This package includes the MASSim-Server plus the 2012-scenario, a monitor for debugging, simple dummy-agents for testing and the documentation.
Multi-Agent Programming Contest (MAPC 2012)
We are happy to announce the Multi-Agent Programming Contest 2012.
Participation Requirements
The participation in this contest consists of these parts:
Declaring the intent to participate by registering to the mailing list.
Submission of a short team description. Thus registering to the contest officially.
Participation in the contest tournament by taking part on the final tournament.
Submitting the source-code of your application right after the tournament.
Submission of a paper after the tournament.
Rough Timeline
Early April: release of the first software package.
Until June: preparing the final software package, that is fixing bugs, adding useful functionality, and fine-tuning the scenario.
June: release of the final software package.
August: registration phase.
August: testing phase. In which you are invited to test your agents using our servers. End of August: qualification phase. In which you have to prove that your agents' connections to our servers is stable and reliable.
Early September: tournament.
After tournament: publications.
Publications
After the tournament we invite every participant to submit a paper about their team. The organizers will select a couple of high-quality papers and publish them in the ProMAS 2012 post-proceedings. The others will be published in the Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Technical Reports Series.
Prize
The winner of the contest will be awarded with a voucher for 500 EUR worth in books, thankfully provided by Springer Verlag. Requirements are the submission of a paper and the sourcecodes of the agents.
Aims and Scope
This competition is an attempt to stimulate research in the area of multi-agent system development and programming by
identifying key problems,
collecting suitable benchmarks, and
gathering test cases which require and enforce coordinated action
that can serve as milestones for testing multi-agent programming languages, platforms and tools. We also expect that participating at the contest helps to debug existing systems and to identify their weak and strong aspects.
The performance of a particular system will be determined in a series of games where the systems compete against each other. While winning the competition is not the main point, we hope it will shed light on the applicability of certain frameworks to particular domains.
History
The Multi-Agent Programming Contest was initiated in 2005 and since then it has passed through three distinct phases. The first phase began in 2005 with the "food-gatherers"-scenario, where a pre-specified multi-agent system had to be implemented. These MASs were later examined in order to determine the winner. From 2006 - 2007 we ran the "goldminers"-scenario. This time we provided the environment by means of an online-architecture, and automatically determined the winner. Then from 2008 - 2010 we ran the "cows and cowboys"-scenario. Again on the same online-architecture, but this time with a slightly changed objective. In 2011, finally, we switched to the new "Agents on Mars" scenario.
Mailing List
Participants and all interested colleagues are invited to subscribe to the agentcontest2012 [at] in.tu-clausthal.de mailing list.
All the important details and announcements including scenario and communication protocol specifications as well as software release announcements and bug reports will be announced and discussed via this list.
To subscribe, send an empty e-mail to
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with the subject subscribe.
The confirmation request and welcome message will be sent to you shortly afterwards. Please follow the instructions in the automatic mailing list replies and do not delete the confirmation mail, you most likely want to use the confirmation id later.
Mailing List Archive
The archive is semi-public. That means, it is accessible to list subscribers. The link is as follows:
In order to login, you need to provide your e-mail address with which you are subscribed to the list and the confirmation ID. You get the confirmation ID in the confirmation e-mail right after you subscribed. In the case you do not have that e-mail any more, simply send an arbitrary e-mail to
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In return the system will send you confirmation ID which you can use to login.
Download MAPC 2012 Package