3rd International Conference on Agreement Technologies

Agreement Technologies (AT) refer to computer systems in which autonomous  software agents negotiate with one another, typically on behalf of  humans, in order to come to mutually acceptable agreements. An agent  may choose whether to fulfil an agreement or not, and it should fulfil  it when there is an obligation to do so derived from the standing  agreements. Autonomy, interaction, mobility and openness are key  concepts studied within the AT approach. Semantic alignment,  negotiation, argumentation, virtual organisations, learning, real time,  and several other technologies are part of the sandbox to define,  specify and verify such systems. 

The International Conference Series on Agreement Technologies is an  interdisciplinary forum that brings together researchers and  practitioners working on the various topics comprising this emergent  and vibrant field. It provides an avenue to discuss and exchange new  ideas and techniques for the design, implementation and verification  of next generation open distributed systems centered on the notion of  agreement among computational agents.

AT-2015 will be held on December 17-18, 2015, in Athens (Greece), co-located with EUMAS-15.

This year The Agreement Technologies Conference (AT 2015) is collocated with EUMAS 2015. Sessions of both conferences will be open to all participants of EUMAS and AT.
We hope that this will allow us to develop a rich and inspiring program of high-quality papers reporting original results.

Aims and Scope

Agreement Technologies refer to computer systems in which autonomous software agents negotiate with one another, typically on behalf of humans, in order to come to mutually acceptable agreements. An agent may choose whether to fulfil an agreement or not, and it should fulfil it when there is an obligation to do so derived from the standing agreements. Autonomy, interaction, mobility and openness are key concepts studied within the Agreement Technologies approach.

Semantic alignment, negotiation, argumentation, virtual organisations, trust and reputation and several other technologies are part of the sandbox to define, specify and verify such systems. The International Conference Series on Agreement Technologies is an interdisciplinary forum that brings together researchers and practitioners working on the various topics comprising this emergent and vibrant field. It provides an avenue to discuss and exchange new ideas and techniques for the design, implementation and verification of next generation open distributed systems centred on the notion of agreement among computational agents.

AT 2015 follows the successful outcome of the first and second edition of the International Conference on Agreement Technologies: AT 2012 in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and AT 2013 in  Beijing.

Topics of Interest

• Argumentation and negotiation
• Trust and reputation
• Coalition & Team Formation
• Coordination and distributed decision making
• Computational social choice
• Semantic alignment
• Inter-theory relations
• Decision and game theoretic foundations for agreement
• Agent commitments
• Semantic service coordination
• Normative systems
• Individual reasoning about norm adoption
• Collective deliberation about norm adoption
• Autonomic Electronic Institutions
• Group planning agreements
• Deliberative agreement: social choice and collective judgment
• Evolution of organisational structures
• Social Intelligence
• Logics for agreements
• Real-time agreements
• Agreement patterns
• Agreement technologies architectures, environments and methodologies
• Applications of agreement technologies (e.g. web service composition, contract automation, supply chain automation, sensor networks, etc.)

Submissions

AT 2015 welcomes original, unpublished papers. We specially invite submissions by students who we think will receive valuable feedback from the discussion-oriented focus of the conference.

Authors are invited to submit papers in the following two categories::

Full Papers:
Papers in this category should represent original and previously unpublished work that is currently not under review in any conference or journal. Both basic and applied research papers are welcome. Papers should not exceed 15 pages including references and figures.

Position Papers:
Contributions in this category may represent either a summary of original work that has already been published in a conference or journal (in this case submissions must include explicitly a reference to the already published work), or ongoing research that can lead to important contributions to Agreement Technologies. Submissions in this category should not exceed 4 pages.

Each submission will be peer-reviewed. All submissions must  be written in English and formatted according to the Springer LNCS style, which can be obtained from http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. Submissions must be done via Easychair through this link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=at15

Proceedings

AT-2015 proceedings, will be published in a Springer LNCS/LNAI volume.
Full research papers and short papers describing original, unpublished work accepted at AT 2015 will be included in the proceedings.

We will give authors of accepted papers the opportunity to revise the camera ready version of their paper(s) in order to incorporate feedback received upon the presentation of their work during the conference.

Journal Special Issue

Best papers from the AT 2015 conference will be published in the AI-COMMUNICATIONS Journal.
AI Communications is a journal on Artificial Intelligence which has a close relationship to ECCAI (the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence).

Important Dates

All deadlines are at 23:59 UTC-12, i.e. before midnight on the respective date anywhere in the world.

Registration

Happy to have you with us!

Conference rates

Please make sure that you register for EUMAS & AT 2015 before November 23, 2015.
Registrations after that date can not be completed (either via bank transfer or on site).

There must be one registration for each paper accepted.

Payments

University of Piraeus Research Center (UPRC), on behalf of the event organiser, is in charge of invoicing and payment handling.

Please transfer the registration amount to the bank account of UPRC. Your ticket will be sent upon receipt of payment.

Please note that the payment to UPRC's bank account must cover the full registration amount. Any transaction fees and / or exchange rate differences will not be covered by EUMAS & AT 2015 or  UPRC.

Account holder: University of Piraeus Research Center (UPRC)
Account number: 190/54041421
SWIFT CODE: ETHNGRAA
IBAN: GR9701101900000019054041421
Bank name: National Bank of Greece,
Branch address: Piraeus A Code *190, Ethnikis Antistaseos 3, Piraeus, 18532

Please make sure to always add the account holder name and "EUMAS/AT 2015" as a justification, otherwise the payment cannot be tracked or it may not succeed.

To complete your registration  please send per email to eumas&at2015@unipi.gr the registration form with the necessary documents (explained in the form).

Your Ticket

The ticket includes:

• Admission to all presentations (EUMAS 2015 and AT 2015)
• Conference Bag
• Admission for 1 person to the Conference Dinner (December, 17)
• Warm lunch buffet, coffee, soft drinks, refreshments and snacks

 
Information on Cancellation Policy

Notification of cancellation must be sent per e-mail to the conference organizers:

• Until 30 November 2015: full refund (handling fee will be charged).
• Until 10 December: 50 % refund (handling fee will be charged).
• After 10 December 2015: No refund will be given.