Third German Conference MATES 2005

Multi-Agent System Technologies

September 11 - 13, 2005, Koblenz, Germany University of Koblenz-Landau

Incorporating the 9th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2005)

Scientific Program

Invited Talks & Speakers

Awards & Student Travel Grants

Organisers & Sponsors

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CONTENT

PRELIMINARIES 3 SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM 6 INVITED TALKS & SPEAKERS 13 AWARDS 17 STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS 18 ORGANISERS 19 SPONSORS 22

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PRELIMINARIES Conference Venue The KI and MATES conference takes place at the campus of the University of Koblenz at the banks of the Moselle river:

University of Koblenz Universitätsstrasse 1 56070 Koblenz Germany

The KI/MATES registration office is in Building D (see next page). The MATES doctoral mentoring program takes place in room E 114. The MATES conference talks are given in the Auditorium C. For further help and information on local organisation, please call the

ICS conference helpdesk at +49-261-287-2768 (Mrs. Ruth Götten) How to Reach the Venue? Airport Frankfurt am Main: http://www.frankfurt-airport.de/ Major airport about 115 km from Koblenz. Terminal 1 is connected to train stations for regional trains (Regionalbahnhof) and long distance trains (Fernbahnhof). From Frankfurt Fernbahnhof you will have a connection (approx. 70 min) about every hour, although there are only a few direct trains to Koblenz; usually you have to change trains in Mainz. For more detailed travel information please visit: http://ki2005.uni-koblenz.de/ [local info - travel] Attending MATES Your regular registration for the KI/MATES conference includes the following benefits: • You may attend both the KI and MATES conference: The technical program of both

conferences, the social events, and attendance of each of the multiple KI conference workshops as you like. Only registration to the KI tutorials is not included.

• You will get served lunch and coffee breaks each day (September 11th to 14th) • One ticket for the conference reception/welcome by the mayor (September 12th) • One ticket for the conference dinner (September 13th) • One copy of the conference proceedings of KI or MATES according to your choice Social Events of KI/MATES • Sunday, September 11th, starting at 6 pm: Barbecue (on campus) • Monday, September 12th, starting at 6:30 pm: Conference reception (on campus) • Tuesday, September 13th, starting at 7 pm: Conference dinner (castle of Koblenz) • Optional: Wednesday, September 14th, 18:00 - 19:00: Guided city tour

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Map of the Campus of the University of Koblenz

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Welcome to MATES 2005! On behalf of the organizing board, we very cordially welcome you to the third German conference on multi-agent system technologies MATES 2005! This year’s event is co-located with the German conference on artificial intelligence KI 2005 and hosted by the university of Koblenz. The city of Koblenz is situated in the beautiful landscape of the rivers Rhine and Moselle in the German state of Rhineland-Palatine. MATES 2005 is intended to provide a rather small but highly distinguished, lively and inter-disciplinary forum for researchers, users, and developers, to present and discuss latest advances of research and development in the area of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Incorporating the CIA 2005 workshop, the topics of interest, talks, and discussions additionally cover the whole fields of intelligent information agents and systems for the Internet, Web, and semantic Web. Based on the 54 regular paper submissions we received, we did put an attractive technical program together. It includes the doctoral students mentoring program, 24 scientific talks and posters addressing a variety of subjects, demonstration of selected running agent systems, and both the MATES 2005 best paper and the CIA 2005 system innovation awards giving. Keeping with tradition, we are also offering you four invited talks of excellence that will be given by leading experts in the fields of AI (Luc Steels), agent-based computing (John-Jules Meyer), and information systems (Karl Aberer, Steffen Staab). Finally, our particular thanks go to the local organisation team in Koblenz for providing a wonderful, comfy place, and ingenious arrangement of social events. We are very much looking forward to an inspiring MATES event, and hope that you will enjoy both its scientific and social program! Mike Huhns, Matthias Klusch (General Co-Chairs) Torsten Eymann, Franziska Klügl and Winfried Lamersdorf (Program Co-Chairs)

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SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM

Sunday, September 11, 2005

13:30 – 14:30 Lunch

14:30 – 14:45 Opening of MATES 2005 Doctoral Mentoring Program Torsten Eymann ___________________________________________________________________

14:45 – 16:15 PhD Project Presentations and Discussion (1) 14:45 - 15:15 Christian Anhalt: Non-secret-based Payment Systems for Mobile Agents in open, service-oriented Environments. (Mentor Ingo J. Timm) 15:15 - 15:45 Andreas Schweiger: Distributed Systems in Health Care. (Mentor Bernhard Bauer) 15:45 - 16:15 Rene Peinl: Multi agent-based simulation of knowledge transfers in organizations exemplified by an IT service company. (Mentor Franziska Klügl) ___________________________________________________________________

16:15 – 16:30 Coffee Break

___________________________________________________________________

16:30 – 18:00 PhD Project Presentations and Discussion (2) 16:30 - 17:00 Rene Schumann: A coordination protocol for autonomous planning-authorities forming a production network. (Mentor Torsten Eymann) 17:00 - 17:30 Christoph Schmitz: Ontologies as a Base Technology for Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Management. (Mentor Karl Aberer) 17:30 - 18:00 Martin Fehler: Calibration of complex agent-based simulations. (Mentor Adelinde Uhrmacher) ___________________________________________________________________ 18:00 Barbecue on Campus

Jointly with participants of KI 2005 Conference Workshops and Tutorials

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Monday, September 12, 2005

9:00 Welcome to MATES 2005 Scientific Program Matthias Klusch, Mike Huhns

9:15 – 10:15 MATES Invited Talk I [page 12] On the Convergence of Retrieval, Structured Search and Trust in Distributed Systems Karl Aberer (EPF Lausanne, Switzerland) ___________________________________________________________________

10:15 – 10:30 Coffee Break

10:30 - 12:00 Session 1a "Workflows and Group Interaction" 10:30 - 11:00 Enacting the Distributed Business Workflows Using BPEL4WS on the Multi–Agent Platform. Li Guo, Dave Robertson, Yun–Heh Chen–Burger 11:00 - 11:30 BSCA–P: Privacy Preserving Coalition Formation Bastian Blankenburg and Matthias Klusch 11:30 - 12:00 Towards Service Coalitions: Coordinating the Commitments in a Workflow Jiangbo Dang, Michael N. Huhns ___________________________________________________________________

12:00 - 12:15 Short Break

12:15 – 12:45 Session 1b "Poster Presentations" (10 minutes for each poster advertisement; slides are to be copied on central WinXP presentation machine via USB stick during previous break) Collaborative Agent–based Knowledge Support for Empirical and Knowledge–intense Processes. Andrea Freßmann, Kerstin Maximini, Rainer Maximini, Thomas Sauer A Framework based on Multi–Agent Systems for Information Retrieval through Mobile Devices. Angela Carrillo Ramos, Jérôme Gensel, Marlène Villanova–Oliver, Hervé Martin CASCOM: Context–Aware Service Co–ordination in Mobile P2P Environments Heikki Helin, Matthias Klusch, Antonio Lopes, Alberto Fernandez, Michael Schumacher, Heiko Schuldt, Federico Bergenti, Ari Kinnunen

12:45 – 14:00 Lunch

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___________________________________________________________________

14:00 – 15:00 MATES Invited Talk II [page 13] Semantic Methods for Peer-To-Peer Query Routing Steffen Staab (U Koblenz, Germany) ___________________________________________________________________

15:00 – 15:15 Coffee Break ___________________________________________________________________

15:15 – 16:45 Session 2 "Reasoning about Utility" 15:15 - 15:45 Modeling Minority Games with BDI Agents – A Case Study Wolfgang Renz und Jan Sudeikat 15:45 - 16:15 A Goal Deliberation Strategy for BDI Agent Systems Alexander Pokahr, Lars Braubach, and Winfried Lamersdorf 16:15 - 16:45 Estimating Utility–Functions for Negotiating Agents: Using Conjoint Analysis as an Alternative Approach to Expected Utility Measurement Marc Becker, Hans Czap, Malte Poppensieker, Alexander Stotz

16:45 – 17:00 Short Break ___________________________________________________________________

17:00 – 18:15 Session 3 "The Shorts" (Slides are to be copied on central WinXP presentation machine via USB stick during previous break) 17:00 - 17:15 A Direct Reputation Model for VOs Formation Arturo Avila–Rosas 17:15 - 17:30 Realising Reusable Agent Behaviours with ALPHA R. Collier, R. Ross, G. M. P. O’Hare 17:30 - 17:45 Multi–Agent System Specification using TCOZ Tim Miller and Peter McBurney 17:45 - 18.00 ABACO, Coordination of Autonomous Entities René Schumann and Jürgen Sauer

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18:00 - 18:15 Agent–based simulation for testing control software of high bay warehouses Cornelia Triebig, Tanja Credner, Peter Fischer, Titus Leskien, Andreas Deppisch, Stefan Landvogt ___________________________________________________________________ University Campus - Building D, Repräsentationsraum der Universität

18:30 KI & MATES Conference Reception

Welcome by the Mayor Dr. Eberhard Schulte-Wissermann and the Staatssekretär (Parliamentary Permanent Under-Secretary of Rhineland-Palatine) Roland Haertel

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Tuesday, Sept 13, 2005 ___________________________________________________________________

9:00 – 10:00 MATES/KI Joint Invited Talk [page 14] Emergent Semantics in Multi-Agent Systems Luc Steels (SONY Computer Science Lab Paris and Free University of Brussels (VUB)) ___________________________________________________________________________

10:00 – 10:15 Coffee Break ___________________________________________________________________

10:15 – 12:15 Session 4 "The Dynamics of Knowledge" 10:15 - 10:45 Reconciling Agent Ontologies for Web Service Applications Jingshan Huang, Rosa Laura Zavala Gutiérrez, Benito Mendoza García, and Michael N. Huhns 10:45 - 11:15 An Agent–Based Knowledge Acquisition Platform David Sánchez, David Isern, Antonio Moreno 11:15 - 11:45 An Agent Architecture for Ensuring Quality of Service by Dynamic Capability Certification Thorsten Scholz, Ingo J. Timm, Rainer Spittel 11:45 - 12:15 Engineering a Multi Agent Platform with Dynamic Semantic Service Discovery and Invocation Capability Oguz Dikenelli, Özgür Gümüs, Ali Murat Tiryaki, Geylani Kardas

12:15 – 13:30 Lunch ___________________________________________________________________

13:30 – 14:30 MATES Invited Talk III [page 15] Programming Cognitive Agents John-Jules C. Meyer (U Utrecht, The Netherlands) ___________________________________________________________________

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14:30 – 15:00 Session 5a "System Demonstration I" Nominees for the CIA System Innovation Award 2005 14:30 - 14:45 CAKE: Collaborative Agent-Based Knowledge Support Engine Andrea Freßmann, Kerstin Maximini, Rainer Maximini, Thomas Sauer, Ralph Bergmann 14:45 - 15:00 GruSMA: An Agent-Based Knowledge Acquisition Platform David Sánchez Ruenes, David Isern, Antonio Moreno

15:00 – 15:15 Coffee Break

15:15 – 15:45 Session 5b "System Demonstration II" Nominee for the CIA System Innovation Award 2005 15:15 - 15:30 Bibster: Semantic P2P Query Routing Jeen Broekstra, Marc Ehrig, Peter Haase, Frank van Harmelen, Maarten Menken, Peter Mika, Michal Plechawski, Pawel Pyszlak, Björn Schnizler, Ronny Siebes, Steffen Staab, Christoph Tempich 15:30 - 15:45 Discussion of demonstrated systems; Public voting ___________________________________________________________________

15:45 – 16:45 Session 6 "Methodology and Simulation" 15:45 - 16:15 Towards a Formal Methodology for Designing Multi–Agent Applications Amira Regayeg, Ahmed Hadj Kacem, and Mohamed Jmaiel 16:15 - 16:45 LEADSTO: a Language and Environment for Analysis of Dynamics by SimulaTiOn Tibor Bosse, Catholijn M. Jonker, Lourens van der Meij, Jan Treur

16:45 – 17:00 Short Break

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___________________________________________________________________

17:00 – 18:00 Session 7 "Agent Tools and Agent Education" 17:00 - 17:30 Towards a Distributed Tool Platform Based on Mobile Agents Kolja Lehmann, Lawrence Cabac, Daniel Moldt, and Heiko Rölke 17:30 - 18:00 The Distributed Weighing Problem: A Lesson in Cooperation without Communication Tibor Bosse, Mark Hoogendoorn, and Catholijn M. Jonker

18:00 – 18:15 Closing of MATES Scientific Program • Best Paper Award and System Innovation Award Giving • Announcement of MATES 2006 and CIA 2006 19:00 KI & MATES Conference Dinner in the castle of Koblenz (Kurfürstliches Schloss zu Koblenz)

A bus to this event will leave at 18:30 from a stop on campus.

Wednesday, Sept 14, 2005 18:00 - 19:00 Guided city tour through the historic centre of Koblenz This event is optional: If you are interested in participating, please indicate your intention at the conference registration desk as soon as possible.

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Invited Talks & Speakers

Monday, September 12, 9:15 - 10:15 On the Convergence of Retrieval, Structured Search and Trust in Distributed Systems Karl Aberer (EPF Lausanne, Switzerland) The database and information retrieval communities have long been recognized as being irreconcilable. Today, however, we witness a surprising convergence of the techniques used by both communities in decentralized, large-scale environments. The newly emerging field of reputation based trust management, borrowing techniques from both communities, best demonstrates this claim. We argue that incomplete knowledge and increasing autonomy of the participating entities are the driving forces behind this convergence, pushing the adoption of probabilistic techniques typically borrowed from an information retrieval context. We argue that using a common probabilistic framework would be an important step in furthering this convergence and enabling a common treatment and analysis of distributed complex systems. We will provide a first sketch of such a framework and illustrate it with examples from our previous work on information retrieval, structured search and trust assessment.

Karl Aberer is full professor for distributed information systems at EPFL, director of the Swiss National Centre for Mobile Information and Communication Systems (NCCR MICS), and member of the Swiss Research and Technology Council (SWTR). His research interests cover P2P systems and Web retrieval, mobile information and trust management, emergent semantics, and distributed workflow. Contact him at karl.aberer@epfl.ch

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Monday, September 12, 14:00 - 15:00 Semantic Methods for Peer-To-Peer Query Routing Steffen Staab (U Koblenz, Germany) Knowledge sharing in a virtual organization requires a knowledge life cycle including knowledge provisioning, terminology alignment, determination of resource location, query routing, and query answering. In this talk we focus on the issue of determining a relevant resource in a completely decentralized setting such as necessitated by peer-to-peer knowledge management in virtual organizations. Requirements for this task include, e.g., full autonomy of peers as well as full control over own resources and therefore preclude prominent resource location and query routing schemes such as distributed hash tables. In order to tackle given requirements we use a resource location and query routing approach that exploits social metaphors of topical experts and experts' experts as well as semantic similarity of queries and information sources. The approach has been fully tested in simulation runs and partially implemented in the system Bibster (http://bibster.semanticweb.org).

Steffen Staab is professor for databases and information systems at the university of Koblenz (Germany). His research interests are in the fields of semantic Web, knowledge management, emergent semantics, metadata, semantic interoperability, text mining. Contact him at staab@uni-koblenz.de

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Tuesday, September 13, 9:00 - 10:00 Emergent Semantics in Multi-Agent Systems Luc Steels (SONY Computer Science Lab Paris, and Free University of Brussels) This talk presents recent research showing how a population of distributed autonomous agents might be able to self-organise a communication system without central control nor prior design. The agents engage in situated language games in which they negotiate not only the linguistic conventions they are going to use in their communication but also the underlying ontologies. I will also discuss applications of this techniques for peer-to-peer information exchange.

Luc Steels is professor of computer science (at the moment part-time) at the Free University of Brussels (VUB), founder and director (from 1983) of the VUB Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and co-founder and chairman (from 1990 until 1995) of the VUB Computer Science Department (Faculty of Sciences). His research interests cover the whole field of artificial intelligence, including natural language, vision, robot behavior, learning, cognitive architecture, and knowledge representation. Contact him at steels@arti.vub.ac.be

This talk by Luc Steels is a joint invited talk of the KI 2005 and the MATES 2005 conference.

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Tuesday, September 13, 13:30 - 14:30 Programming Cognitive Agents John-Jules C. Meyer (U Utrecht, The Netherlands) Although there is a lot of theory around about cognitive agents since the seminal work by researchers such as Bratman, Cohen & Levesque, Rao & Georgeff, practice of programming 'truly' cognitive agents is still in its infancy. Of course, several architectures have been proposed and even occasionally been implemented, and there is a prospect of many potential applications of agent-based systems, but is there a truly systematic way of programming agents with cognitive / mental attitudes such beliefs, desires, intentions, goals, plans, commitments, emotions...? We believe that for this dedicated agent-oriented languages are needed. A number of these have been developed in the last decade or so. But programming in them is still hard. Is there a methodology for agent-oriented programming? Can one structure agent programs better making use of cognitive notions? And how to verify that an agent program is correct? And how is this combined with programming *multi*-agent systems and agent societies where coordination of these autonomous agents and more generally social notions such as norms seem most important? In this talk a number of these issues will be discussed on the basis of work done in Utrecht around the agent language 3APL.

John-Jules Meyer is professor of computer science at the university of Utrecht (The Netherlands) where he is heading the intelligent systems group. Contact him at jj@cs.uu.nl

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Awards

MATES/CIA 2005 Best Paper Award

The MATES 2005 conference and CIA 2005 workshop jointly issue a Best Paper Award. Only submissions to the workshop are eligible for nomination and are evaluated by the program committee, sponsors, and co-chairs. This award is sponsored by Siemens AG, Germany. The winning price is 300 Euros.

CIA 2005 System Innovation Award

This year's award is sponsored by Whitestein Technologies, Switzerland.

The winning prize is 500 Euros.

The three top-ranked finalists have been selected by the program committee, sponsors, and co-chairs.

Each of the nominated agent systems has to be demonstrated live (running prototype) to the public, and is evaluated against the following criteria: core functionality, main techniques used, experimental results, innovative features in comparison to other existing systems. The final decision on the winner of this year's award depends on the result of the public voting of conference attendees, the voting of the program committee, and the final vote of the co-chairs after the public system demonstration in sessions 5a and 5b on September 13, 2005.

The award giving ceremony is scheduled for the closing session of the MATES 2005 conference on September 13, 2005, 18:00 - 18:15.

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Student Travel Grants The European Coordination Action for Agent-Based Computing (AgentLink III) provides limited financial support to limited number of students who are co-authors of accepted papers to give their presentation at the MATES 2005 conference. The MATES 2005 student travel grant holder are • Tanja Credner, Würzburg, Germany • Özgür Gümüs, Bornova-Izmir, Turkey • Jan Sudeikat, Hamburg, Germany

www.agentlink.org

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Organisers General Co-Chairs

Matthias Klusch is research fellow and senior researcher of the German research center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). He is head of the R&D team on intelligent information agents and systems at DFKI, since 1999. Dr. Klusch co-founded the German conference series on multi-agent system technologies (MATES) in 2003, and chairs the annual international workshop series on cooperative information agents (CIA) since 1997, and is program co-chair of the IEEE conference on intelligent agent technology (IAT 2006). Among others, he coordinated the AgentLink European SIG on intelligent information agents from 1998 to 2003. Dr. Klusch is on the editorial board of the international journal of knowledge and information systems, the journal of cooperative information systems, journal of Web intelligence and agent systems, and the journal of Web Semantics. He has been program committee member for numerous international conferences and workshops, and is assigned project reviewer for science funding organizations in China, Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland. He is co-/author of numerous technical papers, and co-/editor of 18 books. He is member of the IEEE CS, GI, and ACM. Contact him at klusch@dfki.de; www.dfki.de/~klusch Michael N. Huhns is professor of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina, where he also directs the Center for Information Technology. He is the author of over 180 technical papers in machine intelligence and an editor of the books Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Volumes I and II and Readings in Agents. Dr. Huhns is an associate editor for IEEE Intelligent Systems, the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, and IEEE Internet Computing. He is on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, the Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, and the Journal of Emerging Mechanical Engineering Technology. He is a founder and board member for the International Foundation for Cooperative Information Systems, and the International Foundation for Multi-Agent Systems, for which he is also the Treasurer. He has chaired and served on the advisory boards and program committees for numerous international conferences and workshops. Contact him at huhns@sc.edu, www.cse.sc.edu/~huhns/

Program Co-Chairs

Torsten Eymann is Professor for Information Systems at University of Bayreuth, Germany. Before, he was with the Institute for Computer Science and Social Research of the Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg. His research topics include Multiagent Systems, Automated Negotiation, Agent-based Computational Economics, Grid Computing, Autonomic Computing, and Ubiquitous Computing. He studied information systems in Kiel and Mannheim (Diploma) and received a PhD from Freiburg in 2000. In 2001, he received a dissertation award of the Alcatel SEL foundation for the best german dissertation in information systems. Together with Deutsche Telekom (T-Systems), he published the technology study "Digital Business Agents" in 2000. He is author of 2 books and several journal and conference papers, some of which received best paper awards. Projects include CATNETS (funded by the European Union's Future and Emerging Technologies Open Programme, 2004-2007) and EMIKA (funded by the German Research Foundation, 2002-2004). For longer research stays he has visited Hitachi's System Development Labs, Yokohama, Japan, and British Telecom Labs, Martlesham Heath, UK. He co-organizes workshops and conferences on Multiagent Systems (MATES), Grid Computing (SGT), and Autonomic Computing (SAACS). Contact him at Torsten.Eymann@uni-bayreuth.de, http://wi.oec.uni-bayreuth.de/teymann.0.html

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Franziska Klügl is currently Assistant Professor (Habilitandin) at the Dept. of Artificial Intelligence and Applied Computer Science at the University of Würzburg. There, she established and still leads the working group on multi-agent simulation. She has worked in this area of multi agent systems for simulation modelling since 1995 starting the development of the SeSAm framework (www.simsesam.de) that combines end-user programming, high-level agent behavior description with efficient simulation techniques. In 2000 she received a PhD from the University of Würzburg (Germany). She is member of the editorial board of the German AI magazine and of the board of the GI-SIG on DAI. Her research interests contain multi-agent simulation with applications in different domains like socio-biology, geography, traffic simulation or test environments for the control software of high bay warehouses. Contact her at kluegl@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de, http://ki.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~kluegl/ Winfried Lamersdorf is full Professor in the Department of Computer Science of Hamburg University and head of the unit for Distributed and Information Systems there, with specific responsibilities in the area of Distributed Systems. From 1974 to 1980 he studied computer science at the Technical University of Munich and University of Hamburg, and spent a year as guest scientist at the University of Maryland, USA, in collaboration with the 'National Institute of Standards and Technology' (NIST) in Washington/DC. In 1985 he received his doctorate for work in the field of database languages and semantic data models. From 1983 to 1990 he was a staff-member in the 'Distributed Applications' research group at the IBM Scientific Center (WZH, 1983/84) and in the IBM 'European Networking Centre' (ENC, 1984-90) in Heidelberg. There he started concentrating on Open Systems communication in general, and communication support for database and distributed applications specifically. Since then, he has lead several research projects financed from various sources and (co-) authored and edited numerous scientific papers as well as a number of books. After calls to chairs at the Technical University Braunschweig in 1991 and to Kiel University in 2004 he accepted respective offers to stay at Hamburg university. Contact him at lamersd@informatik.uni-hamburg.de, http://vsis-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/members/info.php/4

Local Organisation Team The local organisation of MATES 2005 in Koblenz including registration and social events is performed by the local organisation team of the International Conference Summer (ICS) / KI 2005 conference:

Gerd Beuster Sibille Burkhardt Ruth Goetten Vladimir Klebanov Tom Kleemann Jan Murray Oliver Obst Alex Sinner Christoph Wernhard

MATES Steering Committee

Hans-Dieter Burkhard (HU Berlin, D) Stefan Kirn (U Hohenheim, D) Matthias Klusch (DFKI Saarbrücken, D) Jörg Müller (TU Clausthal, D) Rainer Unland (U Duisburg-Essen, D) Gerhard Weiss (TU Munich, D)

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Program Committee

Karl Aberer, EPF Lausanne, Switzerland Elisabeth Andre, U Augsburg, D Bernhard Bauer, U Augsburg, D Wolfgang Benn, TU Chemnitz, D Monique Calisti, Whitestein AG, Zürich, CH Cristiano Castelfranchi , CNR, Italy Thomas Christaller, Fraunhofer AIS, D Rosaria Conte, NRC Rome, IT Stephen Cranefield, U Otago, New Zealand Mehdi Dastani, U Utrecht, The Netherlands Yves Demazeau, LEIBNIZ/IMAG, France Jörg Denziger, U Calgary, Canada Klaus Fischer, DFKI Saarbrücken, D Ana Garcia Serrano, TU Madrid, Spain Fausto Giunchiglia, U Trento, Italy Marie-Pierre Gleizes, IRIT Toulouse, France Rune Gustavsson, Blekinge TH, Sweden Heikki Helin, TeliaSonera Helsinki, Finland Heinrich Hussmann, U Munich, D Toru Ishida, U Kyoto, Japan Stefan Kirn, U Hohenheim, D Ryszard Kowalczyk, TU Swinburne, Australia Daniel Kudenko, U York, UK Jürgen Lind, Agentlab, München, D Gabriela Lindemann, HU Berlin, D Jiming Liu, Hongkong Baptist U, China Stefano Lodi, U Bologna, Italy Beatriz Lopez, U Girona, Spain Jörg Müller, TU Clausthal, D Heinz-Jürgen Müller, Berufsakademie Mannheim, D Werner Nutt, Heriot-Watt U Edinburgh, UK Andrea Omicini, U Bologna, Italy Sascha Ossowski, U Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain Michal Pechoucek, TU Prague, Czech Republic Paolo Petta, Medical University of Vienna & OFAI, Austria Stefan Poslad , Queen Mary U London, UK Frank Puppe, U Würzburg, D Alois Reitbauer, ProFACTOR, Austria Franz Rothlauf, U Mannheim, D Marie-Christine Rousset, U Paris-Sud, France Heiko Schuldt, UMIT Innsbruck, Austria Onn Shehory, IBM Research, Israel John Shepherdson, British Telecom, UK Steffen Staab, U Koblenz, D Rudi Studer, U Karlsruhe, D Ingo Timm, TZI U Bremen, D Robert Tolksdorf , TU Berlin, D Lin Uhrmacher, U Rostock, D Rainer Unland, U Duisburg-Essen, D Thomas Uthmann , Johannes-Gutenberg U Mainz, D Wiebe Van der Hoek, U Liverpool, UK Laszlo Zsolt Varga, MTA SZTAKI, Hungary Daniel Veit, U Karlsruhe, D Ning Zhong, Maebashi IT, Japan

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Sponsors

We very gratefully acknowledge the financial support of this conference by the following co-sponsors.

Whitestein Technologies is a young international IT company, specialized in the design and development of advanced agent-based systems, applications, and technologies, combined and well integrated with other advanced information and communication technologies (eg. mobile

wireless computing) and current state-of-the-art technologies (eg. Java J2EE). It was founded in January 1999 with the mission to become a leading provider of advanced software agent technologies, products, solutions, and services for various applications and industries. We strongly believe that agent-based technologies and agent-oriented software engineering methodologies will be among the key concepts of a next generation of distributed information systems and network infrastructures, in particular in combination with other leading-edge technologies such as web services and mobile wireless computing. However, based on our hands-on experience in the real IT-world, we also know that software agent technologies will only thrive in the marketplace if they reach industry-grade quality and applicability, and are well integrated with “traditional” technologies and products. Consequently, Whitestein pursues a well-focused, integrated and balanced approach on parallel paths in order to realize the agents technologies’ potential for better solutions and thus additional customer benefits and profits. Technology Research: academic partnerships and international research projects; systematic exploration and analysis of relevant technologies and architectures; prototyping and proof of concepts; publishing; contributions to standardization bodies. Technology Development: industrial partnerships and joint ventures; development of conceptual frameworks; development of mostly industry-agnostic (horizontal) technology products and solutions. Technology Application: development of industry-specific (vertical) products and solutions, including the development and integration of customer-specific applications. Technology Consulting: know-how transfer to customers and partners; management consulting and professional support services; training and education; conferences and events. http://www.whitestein.com/

AgentLink III is the premier Co-ordination Action for Agent Based Computing, funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Program. Launched on 1st January, 2004, it provides support for the network of European researchers and developers with a common interest in agent technology through events aimed at industry outreach, and standardisation issues, as well as providing support for academic events and providing resources through the AgentLink Portal.

http://www.agentlink.org http://www.gi-ev.de http://www.siemens.com

© M Klusch, DFKI GmbH Saarbrücken, Germany, 2005