Systems, by
Serge Stinckwich Agent technology has evolved
rapidly over the last few years and is especially used when
trying to solve problems in an uncertain world that changes
frequently. This tutorial will deal with the general problem of
adaptation and self-adaptation in the context of multi- agent
systems. Several methods from software engineering (meta-level
and reflective architectures, Aspect Oriented Programming or
hierarchical modeling) but also from cognitive sciences
(anticipatory system, self-organisation and self-observation)
will be presented and compared. Practical examples from diverse
research fields like embedded systems, reconfigurable robotic
systems or ambient computing will also be provided. Serge Stinckwich is an associate professor of Computer
Science at the Groupe de Recherche en Informatique, Image,
Automatique et Instrumentation de Caen, Universite de Caen Basse
Normandie (France). He is currently an inviting professor for
two years in the MSI team (IFI) in Hanoi, Vietnam. His research
interests include software architecture for multi-agent and
robotic systems, Urban search and rescue robots, pedagogical
robotics, anticipatory systems. - Auctions and mechanism design,
by Shigeo Matsubara Auctions have become a
central topic of the multiagent systems research. Although
auctions have been utilized as a method of determining resource
allocation through the ages, they are rapidly gaining
significance with the developments in IT. For example, ad
auctions used by Google and Yahoo are performed whenever you
search information on Google and Yahoo. In addition to ad
auctions, combinatorial auctions have attracted an interest of
AI researchers, which stemming from the success of FCC spectrum
auctions. To understand the properties of these auctions and
design efficient auction mechanisms, knowledge of economics as
well as computer science are required. Some basic concepts of
economics such as equilibrium, rationality, however, are not
easily accessible to students with computer science or
engineering backgrounds. This lecture gives an introductory
tutorial of these basic concepts and recent advances in
mechanism design researches from the viewpoint of computer
science. Biography Shigeo Matsubara is
Associate Professor of Social Informatics at Kyoto University.
He received M.Sc. in precision mechanics (1992) and Ph.D. in
informatics (2001) from Kyoto University. After working for NTT
Communication Science Laboratories, he joined Kyoto University
in 2007. He served as an industrial track co-chair of AAMAS2007.
He has worked in various areas of AI, including AI planning,
multiagent systems, and web services. His interest in recent
years has been information economics, and in particular the
interaction between computer science and game theory.
- Cooperative,
Large-Scale Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems, by Paul
Scerri In this lecture I will talk about some
approaches to allowing large groups of cooperative agents,
robots and people to work together. Such systems are useful for
a wide range of domains including disaster response,
agriculture, search and rescue and manufacturing.
Coordination of these multi-agent systems requires dealing with
challenges including planning, task and resource allocation and
information sharing. I will describe approaches to these
challenges that draw inspiration from a range of areas,
including teamwork, markets, decision-theory and biology.
I will also describe solutions to the overall problem that
bring together specific solutions into a single framework for
doing large-scale coordination. Specific attention will be paid
to how human operators can perform oversight and have input into
these teams. Finally, I will describe some systems that have
been developed and the challenges that remain. Biography Dr. Scerri is a System
Scientist at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon
University. He holds a BS in Applied Science (Honors) from RMIT
University in Australia and a PhD from Linkoping University in
Sweden. Previously, he has been a Research Associate at the
Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern
California. His research focuses on multi-agent
coordination and human interaction with intelligent systems. Dr.
Scerri has authored over 100 technical publications including
journal articles, book chapters and conference papers. He has
developed the Machinetta coordination software which has been
used in several large projects, including projects for DARPA,
USAF and Homeland Security.
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