International Workshop on Massively Multi-Agent Systems (MMAS2018)
in conjunction with IJCAI/ECAI/AAMAS/ICML 2018
July 14th, 2018. Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm, Sweden.
Invited Papers

Welcome to International Workshop on Massively Multi-Agent Systems (MMAS2018)

Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), where millions of physical devices with computing facilities are connected with each other in ad hoc ways, but are required to behave coherently. Massively multi-agent systems (MMAS) can be a major design paradigm or an implementation method for IoT. The aim of this workshop is to bring together participants concerned with massively multi-agent systems and applications, and to explore how multi-agent systems can be used for large-scale social design with big data analysis and high performance computing technologies.

MMAS 2018 will be held as a half-day workshop on July 14th, 2018 at Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm, Sweden. The workshop (ID: W48) is co-located with IJCAI-ECAI 2018, AAMAS 2018, and ICML 2018.

Revised selected papers and post-workshop papers have been published as a post-proceedings in Springer LNCS/LNAI (Series Volume 11422: https://www.springer.com/978-3-030-20936-0).
team

PROGRAM

Date and Time: 14:00-18:00, July 14th, 2018
Location: Room B2, Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm, Sweden
Time Program
14:00-14:05 Opening
14:05-15:30 Session 1: Multi-Agent Systems and Internet of Things
Invited Paper
Distributed Speaking Objects: a Case for Massive Multiagent Systems
Marco Lippi, Marco Mamei, Stefano Mariani, and Franco Zambonelli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy)
Invited Paper
Injecting (Micro)Intelligence in the IoT: Logic-based Approaches for (M)MAS
Andrea Omicini and Roberta Calegari (the University of Bologna, Italy)
Integrating Internet of Services and Internet of Things from a Multiagent Perspective
Donghui Lin (Kyoto University, Japan)
Yohei Murakami (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)
Toru Ishida (Kyoto University, Japan)
15:30-16:00 Coffee Break
16:00-17:50 Session 2: Architectures for Massively Multi-Agent Systems
Invited Paper
Two-Layered Architecture for Distributed Massively Multi-Agent Systems
Yohei Murakami (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)
Takao Nakaguchi (The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics, Japan)
Donghui Lin (Kyoto University, Japan)
Toru Ishida (Kyoto University, Japan)
Invited Paper
Multiagent Social Simulation for Social Service Design
Itsuki Noda (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)
Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Agents Behavior in a Crowd Simulator
Nahum Alvarez and Itsuki Noda (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)
FARM: Architecture for Distributed Agent-based Social Simulations
Jim Blythe (Information Sciences Institute, USA)
Alexey Tregubov (University of Southern California, USA)
17:50-18:00 Closing

Presentation time: 30 minutes for each invited paper and 25 minutes for each regular paper, including Q&A.

Invited Papers

International Workshop on Massively Multi-Agent Systems (MMAS2018) will have the following invited papers on important timely issues.

  • Distributed Speaking Objects: a Case for Massive Multiagent Systems

    • Marco Lippi, Marco Mamei, Stefano Mariani, and Franco Zambonelli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy)

    team

    Abstract: Smart sensors and actuators, embedding learning and reasoning features and associated to everyday objects and locations, will soon densely populate our everyday environments. Being capable of understanding, reasoning, and reporting, about what is happening (for sensors) and about what they can make possibly happen (for actuators), these "speaking objects" will thus be assimilable to autonomous situated agents. Accordingly, populations of speaking objects will define dense and massive multiagent systems, devoted to monitor and control our environments, let them be homes, industries or, in the large-scale, whole cities. In this context, the necessary coordination among speaking objects will be likely to become associated with the capability of argumenting about situations and about the current "state of the affairs", triggering and directing proper distributed "conversations", and eventually collectively reach future desirable state of the affairs. In this article, we detail the speaking object scenario, overview the key enabling technologies, and eventually analyze the key challenges for engineering large-scale collectives of speaking objects and their conversations.

  • Multiagent Social Simulation for Social Service Design

    • Itsuki Noda (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)

    team

    Abstract: Multiagent Social Simulation (MASS) can be a powerful tool to design social systems and services. Because of progress of computational power and social big data, we can apply MASS to real applications on social systems like urban traffic and disaster response. I will show several cases of MASS application and discuss about the further possibility and issues on this emerging domain.
  • Injecting (Micro)Intelligence in the IoT: Logic-based Approaches for (M)MAS

    • Andrea Omicini, Roberta Calegari (the University of Bologna, Italy)

    team

    Abstract: Pervasiveness of ICT resources along with the promise of ubiquitous intelligence is pushing hard both our demand and our fears of AI: demand mandates for the ability to inject (micro) intelligence ubiquitously, fears compel the behaviour of intelligent systems to be observable, explainable, and accountable. Whereas the first wave of the new "AI Era" was mostly heralded by non-symbolic approaches, features like explainability are better provided by symbolic techniques. In this talk we focus on logic-based approaches, and discuss their potential in pervasive scenarios like the IoT and open (M)MAS along with our latest results in the field.
  • Two-Layered Architecture for Distributed Massively Multi-Agent Systems

    • Yohei Murakami (Ritsumeikan University, Japan), Takao Nakaguchi, Donghui Lin, Toru Ishida

    team

    Abstract: The existing massively multi-agent systems are aimed at handling tens of thousands of agents on a single server or a computer cluster. To this end, those agents are implemented as data structure on the server to run at high speed. However, in the future IoS/IoT environments and environments where personal information protection is required, it is necessary to deploy agents to distributed servers. Therefore, we have proposed a two-layered architecture consisting of macro-agents and micro-agents: the former control a distributed environment and the latter solve a problem cooperatively. The macro-agents pre-installed on servers form a self-organized network by communicating neighbor macro-agents. On the other hand, micro-agents are implemented as data structure on each server and solve a problem under control of the macro-agents. Two example scenarios are given to illustrate how to apply the proposed architecture to a distributed environment necessary for multilingual communication support and copyright management.

Call for Papers

Important Dates

Submission deadline : May 14th, 2018 May 21st, 2018 (extended)
Author notification : May 30th, 2018
Camera ready due by Authors : June 15th, 2018
IJCAI/ECAI/AAMAS/ICML early registration : from April 16th to May 31st, 2018
IJCAI/ECAI/AAMAS/ICML late registration : from June 1st to June 25th, 2018
IJCAI/ECAI/AAMAS/ICML on-site registration : from June 26th, 2018

  • Topics of Interest:

    • We would prefer not to rigorously limit topics under the general category of the workshop. Nonetheless, some candidate topics are listed below:

    • Massively multi-agent infrastructure
    • Massively multi-sensor systems
    • Design and analysis of massively multi-agent systems
    • Large-scale participatory technologies
    • Massively multi-agent systems and social computing
    • Application of massively multi-agent systems
    • Massively multi-agent simulation
    • Massively multi-agent learning
    • Multi-agent systems for Internet of Things
    • Crowdsourcing and multi-agent systems

  • Paper Submission:

    • Paper submissions for MMAS 2018 will be handled by the easychair system. Before submitting your paper please ensure you have read the Instructions for Authors and that your paper uses the prescribed style files. To submit your work, please use the submission page at the following address https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mmas2018 .

  • Instruction for authors:

    • Papers should be submitted in English with a maximum length of 15 pages and 2 extra pages for references.

    Submission Format: All submissions must be in PDF format and must follow the LNCS/LNAI style guidelines which can be found at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html

    Submission and reviewing will be managed online by the easychair system. The only accepted format for submitted papers is in Adobe's PDF. Submissions must be uploaded on the easychair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mmas2018) by the submission deadlines; submissions after that time will not be reviewed. To minimise network congestion, we request authors to upload their submissions as early as possible.

    DUAL SUBMISSION POLICY: Papers being submitted to other conferences or workshops can be submitted in parallel to MMAS 2018, on condition that submissions at other conferences will be withdrawn if the paper is accepted for MMAS 2018. Authors must clearly indicate on the title page the other conferences or workshops to which the paper is being submitted and also indicate that they will withdraw these other submissions if the paper is accepted for MMAS 2018.

    For each accepted paper, at least one author must attend the workshop and present the paper. The registration information is available at IJCAI-ECAI 2018, AAMAS 2018, and ICML 2018. The selected MMAS 2018 accepted papers will be published as a volume of Springer LNCS/LNAI post-proceedings.

Organizers

Program Committee

  • Jake Beal (BBN Technologies, USA)
  • Peter Lewis (Aston University, UK)
  • Andrea Omicini (Universitò di Bologna)
  • Patrick Taillandier (INRA, Toulouse, France)
  • Hiromitsu Hattori (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)
  • Toshiharu Sugawara (Waseda University, Japan)
  • Yohei Murakami (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)
  • Norman Sadeh (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
  • Amit K. Chopra (Lancaster University, UK)
  • Donghui Lin (Kyoto University, Japan)
  • Toru Ishida (Kyoto University, Japan)
  • Franco Zambonelli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy)
  • Alexis Drogoul (UMI UMMISCO 209, IRD & UPMC, France)
  • Munindar P. Singh (North Carolina State University, USA)
  • Tomohisa Yamashita (Hokkaido University, Japan)
  • Itsuki Noda (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)

Venue

  • Venue

    • Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm, Sweden

  • Access:

    • Please find the traffic access at Stockholmsmässan official website.