======== CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ======== 15th MAPC (2020/21) [DEADLINES EXTENDED] Multi-Agent Programming Contest https://multiagentcontest.org/2020/ ======================================== 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 that can serve as milestones for testing multi-agent programming languages, platforms, and tools. We also expect that participating in the contest will help to debug existing systems and frameworks 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 is now in its 6th phase. 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. 2016-2018: the "agents in the city"-scenario, played on realistic street graphs, where agents had to solve logistics puzzles. 2019-NOW: The "Agents Assemble"-scenario combines many aspects which have proven interesting in previous scenarios. The agents have to move in a dynamic grid-world with limited local information and cooperate to find and combine pieces in order to complete randomized tasks. 3. 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 directly from GitHub: https://github.com/agentcontest/massim_2020/releases 4. 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 team description and analysis paper after the tournament. 5. ROUGH TIMELINE 12 February 2021: end of registration and qualification. 15-19 March 2021: tournament. After tournament: publications. 6. 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 in Springer's new Computer Challenges subline: https://www.springer.com/series/16528 7. 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. 8. PEOPLE Organizers: Tobias Ahlbrecht (Clausthal University of Technology) Jürgen Dix (Clausthal University of Technology) Niklas Fiekas (Clausthal University of Technology) Tabajara Krausburg (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)