Introduction

The Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference series brings together researchers from around the world to share the latest advances in the field. It provides a high-profile and high-quality forum for research in the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multiagent systems. AAMAS 2002, the first of the series, was held in Bologna, followed by Melbourne (2003), New York (2004), Utrecht (2005), Hakodate (2006), Honolulu (2007), Estoril (2008), Budapest (2009), Toronto (2010), and Taipei (2011). These are the proceedings of AAMAS 2012, held in Valencia, in June 2012.

In addition to the general track for the AAMAS 2012 conference, submissions were invited to three special tracks: a robotics track, a virtual agents track and an innovative applications track. The aims of these special tracks were to give researchers from these areas a strong focus, to provide a forum for discussion and debate within the encompassing structure of AAMAS, and to ensure that the impact of both theoretical contributions and innovative applications were recognized. The tracks were chaired by leaders in the corresponding fields: Daniele Nardi for the robotics track, Stefan Kopp for the virtual agents track, and Klaus Fischer and Alex Rogers for the innovative applications track. The special track chairs provided critical input to selection of Program Committee (PC) and Senior Program Committee (SPC) members, and to the reviewer allocation and the review process itself. The final decisions concerning acceptance of papers were taken by the AAMAS 2012 Program Co-chairs in discussion with the special track chairs.

Only full paper submissions were solicited for AAMAS 2012. The general, robotics, virtual agents, and innovative applications tracks received 525, 75, 45, and 31 submissions respectively, for a total of 676 submissions at the submission deadline, with 671 papers going on to be reviewed (a few papers were withdrawn after the deadline).

After a thorough review and discussion process which included an opportunity for authors to respond to reviewer comments, 137 papers were selected for publication as full papers (acceptance rate 20.4%), each of which was allocated 8 pages in the proceedings and allocated 20 minutes in the program for oral presentation. Another 154 papers were selected as extended abstracts and allocated 2 pages each in the proceedings. Both full papers and extended abstracts were presented as posters during the conference. A number of accepted papers were subsequently withdrawn, leaving 136 full papers and 146 extended abstracts.

Of the submissions, 401 (59%) were indicated as being student papers, which indicates that AAMAS continues to be a nurturing environment for students. Submissions were assigned keywords, each of which was classified under one of 15 top-level topics (e.g., "Agent Cooperation"), including a new keyword "Perspectives" which attracted six submissions. Representation of top-level topics (measured by first keyword) was broad, with top counts in the areas of Economic Paradigms (113 submissions), Agent Cooperation (110), Learning and Adaptation (66), Agent Reasoning (64), Robotics (54) and Agreement Technologies (40). Looking at specific keywords (e.g., "Agent Cooperation::Distributed problem solving"), the most popular submission topics (again, measured by first keyword) were game theory (43 submissions), teamwork, coalition formation, and coordination (34), distributed problem solving (33), single agent learning (27), robot teams, multi-robot systems, robot coordination (26), planning (25), auction and mechanism design (24), and multiagent learning (21).

We thank the PC and SPC members of AAMAS 2012 for their thoughtful reviews and extensive discussions. We thank Daniele Nardi, Stefan Kopp, Klaus Fischer, and Alex Rogers for making the robotics, the virtual agents and the innovative applications tracks a success. We thank Mehdi Dastani and Dave Shield for putting together the proceedings. The program represents the intellectual motivation for researchers to come together at the conference, but the success of the event is dependent on the many other elements that make up the week --- especially the tutorials, workshops, and doctoral consortium. We thank all members of the Conference Organising Committee for their dedication, enthusiasm, and attention to detail, and wish to particularly thank Vicente Botti as Chair of the Local Organising Committee for his contributions. We also thank Dave Shield for his patience and support regarding Confmaster during every stage between the submission process and the actual AAMAS 2012 event.

Finally, we would like to thank the programme committee and senior programme committee members for their work, and the authors for submitting their work to AAMAS.

Vincent Conitzer and Michael Winikoff
AAMAS 2012 Program Co-Chairs

Wiebe van der Hoek and Lin Padgham
AAMAS 2012 General Co-Chairs