CALL FOR PAPERS The Second International Conference on AUTONOMOUS AGENTS (Agents '98) Minneapolis/St Paul, May 10-13, 1998 Autonomous agents are computer systems that are capable of independent action in dynamic, unpredictable environments. Agents are also one of the most important and exciting areas of research and development in computer science today. Agents are currently being applied in domains as diverse as computer games and interactive cinema, information retrieval and filtering, user interface design, and industrial process control. The aim of the Agents '98 conference is to bring together researchers and developers from industry and academia in order to report on the latest scientific and technical advances, discuss and debate the major issues, and showcase the latest systems. Agents '98 will build on the enormous success of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents '97), held in Marina del Rey in February 1997, which was attended by some 500 people. The conference welcomes submissions of original, high quality papers and videos with summaries concerning autonomous agents in a variety of embodiments and playing a variety of roles in their environments. The Agents '98 conference, like its predecessor, will focus primarily on systems that have been or are being implemented; theory papers are welcome provided that they clearly relate to such systems, for example by helping us to predict their behaviour, explain, or understand them. The submission of pure theory papers is not encouraged: there are other, more appropriate forums for such work. Papers that address isolated agent capabilities (such as planning or learning) are similarly discouraged. Evaluation of agents or multi-agent systems will be a necessary component of each submission. The conference will include presentations of papers and videos, panel sessions, software and robotic agent demonstrations, and exhibits. More generally, the conference will strive towards an informal atmosphere with plenty of time for presentations, questions, and discussions. Accepted papers will be formally published in a Conference Proceedings. A limited number of student scholarships will be available. The conference will also include tutorials and workshops that will take place May 9, 1998. CONFERENCE THEMES Technical isses to be addressed include, but are not restricted to: * action selection and planning * agent architectures * agent communication languages and their semantics * autonomous robots * believability * collaboration between people and agents * communication between people and agents * coordinating perception, thought, and action * expert assistants * evolution of agents * human-like qualities of synthetic agents * information agents * instructability * integration and coordination of multiple activities * knowledge acquisition and accumulation * life-like qualities * longer-term adaptation and learning * artificial market systems * meta-modeling of an agent by itself * middle-agents (e.g., matchmakers, brokers, routers) * mobile agents * modeling the environment * modeling the behavior of other agents * models of emotion * models of motivation * models of personality * multi-agent communication, coordination, and collaboration * multi-agent simulation * multi-agent teams * network and mobile agents * organization of agent societies * real-time performance * synthetic agents * user modeling SUBMISSION INFORMATION SUBMISSION DATES: October 1, 1997 The submission must include a title page and abstract. 1. Title Page * category (paper or video) * application area (synthetic agents, mobile agents, software agents, robotic agents) * technical issues (1-3 from list above) * title * authors and Their Institutions: * contact Information (telephone, fax, email, regular mailing address) for first or nominated contact author 2. Abstract * maximum 150 words Submissions must arrive no later than October 1 1997. Submissions received after this date will be returned unopened. The title page of every paper or video summary must contain all of the information specified above. Paper bodies should be no longer than 6500 words, including references and figures (assumed to represent the number of words they replace on the manuscript page), but not including the title page. Videos should be no longer than 10 minutes and accompanied by two page summaries, including references and figures, but not including the title page. Over-length papers may be rejected or penalized in the review process. Paper and video submissions should be sent to: AAAI AGENTS 98 445 Burgess Drive Menlo Park CA 94025-3496 USA IMPORTANT DATES October 1, 1997 Deadline for receipt of papers and videos December 15, 1997 Author notifications mailed January 15, 1998 Camera-ready copies of accepted papers due CONFERENCE OFFICIALS General Chair: Katia P. Sycara (Carnegie Mellon University) Technical Program Co-Chairs: Tim Finin (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) Mike Wooldridge (Zuno) Area Chairs: Agents for Entertainment: Clarke Elliot Robotic agents: Maja Mataric (Brandeis University) Software agents: Dan Weld (University of Washington) Finance Chair: Jim Hendler (University of Maryland) Local Arrangements Chair: Maria Gini (University of Minnesota) Publicity Chair: Keith Decker (University of Delaware) Tutorial Chair: Anand Rao (Australian AI Institute) Workshops Chair: Mike Huhns (University of S. Carolina) Demonstration Chairs: Software Agents: Henry Kautz (ATT Bell Labs) Robotic Agents: Robin Murphy (Colorado School of Mines) Poster Chair: Afsaneh Haddadi (Daimler Benz) Exhibits Chair: David Musliner (Honeywell) ------------------------------------------- To keep you updated with more information on AGENTS 98, this is the URL for the AGENTS 98 home page. http://www.cis.udel.edu/~agents98/