Call For Papers

Aims and Scope

Although much progress has been made in the development of multi-agent systems, the systematic development of large-scale MAS still poses many challenges. Even though various models, techniques and methodologies have been proposed in the literature, researchers and developers are still faced with the common questions:

• Which architectures are suitable for MAS?
• How do we specify, design, implement, validate and verify, and evolve our systems?
• Which notations, models and programming languages are appropriate?
• Which development tools and frameworks are available?
• Which processes and methodologies can integrate all of the above and provide a disciplined approach to the rapid development of quality MAS?

EMAS 2016 aims to gather researchers and practitioners in the domains of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE), PROgramming Multi-Agent Systems (ProMAS) and Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies (DALT) to present and discuss their research and outcomes in MAS engineering. The purpose of this workshop is to facilitate the cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences in the various fields to:

1. further our knowledge in MAS engineering and improve the state-or-the art;
2. define research directions that are useful to practitioners;
3. encourage practitioners to use established methodologies for the development of large-scale MAS.

Topics of Interest

Topics and areas of interest include but are not limited to:

MAS software engineering processes, methodologies and techniques

• Processes and methodologies for MAS development
• Requirements Engineering for MAS?
• Software architectures and design patterns for MAS
• Testing techniques for MAS
• MAS maintenance and evolution

Programming languages for MAS

• Semantics of multi-agent programming languages
• Extensions of existing languages for MAS programming
• Agent communication issues in multi-agent programming
• Programming of social and organizational aspects
• Benchmarks and testbeds for comparing multi-agent programming languages

Formal methods and declarative technologies for the specification, validation and verification of MAS

• modal and epistemic logics for agent modeling
• declarative approaches to engineering agent-based systems
• semantics of agent communication
• logic programming-based approaches for agent systems
• high-level executable multi-agent specification languages

Development Tools

• Tools for MAS specification and validation
• Tools for MAS design
• Tools and infrastructures for MAS programming
• Tools for MAS testing
• Visualization tools

Experience reports

• Use of MAS engineering processes, methodologies and techniques in industry
• Use of agent-based programming languages in real-world applications
• Use of formal methods and declarative technologies in large-scale projects

Target Audience

EMAS 2016 will appeal to researchers and practitioners at all levels (i.e., junior and senior) who are interested in the theoretical and practical aspects of MAS engineering.