The view of computational components as `agents' is widely used in
contemporary software applications, such as Internet navigation,
information management, autonomous process control, and
e-commerce. The popularity of the agent paradigm stems not only from
its intuitive and appealing nature, capturing the notions of
flexibility and evolving behaviour, but also from the range of
theories, tools and techniques that have been developed over recent
years for agent-based systems.
However, the languages in which agents are typically implemented are
often standard (usually, object-oriented) languages, with few `agent'
concepts included as a central part. Thus, the abstractions that
agent-based systems developers must work with are not always
appropriate for producing effective agent applications, especially
where `intelligent' or `rational' behaviour is required. In addition,
with agent-based systems beginning to be used in both safety/mission
critical (e.g. autonomous control) and business critical
(e.g. e-commerce and security) software, it is clear that more
precise, and logically well-founded, development techniques will be
required for agent-based applications in the future.
Thus, the aim of this special issue is to bring together high-quality
papers exhibiting leading edge research where a "logic-based" approach
is taken to the implementation of agent-based systems (often
comprising `rational' or `intelligent' agents). Our view of `logic'
here is not restricted to classical logic and logic programming
techniques and, indeed, much of the leading work in this area does not
easily fit within such a classification. We here take a broad view of
logic, and consider implementation techniques for agents that are
inherently based in some logical formalism. This logical formalism may
have been developed for a variety of reasons. For example, the use of
logic may enhance the abstractions used in the language, the potential
for verification, the type of tools that can be utilised or the
breadth of behaviours that can be developed.
The Annals of Mathematics and Artificial
Intelligence
journal is intended to represent a wide range of topics of
concern to scholars applying quantitative, combinatorial, logical,
algebraic and algorithmic methods to Artificial Intelligence areas as
diverse as decision support, automated deduction, reasoning,
knowledge-based systems, machine learning, computer vision, robotics
and planning. The journal is aimed at: applied logicians, algorithms
and complexity researchers, Artificial Intelligence theorists and
applications specialists using mathematical methods. For more
details, see
http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/1012-2443
| Submission deadline: |
1st March 2003 |
| Author notification: |
1st July 2003 |
| Revised papers due: |
1st September 2003 |
The topics of interest of this special issue include (but are
not limited to)
- implementation techniques (together with accompanying software
engineering methods) for agent-based or multi-agent systems based
on:
- logic programming (including, concurrent/parallel logic
programming)
- constraints (including, constraint logic programming and concurrent
constraint programming)
- intensional programming
- situation calculus
- executable modal/temporal logics
- multi-paradigm approaches
- advanced techniques within logic-based agents, such as:
- knowledge representation, nonmonotonic reasoning
- planning, problem solving and deliberation
- learning, evolution and adaption
- cooperation, teamwork, negotiation and social ability
- decision theory for multi-agent systems
- applications of logic-based agents, for example in:
- robotics, autonomous process control
- knowledge/information management, WWW search/navigation
- e-commerce and B2B applications
- embedded components
- telecommunications
- general purpose agent programming
We invite submission of full (typically, 20-40 pages) high-quality
research papers for this special issue. These should neither have been
previously published in their full form, nor be under review
elsewhere. Submissions consisting of the paper (preferably PDF or
Postscript via email but, alternatively, five hard-copies) including
an abstract in which the role of logic in the particular approach used
is clarified, should be sent to Michael
Fisher
(address given below)
to arrive no later than 1st March 2003. Formatting instructions can be
found at the journal's web site.
Queries concerning this special issue should be directed to any
of the guest editors. Up-to-date information will also be available
from http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/LBAI03
- JÜRGEN DIX
Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, U.K.
email:
dix@cs.man.ac.uk
url:
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~jdix
- MICHAEL FISHER
Department of Computer Science,
University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZF, U.K.
email:
M.Fisher@csc.liv.ac.uk
url:
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael
- HECTOR LEVESQUE
Department of Computer Science,
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
email:
hector@cs.toronto.edu
url: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hector
- LEON STERLING
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering,
University of Melbourne, Australia
email:
leon@cs.mu.oz.au
url:
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~leon
This document was generated using the
LaTeX2HTML translator Version 2002 (1.62)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,
Nikos Drakos,
Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999,
Ross Moore,
Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney.
The command line arguments were:
latex2html -no_navigation -split 1 -address M.Fisher@csc.liv.ac.uk lbai-cfp.tex
The translation was initiated by Michael Fisher on 2003-02-25
M.Fisher@csc.liv.ac.uk