======== CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ======== MAPC 2017 Multi-Agent Programming Contest https://multiagentcontest.org/2017/ ======================================== 1. AIMS AND SCOPE This competition is an attempt to stimulate research in the area of multi-agent system development and programming by 1. identifying key problems, 2. collecting suitable benchmarks, and 3. 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. 2. HISTORY The Multi-Agent Programming Contest was initiated in 2005 and since then passed through four distinct phases. 2005: 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. 2006 - 2007: the "goldminers"-scenario, where we provided the environment by means of an online-architecture and automatically determined the winner. 2008 - 2010: the "cows and cowboys"-scenario, again on the online-architecture, but with a slightly changed objective. 2011 - 2014: the "agents on Mars"-scenario, where agents had to solve a different more complex problem. 3. THE FIFTH PHASE: "AGENTS IN THE CITY" After the first instance in 2016, we present an iteration on the fifth MAPC scenario: "Agents in the city". The goal is to implement a team of cooperating agents with different roles in order to complete certain jobs on realistic street graphs. The challenge of the scenario is its ever increasing complexity: agents have to reason about the quality of jobs and how to complete them. This time around, we focus even more on enforcing cooperation among agents. 4. ENROLLING AND DOWNLOAD We would like to invite potential participants to join the MAPC mailing list. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/agentcontest All the important details and announcements will be sent and discussed via this list. And please do not hesitate to say hello on the list. You can download the software package here: https://multiagentcontest.org/2017/#downloads or directly from GitHub: https://github.com/agentcontest/massim/releases 5. PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS The participation in this contest consists of these parts: 1. Declaring the intent to participate by registering to the mailing list. 2. Submission of a short team description. Thus registering to the contest officially. 3. Participation in all assigned matches in the final tournament. 4. Submitting the source-code of your application right after the tournament. 5. Submission of a paper after the tournament. 6. ROUGH TIMELINE Until 31st of July: individual testing phase. 1st - 8th of August: registration phase. 9th - 21st of August: connection testing. You will have the chance to test the connection to our servers. 4th of September: qualification phase. You have to prove that your agents' connections to our servers are stable and reliable. Week of 18th of September: tournament. After tournament: publications. 7. PUBLICATIONS After the tournament we invite each participant to submit a paper about their agent team. The papers of which the quality has been assured will be regularly published. The publication outlet will be announced as soon as possible. 8. 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 source codes of the agents. 9. PEOPLE Organizers: Tobias Ahlbrecht(Clausthal University of Technology) Jürgen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology) Niklas Fiekas (Clausthal University of Technology) Steering Committee: Mehdi Dastani (Utrecht University) Jürgen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology) Jomi Hübner (Federal University of Santa Catarina) Peter Novak (Delft University of Technology)