The 17th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (PAAMS 2019) took place on June 26-28 in Avila, Spain. It was organized by the University of Salamanca. This conference was sponsored by the IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society Spain Section Chapter, the IEEE Spain Section and supported by the IBM.
The main objective of PAAMS 2019 was to provide an international forum to present and discuss the latest scientific developments and their effective applications, to assess the impact of the approach, and to facilitate technology transfer. It provided a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to exchange their experience in development and deployment of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.
PAAMS 2019 brought together researchers and developers from the industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances in application of multi-agent systems, to discuss and debate the major issues, and to showcase the latest systems using agent-based technology. It promoted a forum for discussion on how agent-based techniques, methods, and tools help system designers to accomplish the mapping between available agent technology and application needs.
The main Conference Problems were:
· Agent-based simulation and prediction;
· Distributed problem solving;
· Agent cooperation and negotiation;
· Agent societies and social networks;
· Real-time multi-agent systems;
· Human agent interaction, user interfaces;
· Adaptation, learning and personalization;
· Reputation, trust, privacy and security;
· Agent engineering and development tools;
· Evaluation, ethical and legal issues.
The main Conference Domains were:
· Information recovery and information systems;
· Knowledge management and data intensive systems;
· Intelligent control and manufacturing systems;
· Embodied agents and autonomous systems;
· Multi-robot systems and real world robotics;
· Internet softbots and web intelligence;
· Virtual agents, animation and games;
· Pervasive agents and ambient intelligence;
· E-learning and educational systems;
· User-centered applications and assisting agents.
The Conference brought together participants from many countries – the USA, the UK, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Sri Lanka, Japan, Australia, New Zealand.
Conference reports represented various aspects of application and validation of agent-based models, methods, and technologies in a number of key areas, including: agronomy and the Internet of Things, coordination and structure, finance and energy, function and autonomy, humans and societies, reasoning and optimization, traffic and routing.
Professor Petr Skobelev attended the Conference and presented the paper “Smart Farming – Open Multi-Agent Platform and Eco-System of Smart Services for Precise Farming”, prepared by the following authors: Petr Skobelev, Vladimir Laryukhin, Igor Mayorov, Elena Simonova and Olga Yalovenko.
In his report, Petr Skobelev addressed new challenges in agriculture, which are becoming critical for many countries, including climate changes, exhausted soils, aged farmers, etc. One of the new trends is associated with a step from Agriculture–4.0, focused on automation of physical processes for precision farming, – to Agriculture–5.0 based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for digitalization of domain knowledge and automation of farmer decision-making processes. Then, Professor Skobelev gave a brief overview of existing IT systems for precision farming, discussed their key limitations and formulated business requirements for developing AI solutions. He proposed the concept of digital eco-system of smart services for precision farming based on AI-technologies. Then he presented functionality and architecture of multi-agent platform and eco-system and identified vitally important smart services for everyday operations of farmers. He also described the structure and content of ontology-driven knowledge base for precision agriculture, aimed at formalizing specifications of modern types of crops, agro- and bio-technologies, etc. The authors also propose the virtual “round table” as a generic framework for forming well-balanced recommendations for farmers with the use of ontology-based model of agricultural enterprise, which forms a specification of situation for automatic decision-making. Finally, Professor Skobelev presented the first case studies of the industrial prototype of the solution development.
PAAMS Workshops and Special Session complemented the regular program with new or emerging trends of particular interest connected to multi-agent systems:
· Workshop on Agent-Based Solutions for Manufacturing and Supply Chain;
· 2nd International Workshop on Blockchain Technology for Multi-agent Systems;
· Workshop on MAS for Complex Networks and Social Computation;
· Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Applications for Energy Markets, Smart Grids, and Sustainable Energy Systems;
· Workshop on Smart Cities and Intelligent Agents;
· Workshop on Swarm Intelligence and Swarm Robotics;
· Special Session on Software Agents and Virtualization for Internet of Things.
Here are some papers of PAAMS 2019 that are the closest to the works of our company:
1. Jim Blythe, John Bollenbacher, Di Huang et al. Massive Multi-agent Data-Driven Simulations of the GitHub Ecosystem
2. Ahmad Esmaeili, Nasser Mozayani, Mohammad Reza Jahed-Motlagh and Eric T. Matson. Towards Topological Analysis of Networked Holonic Multi-agent Systems.
3. Carolina Higuera , Fernando Lozano , Edgar Camilo Camacho et al. Multiagent Reinforcement Learning Applied to Traffic Light Signal Control.
4. Mohamed Essaid Khanouche, Nawel Atmani, Asma Cherifi et al. QoS-Aware Agent Capabilities Composition in HARMS Multi-agent Systems.
5. Lisa Kosiachenko, Nathaniel Hart, and Munehiro Fukuda. MASS CUDA: A General GPU Parallelization Framework for Agent-Based Models.
6. Yaroslav Marchukov and Luis Montano. Multi-agent Coordination for On-Demand Data Gathering with Periodic Information Upload.
7. Patrick Nalepka, Rachel W. Kallen, Anthony Chemero et al. Practical Applications of Multiagent Shepherding for Human-Machine Interaction.
8. Alvaro Paricio Garcia and Miguel A. Lopez-Carmona. Multimap Routing for Road Traffic Management.
9. Jeremy Albouys, Nicolas Sabouret, Yvon Haradji et al. SMACH: Multi-agent Simulation of Human Activity in the Household.
10. Nicola Falcionelli, Paolo Sernani, Dagmawi Neway Mekuria, and Aldo Franco Dragoni. An Agent-Swarm Simulator for Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem Empirical Analysis.
11. Paulo Leit˜ao and Jos´e Barbosa. Modular and Self-organized Conveyor System Using Multi-agent Systems.
12. Yaroslav Marchukov and Luis Montano. Multi-agent Coordination for Data Gathering with Periodic Requests and Deliveries.
13. Thiago R. P. M. R´ubio, Henrique Lopes Cardoso, and Eug´enio Oliveira. Agent Process Modelling: When Multiagent Systems Meet Process Models and Microservices.
14. Neil Urquhart and Simon T. Powers. An Agent Based Technique for Improving Multi-stakeholder Optimisation Problems.
15. Kamila Kluska, Patrycja Hoffa-Dabrowska, and Anna Zwolankiewicz. Simulation Modeling of Milk-Run Internal Logistics System – Case Study.
16. Nuno Trindade Magessi and Luis Antunes. The Supply Chain Network Integration.
17. Pawel Pawlewski and Tomasz Kunc. Using Agent Base Simulation to Model Operations in Semi-automated Warehouse.
18. Davide Calvaresi, Ekaterina Voronova, Jean-Paul Calbimonte et al. A Startup Assessment Approach Based on Multi-Agent and Blockchain Technologies.
19. Timotheus Kampik and Amro Najjar. Integrating Multi-agent Simulations into Enterprise Application Landscapes.
20. Franciszek Seredy´nski and Jakub Gasior. Collective Behavior of Large Teams of Multi-agent Systems.
21. Pablo Pico-Valencia, Juan A. Holgado-Terriza, and Luz M. Sierra Martınez. A Preliminary Ontology for Human-Agent Collectives.
22. Qasim Khalid, Alberto Fernandez, Marin Lujak, and Arnaud Doniec. A Two-Phase Context-Aware Approach to Emergency Evacuation in Smart Buildings.
23. Javier Palanca, Andres Terrasa, Carlos Carrascosa, and Vicente Julian. SimFleet: A New Transport Fleet Simulator Based on MAS.
24. Charles Harold. Towards Self-managing Systems Through Decentralised Constraint Optimisation.
25. Pedro Filipe Oliveira, Paulo Novais, and Paulo Matos. A Multi-agent System to Manage Users and Spaces in an Adaptive Environment System.
26. Pablo Chamoso Alfonso Gonzalez-Briones, and Francisco Jose Garcýa-Penalvo. Data Analysis Platform for the Optimization of Employability in Technological Profiles.
27. Filipe Alves, Ana Maria A. C. Rocha, Ana I. Pereira, and Paulo Leit˜ao. Distributed Scheduling Based on Multi-agent Systems and Optimization Methods.
The proceedings of PAAMS 2019 conference.
Avila
La Primada Cathedral, Avila