Scope and Background

Intelligent agents are software entities which can carry out some actions on behalf of clients with some degree of autonomy. Through sensing the status of environment, agents perform some operations based on some possessed knowledge in order to change or influence the environment towards their goals. A Multi-Agent System (MAS) is a group or society of agents, and agents interact with others in the group cooperatively and/or competitively in order to reach their individual or common goals. In general, agents possess five common properties which are autonomy (some level of self-control), adaptivity (the ability to learn and improve performance with experience), reactivity (the ability to perceive the environment and to respond in a timely fashion to changes that occur), proactivity (the ability not only to act simply in response to their environment but also to exhibit goal-directed behaviour by taking the initiative) and sociability (the ability to interact, communicate and work with other agents). Research on agent techniques and MASs mainly focus on improving existing or invent innovative frameworks, models, mechanisms, approaches and algorithms to improve agents effectiveness and efficiency in those five aspects for advanced autonomous problem solving abilities in complex environments.

The topics of IJAWS2015 include but are not limited to:
· Agent reasoning and learning techniques

· Agent decision making techniques

· Multi-agent communication and interaction protocols

· Agent-based negotiation, argumentation and auction approaches

· Multi-agent cooperation, collaboration and coordination mechanisms

· Self-organisation and self-adaptation multi-agent systems

· Agent-based complex systems modelling and simulation

· Agent-based programming languages

· Multi-agent systems designs and development

· Human and multi-agent systems interaction

· Challenges and expectations for future agent technologies and MASs

Agent technique and multi-agent system are very important fields in Artificial Intelligence (AI). We believe that this special session will attract attentions from not only AI researchers, but also domain experts and industrial investigators who are interested in the applications of AI techniques.


Submission

We encourage submission in Springer SCI format. You can find the format requirements on Springer SCI website: http://www.springer.com/series/7092. The length of papers should not be more than 12 pages. All submissions must include the author's name(s), affiliation, and email address.

Submission is entirely automated by a paper management tool, which is available from the main web site: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=IJAWS2015. Authors must first register their own account by obtaining a password, and then follow the instructions.

All accepted papers will be provided an oral presentation at the workshop. Each paper will be reviewed by at least three PC members or experts in the field. Multiple submission policy for papers: Papers that are being submitted to other conferences, whether verbatim or in essence must reflect this fact on the title page. Papers that do not meet this requirement are subject to rejection without review.

Venue

IJAWS 2015 workshop will be held in the Yamanaka-Onsen Kajikaso Royal Hotel in Japan. More information regarding to the workshop venue is on the Yamanakaonsen-Kajikaso Royal Hotel webpage.


Invited Talk

SPEAKER: Prof. Milind Tambe, University of Southern California

TITLE: Towards a Science of Security Games: Key Algorithmic Principles, Deployed Applications and Research Challenges

ABSTRACT: Security is a critical concern around the world, whether it is the challenge of protecting ports, airports and other critical infrastructure, interdicting the illegal flow of drugs, weapons and money, protecting endangered wildlife, forests and fisheries, suppressing urban crime or security in cyberspace. Unfortunately, limited security resources prevent full security coverage at all times; instead, we must optimize the use of limited security resources. To that end, we founded the "security games" framework that has led to building of decision-aids for security agencies. Security games is a novel area of research that is based on computational and behavioral game theory, while also incorporating elements of AI planning under uncertainty and machine learning. Today security-games based decision aids for infrastructure security are deployed in the US and internationally; examples include deployments at ports and ferry traffic with the US coast guard (in ports such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles/Long Beach and others), for security of air traffic with the US Federal Air Marshals, and for security of university campuses, airports and metro trains with police agencies in the US and other countries. Moreover, recent work on "green security games" has led to testing our decision aids for protection of fisheries with the US Coast Guard and protection of wildlife at sites in multiple countries, and "opportunistic crime security games" have focused on suppressing urban crime. I will discuss our use-inspired research in security games, that is leading to a new science of security games, including algorithms for scaling up security games as well as for handling significant adversarial uncertainty and learning models of human adversary behaviors. (*This is joint work with a number of former and current PHD students, postdocs, and other collaborators, all listed at: http://teamcore.usc.edu/security)


BIO: Milind Tambe is Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California(USC). He is a fellow of AAAI and ACM, as well as recipient of the ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award, Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, the INFORMS Wagner prize for excellence in Operations Research practice, the Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society, IBM Faculty Award, Okawa foundation faculty research award, RoboCup scientific challenge award, Orange County Engineering Council Outstanding Project Achievement Award, USC Associates award for creativity in research and USC Viterbi use-inspired research award. Prof. Tambe has contributed several foundational papers in areas such as multiagent teamwork, distributed constraint optimization (DCOP) and security games. For this research, he has received the "influential paper award" from the International Foundation for Agents and Multiagent Systems(IFAAMAS), as well as with his research group, multiple best paper awards at conferences such as the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems and International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents. In addition, the real-world deployments of the ''security games'' framework and algorithms pioneered by Prof. Tambe and his research group has led them to receive the US Coast Guard Meritorious Team Commendation from the Commandant, US Coast Guard First District's Operational Excellence Award, Certificate of Appreciation from the US Federal Air Marshals Service and special commendation given by the Los Angeles World Airports police from the city of Los Angeles. For his teaching and service, Prof. Tambe has received the USC Steven B. Sample Teaching and Mentoring award and the ACM recognition of service award. Prof Tambe has also co-founded ARMORWAY, a company focused on security resource optimization through game theory and machine learning, where he serves on the board of directors and as director of research. Prof. Tambe received his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.


Post-Proceeding Publication

The extended version of the accepted papers will be included in the post-proceedings (book) of the workshop (to be confirmed)