A special issue of Cognitive System Research is planned for the selected papers accepted by the Workshop (to be edited by Charles Ling, Vasant Honavar, and Ron Sun).
 

Background

Computational models of cognitive agents  that incorporate aspects of reactive,  deliberative, goal-driven, adaptive, autonomous,learning,  communicative, competitive, and collaborative behaviors and multi-agent  interaction provide an attractive paradigm for addressing foundational questions in  Cognitive Science.

Artificial intelligence, in its early days, started out with the goal of designing intelligent agents. However, faced with the enormous complexity of the task, the focus soon shifted to modelling specific aspects of intelligence, often in highly restricted domains. In recent years, some researchers have begun to focus on putting the pieces together with the goal of designing intelligent agents. There is also a growing interest in multi-agent systems that address aspects of coordination and communication among groups of agents.

On the other hand, historically, the main focus of research in Cognitive Science has been on specific components of cognition (e.g., perception,  memory, learning, language). Recent developments in computational modelling of cognitive  agents and multi-agent systems provide new avenues for addressing foundational questions in  Cognitive Science

Against this background, the workshop seeks to bring together cognitive scientists with diverse backgrounds and expertise to discuss research problems and exchange recent results that have broad implications for understanding cognition in computational terms at the whole systems level. We invite full papers, extended abstracts, or position papers on all aspects of cognitive agents and multi-agent  interaction  including, but not limited to:

• Cognitive Architectures (including alternative formalisms for modelling reactive, deliberative, autonomous, rational,  learning, communicating agents).
• Ontologies, knowledge representations, and inference for cognitive  agents and multi-agent systems (including reasoning about space, time, and behaviors).
• Multi-agent organizations (e.g., democracies, economies, societies, and associated coordination structures and mechanisms).
• Learning and adaptation in cognition (including learning in  dynamic environments consisting of  active, distributed information  sources).
• Language and communication (signs, signals, symbols,  syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of communication among  cognitive agents).
• Multi-agent coordination (cooperation, competition etc. in multi-agent societies).
• Computational abstractions, languages,  and tools  for modelling  cognitive agents and multi-agent interaction.
• Evolution  of cognitive  behavior .

Important Dates and Deadlines

• Deadline for submission of full papers (up to 6 pages) or abstract (1 page): May 15, 2001.
• Notification of acceptance: May 31, 2001.
• Deadline for receipt of camera-ready papers: June 30, 2001

Electronic submission (postscript, pdf, or MS Word) is strongly encouraged. Each paper will be refereed for technical soundness, relevance, significance, and clarity of presentation.

Organizers

Prof. Vasant Honavar
Department of Computer Science
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
honavar@cs.iastate.edu
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~honavar/

Prof. Charles Ling
Department of Computer Science
University of Western Ontario
ling@csd.uwo.ca
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/ling

Prof. Ron Sun
CECS Department
University of Missouri-Columbia
201 Engineering Building West
Columbia, MO 65211-2060
rsun@cecs.missouri.edu
http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun