Call for Papers: The Eighth International Workshop on Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiations (ACAN2015)
http://www.itolab.nitech.ac.jp/tACAN2015/index.html


To be held in conjunction with the 14th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and
Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2015: http://www.aamas2015.com/en/ )


Important dates
• February 11, 2015: Deadline for Submitting to Workshops
• March 10, 2015: Deadline for Announcing Accepted Papers
• March 19, 2015 : Deadline for Camera-Ready Papers
• May 4 or 5, 2015, ACAN workshop

Scope and Background

Complex Automated Negotiations have been widely studied and are one of the emerging areas of research in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. The complexity in an automated negotiation depends on several factors: the number of negotiated issues, dependencies between these issues, representation of the utility, negotiation protocol, negotiation form (bilateral or multi-party), time constraints, and so on. Complex automated negotiation scenarios are concerned with negotiation encounters where we may have for instance, a large number of agents, a large number of issues with strong interdependencies, real time constraints, etc. Many real world negotiation scenarios present one or more of the mentioned elements. Software agents can support the automation of complex negotiations, by negotiating on the behalf of their owners and providing adequate strategies to their owners to achieve realistic, win-win agreements. In order to provide solutions in such complex automated negotiation scenarios, research has focused on incorporating different technologies including search, CSP, graphical utility models, Bayesian nets, auctions, utility graphs, optimization and predicting and learning methods. The applications of complex automated negotiations could include e-commerce tools, decision-making support tools, negotiation support tools, collaboration tools, as well as knowledge discovery and agent learning tools.
ACAN2015 will discuss, among others, the following aspects and topics of such complex automated negotiations within the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, which have distinct relationships with AAMAS main conference topics:
- Complex Automated Negotiations Frameworks and Mechanisms
Bilateral and Multilateral Negotiations, High dimension Multi-Issue Negotiations, Large Scale Negotiations, Concurrent Negotiations, Multiple Negotiations, Sequential Negotiations, Negotiations under Asymmetric Information, and so on
- Prediction of Opponent's Behaviours and Strategies in Negotiations
- Simulation Models and Platforms for Complex Negotiations
- Coordination Mechanisms for Complex Negotiations
- Matchmaking and Brokering Mechanisms
- 2-Sided Matching
- Utility and Preference Representations in Negotiations
- Computational Complexity of Multi-Issue Negotiations
- Real-life Aspects of Electronic Negotiations
- Negotiations with Humans, Negotiations in Social Networks etc.
- Applications for Automated Negotiations (e.g. cloud computing, smart grid, electronic commerce etc.)
A considerable number of researchers in various sub-communities of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems are actively working on these and related issues. They are, for instance, being studied in agent negotiations, multi-issue negotiations, auctions, mechanism design, electronic commerce, voting, secure protocols, matchmaking and brokering, argumentation, co-operation mechanisms and distributed optimization. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from these communities to learn about each other's approaches to the complex negotiation problems, encourages the exchange of ideas between the different areas, and potentially fosters long-term research collaborations to accelerate progress towards scaling up to larger and more realistic applications.

Automated Negotiating Agents Competition Special Session (Tentative)
From 2010, ACAN is tightly cooperating with ANAC (Automated Negotiating Agents Competition). Based on the great success of previous ANAC, the ANAC2015 will be held at AAMAS2015. This year, we, ACAN, will have the ANAC special session, in which the finalists of ANAC will describe their negotiating agents. See the ANAC site for more details:
http://mmi.tudelft.nl/negotiation/index.php/Automated_Negotiating_Agents_Competition_(ANAC)

Submission
Submissions should conform to the ACM SIG style (see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedingstemplates for more details) and should not be more than 8 pages long (excluding appendices). The workshop welcomes submissions of original works relevant to the topics described above. This year, the workshop will accept submissions of both full papers (maximum 8 pages) and short papers (maximum 4 pages).

Please submit your paper via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acan2015

All accepted papers will be provided an oral presentation at the workshop. Each paper will be reviewed by at least two 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.

Post-Proceeding Publication (to be confirmed)
The extended version of the accepted papers will be included in the post-proceedings (book) of the workshop, which will be published in Springer Studies of Computational Intelligence Series (http://www.springer.com/series/7092). 　
　

Organizing Committee:
● Dr. Katsuhide Fujita (Organizing Chair),
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan,
● Dr. Quan Bai (Organizing Chair),
Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
● Dr. Rafik Hadfi
Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
● Prof. Dr. Takayuki Ito
Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
● Prof. Dr. Minjie Zhang
University of Wollongong, Australia
● Dr. Fenghui Ren
University of Wollongong, Australia
● Dr. Reyhan Aydogan
Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherland



Tentative Program Committee Members:
− Prof. Dr. Paul Scerri (Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, USA)
− Dr. Mark Klein (MIT, USA)
− Prof. Dr. Katia Sycara (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
− Dr. Raz Lin (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
− Prof. Dr. Sarit Kraus (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
− Prof. Dr. Catholjin Jonker (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
− Dr. Enrico Gerding (University of Southampton, UK)
− Dr. Koen Hindriks (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
− Prof. Dr. Xudong Luo (Sun Yat-sen University, China)
− Dr. Gheorghe Cosmin Silaghi (UBB Cluj, Romania)
− Dr. Lotzi Boloni (University Florida, United States)
− Dr. Scott Buffett (National Research Council Canada)
− Dr. Jiamou Liu, (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand)
− Dr. Bo An, (Nanyang Technology University, Singapore)
− Dr. Chao Yu, (Dalian University of Technology, China)
− Dr Dayong Ye, (University of Wollongong, Australia)
− Dr. Susel Fernandez (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan)
− Dr. Tim Baarslag (University of Southampton/Nagoya Institute of Technology)



Contact persons:

● Dr. Katsuhide Fujita (Organizing Chair, Primary Contact Person),
Associate Professor, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan,
E-mail: katfuji@cc.tuat.ac.jp
● Dr. Quan Bai (Organizing Chair, Primary Contact Person),
Senior Lecturer, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
E-mail: quan.bai@aut.ac.nz