MIPC 2014 - The AAAI 2014 Workshop on Multiagent Interaction without Prior Coordination

This workshop will focus on models and algorithms for multiagent interaction without prior (preset) coordination (MIPC). Interaction between agents is the defining attribute of multiagent systems, encompassing problems of planning in a decentralized setting, learning other agent models, composing teams with high task performance, and selected resource-bounded communication and coordination. There is significant variety in methodologies used to solve such problems, including symbolic reasoning about negotiation and argumentation, distributed optimization methods, machine learning methods such as multiagent reinforcement learning, and others. The majority of these well studied methods depend on some form of prior coordination. Often, the coordination is at the level of problem definition, for example, learning algorithms may assume that all agents share a common learning method or prior beliefs, distributed optimization methods may assume specific structural constraints regarding the partition of state space or cost/rewards, and symbolic methods often make strong assumptions regarding norms and protocols. In realistic problems, these assumptions are easily violated ? calling for new models and algorithms that specifically address the case of ad hoc interactions. Similar issues are also becoming increasingly more pertinent in human-machine interactions, where there is a need for intelligent adaptive behaviour and assumptions regarding prior knowledge and communication are problematic. The community of researchers addressing such issues is diverse, drawing on many different speciality areas and corresponding methods. The goal of this workshop is to bring together these diverse viewpoints in an attempt to consolidate the common ground and identify new lines of attack.
Topics
The workshop will discuss research related to multiagent interaction without prior coordination, as outlined in the workshop description above. A nonexclusive list of relevant topics includes:
learning and adaptation in multiagent systems without prior coordination
agent coordination and cooperation without prior coordination
team formation and information sharing in ad hoc settings
teammate/opponent modelling and plan recognition
human-machine interaction without prior coordination
game theory/incomplete information applied to ad hoc agent coordination
Format
The one-day workshop will include keynote talks from invited speakers, sessions of oral workshop paper presentations, and an "open problems and discussion" session. We also intend to include a poster session in which participants can present their work, and we will consider developing the proceedings into a form that has broader reach, such as a journal special issue of the proceedings.