-- Intelligent Agents in Telecommunications Applications -- This is a call for papers for the IATA '98 event, which will be part of the Agents' World forum from the 3rd to the 8th of July 1998, in Paris. Please follow these links for more (HTML) information: http://goma.univ-paris13.fr/AgentsWorld/ -- Agents' World http://dai.cs.tu-berlin.de/workshops/iata98/iata98.html -- IATA '98 CFP ______________________________________________________________________________ * Announcement * * Call for Papers * IATA '98 The Second International Workshop Intelligent Agents for Telecommunications Applications At the Agents' World Event 1998 Cite de Sciences - La Vilette, Paris (France). ----------------------- 1. Introduction 2. Workshop themes 3. Agents' World Context 4. Important dates at a glance 5. Submissions 6. Registration 7. Organizing committee 8. Program committee ----------------------- 1. Introduction Telecommunications is a rapidly evolving area. Network technology and communication structures are becoming increasingly complex, accompanied by a strong push for deregulation and liberalisation of the telecommunications markets. Traditional providers of telecommunications services and Public Network Operators are transforming into providers of telematics services. As one consequence, the market is dominated by a broad range of networking technologies that are constantly being enhanced. Additionally, Internet technology is gaining momentum in its influence on telecommunications. At the same time, users of telematics services place rising demands on these, including * personalisation of telematics services * support of user mobility (terminal/location independence) * integrated access to and usage of telematics services * telematics services independent of networking technologies * ease of use * cost and time efficiency There is a large number of telematics services and application areas that reflect the developments in telecommunications technologies and the demands of users, e.g. * Intelligent Communication: Personal Information Management * Electronic Commerce * Traffic Telematics * Smart Home Services * Service and Network Management, Intelligent Networks Agent-oriented Technology (AOT), through its basic characteristics and principles, lends itself very well to providing a technology base for building such services and enabling such application areas; in the past, research and development in AOT has gained initial experience with selected services and application areas and technological approaches. Now it is necessary to focus on development platforms serving to comprehensively realise agent-based telematics services which must incorporate sound concepts for providing management functionality such as accounting and security. The design of appropriate agent architectures needs to be progressed, as well as agent cooperation protocols, agent migration mechanisms, run-time environments for agent execution and interaction, but also tools for developing, simulating and testing agent-based telematics services. AOT is substantially driven by rapid advancements in the development of the Java programming language which contains important constructs and elements for realising development platforms for agent-based telematics services. Distributed programming standards like CORBA, programming languages as Java and also specific Agent development environments providing tools for building agent-based applications. A further important factor influencing the progression of AOT is a trend commonly labeled as "Network Computing": here, not only can applications be downloaded on demand from network nodes and stored temporarily on the user's terminal equipment, but also through code mobility the execution and control of services shifts from the user's terminal equipment into the network. It is the aim of the IATA '98 workshop to bring together interested people from the different areas and bodies affected by these developments and trends, e.g. PNOs, content providers, service providers, researchers etc. The workshop will provide a forum for discussing the different perspectives and requirements on telematics and AOT; also, the workshop provides an opportunity for the presentation of state-of-the-art approaches and techniques in the area of agent-based telematics services. ----------------------- 2. Workshop Themes The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Open, Scalable Agent Architectures for Telecommunications Applications * Testbeds for Agent Systems in Telecommunications Applications * Mobile Agents to support User Mobility * Languages and Technology for Telematics Services (e.g. Java, Network Computing) * Languages for Realizing Agent Architectures for Telecommunications Applications (Mobile and Static Agents) * Communication and Cooperation in Telecommunication * Intelligent Agents for the Realization of Agent-based Electronic Marketplaces * Intelligent Agents for Service Architectures * Intelligent Agents and Network Management (IN, TMN) * Intelligent Agents and TINA * Intelligent Agents and OMG/CORBA * Middleware for Agent Communication (e.g CORBA, RMI) ----------------------- 2. Agents' World Context IATA '98 is a key component of a comprehensive gathering of researchers interested in multi-agent systems in numerous settings. Coordinated with IATA '98 will be held seven other international events (one conference, five workshops and one competition): ICMAS '98 Multi-Agent Systems Conference focussing on Multi-Agent Systems ATAL '98 Agents Theories, Architecture, and Languages Workshop focusing on Theory and Practice of Intelligent Agents CIA '98 Cooperative Information Agents Workshop focusing on Multi-Agent Systems and Databases CRW '98 Collective Robots Workshop focusing on Multi-Agent Systems and Robotics ACW '98 Agents in CommunityWare Workshop focusing on Multi-Agent Systems and Telematics MABS '98 Multi-Agent Systems and Agent-Based Simulation Paris '98 Featuring Robocup '98 and FIRA RWC '98 International competitoin between Soccer Robots Teams ----------------------- 3. Important dates at a glance Deadline to contribute Papers February 6, 1998 Notification of Acceptance or Rejection March 23, 1998 Deadline for camera-ready version April 10, 1998 ----------------------- 4. Submissions Authors are invited to submit papers describing both theoretical and practical work in the area of intelligent agents for telecommunications appications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the ones listed above in the workshop description. Papers which describe ongoing research or provide an excellent surveying work are in particular welcome. All submitted papers will be refereed for quality, correctness, originality and relevance. Papers accepted or under review by other conferences or journals are not acceptable. Authors should submit five (5) copies of papers and an email version of the abstract by February 6, 1998 to one of the programme co-chairs. Papers received after the deadline will be returned unopened. All papers will be reviewed by the program committee, and authors will be notified of acceptance by March 23, 1998. Each paper should clearly indicate the nature of its scientific contribution, and the problems, domains, or environments to which it is applicable. Submitted papers must be printed on 8 1/2" x 11" or A4 paper using 12 point type (10 characters per inch for typewriters). Each page must have no more than 38 lines and an average of 75 characters per line. (This corresponds to LaTeX article style, 12 point.) Each paper should have a single title page which includes a 150-word abstract and up to two topic areas covered by the paper. (These will be used to focus reviewing and ultimately to structure the technical program.) Papers can not exceed a length of 5000 words. The workshop proceedings including all accepted papers will be made available to all workshop participants. Also, the proceedings will be published by Springer as a volume in the LNAI series (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, a subseries of LNCS). ----------------------- 5. Registration All workshop participants are expected to register for the main Agents' World Event ----------------------- 6. Organizing Committee Sahin Albayrak (Chair) Francisco J. Charles Petrie Garijo (Co Chair) (Co Chair) Technische Universität C/ Emilio Vargas 6 Center for Design Berlin TELEFONICA I+D Research FR 6-7 28043 - Madrid 560 Panama Street D-10587 Berlin Spain Stanford University Germany Stanford, CA 94305-2232 USA sahin@cs.tu-berlin.de fgarijo@tid.es petrie@stanford.edu +49 30 314 24943 +34 13 374235 650 725 0162 +49 30 314 21799 +34 13 374602 650 725 8475 ----------------------- 7. Program Committee * Frank von Martial, Germany (invited) * Fumio Hattori, Japan (invited) * Innes Ferguson, Canada (invited) * Katia Sycara, USA (invited) * Leonardo Chiariglione, IT (invited) * Makoto Yokoo, Japan (invited) * Mark Fox, Canada (invited) * Michael Huhns, USA (invited) * Michel Plu, FR (invited) * Mike Wooldridge, UK (invited) * Nick Jennings, UK (invited) * Pattie Maes, USA (invited) * Paul Kearney, UK (invited) * Peter Selfridge, USA (invited) * Robert Weihmayer, USA (invited) * Tim Finin, USA (invited) * Jens Meinköhn, Germany (invited) * Victor Lesser, USA (invited) * Walter Van de Velde, Belgium (invited) * Yves Demazeau, FR (invited)