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30th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (ACM SAC 2015)
Track on Intelligent Robotics and Multi-Agent Systems (IRMAS)
Salamanca, Spain, April 13-17, 2015

http://ap.isr.uc.pt/events/sac2015-irmas/

The ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. SAC 2015 (http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2015/) is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing (SIGAPP).
Robotics is a multidisciplinary research area that presents an enormous potential. It concerns about developing intelligent robotic systems that are capable of making decisions and acting autonomously in real and unpredictable environments to accomplish valuable tasks. Several complex problems require the use of teams of robots that share some of the same challenges approached by multi-agent systems.
Multi-agent systems (MAS) are groups of intelligent agents that can perceive and act in a given environment to achieve their individual and collective goals. MAS enable solving problems that are beyond the individual capabilities and knowledge of single agents, not suffering from resource limitations, performance bottlenecks, or critical failures usually found in centralized problem solvers. Multi-robot systems are often used to evaluate and validate MAS with physical robot platforms.
For many years, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers have worked separately in these fields, both fields have matured enormously, and today there is a growing interest in getting the two fields together. Many in Robotics believe that the focus in the near future should be adding capabilities to robots that lie at the core of AI research. Reciprocally, AI researchers aim at embedding their techniques in physical robots that can perceive, reason and act in real, dynamic physical environments. Despite this mutual interest, although there are many conferences focusing either on Robotics or AI separately, there is a lack of scientific venues where both communities can meet. The purpose of this track is therefore to provide a venue to exploit synergies between intelligent robotics and MAS, i.e. between Robotics and AI in general, bringing together researchers from both fields to share experiences, expose issues, and discuss about these exciting fields.


== Topics ==

- Autonomous robotic systems
- Multi-agent systems (MAS) theory
- Cooperative robotics and cooperative MAS
- Multi-robot systems
- Mixed human-robotic teams
- Coordination and cooperation
- Distributed control architectures
- Real-world applications of MAS
- Self-adaptation and learning
- MAS in mobile ad-hoc sensor networks
- Robot localization, mapping and navigation
- Artificial perception and computer vision
- Field robotic applications
- Deployment, coverage and patrolling
- Evolutionary robotics and swarm robotics
- Humanoid robots
- Human-machine and human-robot interaction
- Entertainment and educational robots
- Robotic dexterous grasping
- Simulation tools and middleware


== Important Dates ==

* Paper submission: Sep. 12, 2014 *
Acceptance notification: Nov. 17, 2014
Final paper submission: Dec. 8, 2014
Conference dates: Apr. 13-17, 2015


== Submission Procedure ==

Original papers addressing the listed topics of interest will be considered. Each submitted paper will be fully refereed and undergo a blind review process by at least three referees. Paper size is limited to 6 pages. A maximum of 2 additional pages may be included for an additional fee. The reviews will be double-blind: authors’ names and affiliations must not appear in the paper and self-citations should be in the third person. Accepted papers will be published in the ACM SAC 2015 proceedings.
Graduate students are invited to submit research abstracts (minimum of 2-page and maximum of 4-page) to the Student Research Competition (SRC), following the instructions published at SAC 2015 website.

Paper submission link:
http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2015/Paper-SubmissionUploadPage.htm


== Track Chairs ==

Denis F. Wolf, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Rui P. Rocha, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Christopher D. Kiekintveld, Univ. of Texas at El Paso, TX, USA

For further information on SAC 2015 IRMAS track, please contact:
denis@icmc.usp.br, rprocha@isr.uc.pt, or cdkiekintveld@utep.edu