9th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2021)

Co-located with AAMAS 2021

3-4 May 2021, London, UK

A key unifying theme underlying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is the idea of an intelligent agent able to reason, act, interact, and learn. This metaphor has stimulated much research in AI and particularly in Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), giving rise to research in agent-oriented software engineering, programming multi-agent systems, and declarative agent languages and technologies.

Despite the substantial body of knowledge and expertise developed in the design and development of multi-agent systems (MAS), the systematic development of large-scale and open MAS still poses many challenges. Even though various languages, models, techniques and methodologies have been proposed in the literature, researchers and developers are still faced with fundamental questions attaining MAS engineering, such as:

• How to specify, design, implement, verify, test and validate large-scale and open MAS? 
• How to ensure and control the global behaviour of decentralised, large-scale and open MAS? 
• How to express the requirements for MAS and how to translate these requirements into agent goals? 
• Which (multi-)agent architectures and languages are most suitable for MAS in different domains? 
• How to seamlessly integrate AI and machine learning techniques into design/programming languages and tools for agent-based systems? 
• How to engineer agent and multi-agent systems that are secure and protect the privacy concerns of users? 
• How to scale to the complexity of real-world application domains? 
• What are the implications of MAS engineering in the context of continuous development and deployment? 
• How can MAS be applied in specific application areas, such as Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things? 
• How to seamlessly integrate MAS engineering with mainstream software engineering models, languages, frameworks and tools? 
• Which processes and methodologies can integrate the above and provide a disciplined approach to the engineering of MAS?

EMAS 2021 will provide a forum for researchers and practitioners in the domains of agent-oriented software engineering, programming multi-agent systems, declarative agent languages and technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to present and discuss their research and emerging results in engineering MAS. The overall purpose of the workshop is to facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas and experiences in these fields to:

• enhance our knowledge of the theory and practice of engineering intelligent agents and multi-agent systems, and advance the state of the art;
• demonstrate how MAS methodologies, architectures, languages and tools can be used in the engineering of deployed large-scale and open MAS;
• define new directions for engineering MAS by drawing on results and recommendations from related research areas; and
• encourage PhD and Masters students to become involved in and contribute to the area.

 As AAMAS 2021 will be a virtual event, EMAS 2021 will adopt a virtual format a similar to that used for EMAS 2020.   

TOPICS

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Formal methods and declarative technologies for specification, verification, and engineering of MAS 
• Software engineering methodologies and techniques for MAS 
• Programming frameworks, languages, models and abstractions for all aspects of MAS 
• Tools and testbeds
• Empirical studies and (industrial) experience reports on engineering MAS applications
  
  

SUBMISSIONS

We solicit four types of submission:

1. Regular papers should: (1) clearly describe innovative and original research; or (2) report a survey on a research topic in the field; or (3) explain how existing techniques have been applied to a real-world case. (16 pages (excluding references) in LNCS format).

2. Short papers should: (1) describe novel and promising ideas and/or techniques that are in an early stage of development; or (2) present a vision for some part of the field, including challenges, and research opportunities (see the AAMAS Blue Sky Track CFP for more information on these sort of papers). (8 pages (excluding references) in LNCS format).

3. Student papers should describe MSc or PhD research in the field of engineering multi-agent systems. The paper should clearly describe the problem tackled and why it is important, the research method, the (expected) contributions of the research, and the evaluation. The lead author on the paper should be the student. (6 pages (excluding references) in LNCS format).

4. Tool, testbed and demo papers should describe a novel tool or demonstration in the field of engineering multi-agent systems. Submission may range from early prototypes to in-house or pre-commercialised products. Authors of other EMAS 2020 papers are also welcome to submit an accompanying tool/demo paper. The paper should provide a link to supplementary material that allows the reviewers to evaluate the submission such as website or movie (4 pages (excluding references) in LNCS format).

Submission policy: all papers should be original and not be submitted elsewhere. The review process is single blind: submissions should not be blind, reviewers will be.

The LNCS formatting style is available via: http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

The Easychair submission page can be found here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=emas2021

Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit revised and extended versions of the EMAS papers for inclusion in the post-proceedings that we will be published as a volume in Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline:19 March, 2021 (extended)
Submission deadline: 5 March, 2021
Author notification: 10 April, 2021
Camera-ready deadline: 20 April, 2021
EMAS: 3-4 May, 2021