TUC-TAC finishes at second place in the 2021 PowerTAC international competition.

After being crowned the PowerTAC champion last year (2020), the TUC-TAC intelligent software agent has finished second in this year's (2021) international PowerTAC trading agents competition. Team members this year includeδ: Stavros Orfanoudakis (graduate student), and Associate Professor Georgios Chalkiadakis in a “managerial”, advisory role).

The complete PowerTAC 2021 finals results can be found here: final results

This year's qualifiers consisted of 10 teams from around the globe, but only 7 made it to the finals. PowerTAC is held annually, and pits intelligent autonomous software agents corresponding to energy brokers against each other in simulated complex retail electricity markets. The TUC-TAC team, located at the InteLLigence Lab of the School of ECE at the Technical University of Crete, has been developing intelligent software agents to participate in trading agent competitions since 2012.

Specifically, last year TUC-TAC's astonishing performance crowned it the winner, the PowerTAC's 2021 competition was fiercer so another agent was declared the winner. However, TUC-TAC had better results in 29 out of 50 7-player games, also had better results in 49 out of 90 5-player games, and lastly had a better score in 61 out of 90 3-player games it took part in.

In short, TUC-TAC employs AI and Machine Learning techniques in order to subscribe a large number of customers (electricity consumers) to its services, while ensuring that it keeps its costs low. TUC-TAC 2021 was a tweaked version of last year's agent specifically updated to perform some damage control in some extreme scenarios.

Scholarship from the Onassis Foundation to a postgraduate student

Our postgraduate student Errikos Streviniotis was selected as one of the 12 scholarship holders of the Onassis Foundation this year for postgraduate studies in Greece. Errikos’s research lies within the Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems fields, with an emphasis on Recommender Systems (and partly Computational Social Choice). Errikos Streviniotis works under the supervision of Associate Professor Georgios Chalkiadakis. Since 1978 the Onassis Foundation grants scholarships to Greeks for doctoral and postgraduate studies in Greece and abroad, but and to foreigners for postgraduate studies and research in Greece. The total number of scholarships of the institution amounts to 7,317 up to today. For the academic year 2021-2022, the Onassis Foundation provided a total of 88 Scholarships: 76 for study abroad (41 for postgraduate and 35 for doctoral) and 12 for postgraduate studies in Greece. In accordance with the institution itself, the selection of fellows was made on the basis of academic excellence and through a meritocratic system of evaluation by top scientists, university professors in Greece and abroad and academics. The sectors in which special emphasis was placed were among among others Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, Molecular Biomedicine / Biotechnology and Computational Linguistics. The selected branches and specializations are linked to the actions of the Onassis Foundation, emphasizing innovation and revolutionary technologies. For more information you can visit the corresponding one Onassis Foundation website: link

Paper wins IEEE IST 2021 Best Student Paper award

The paper “Dual-Branch CNN for the Identification of Recyclable Materials”, with first author the InteLLigence Lab grad student Antonios Vogiatzis and co-authored by Georgios Chalkiadakis, Konstantia Moirogiorgou, George Livanos, Maria Papadogiorgaki, and Michalis Zervakis, received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Imaging Systems and Techniques."

Three papers accepted in AAMAS-2021!!

The following papers were accepted as full papers in AAMAS-2021, the 20th Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (acceptance rate ~25%): 1. Dimitrios Troullinos, Georgios Chalkiadakis, Ioannis Papamichail and Markos Papageorgiou: "Collaborative Multiagent Decision Making for Lane-Free Autonomous Driving." and 2. Ryan Beal, Georgios Chalkiadakis, Timothy Norman, and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn: "Optimising Long-Term Outcomes using Real-World Fluent Objectives: An Application to Football". Moreover, the following paper was accepted as an extended abstract: 3. "A succinct representation scheme for cooperative games under uncertainty".

AI developed at InteLLigence Lab prevails in international power trading competition

The TUC-TAC intelligent software agent has been declared the winner of this year's international PowerTAC trading agents competition. PowerTAC is held annually, and pits intelligent autonomous software agents corresponding to energy brokers against each other in simulated complex retail electricity markets. The TUC-TAC team, located at the InteLLigence Lab of the School of ECE at the Technical University of Crete, has been developing intelligent software agents to participate in trading agent competitions since 2012.

Team members this year include: Stavros Orfanoudakis (undergraduate student), Stefanos Kontos (undergraduate student), Charilaos Akasiadis (postdoctoral researcher), and Georgios Chalkiadakis (Associate Professor). The key algorithmic aspects of the TUC TAC agent that prevailed in the competition this year, were mainly developed by Stavros Orfanoudakis in the context of his engineering diploma thesis. TUC TAC employs AI and Machine Learning techniques in order to subscribe a large number of customers (electricity consumers) at its services, while ensuring that it keeps its costs low. TUC-TAC’s strategy will be presented at the "Policy, Awareness, Sustainability and Systems (PASS-2020)" workshop, which will be take place on Dec 2-3, 2020, virtually online.

Two papers accepted in AAMAS-2020!!

The following two papers were accepted as full papers in AAMAS-2020, the 19th Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (acceptance rate 23%): 1. Riccardo Sartea, Georgios Chalkiadakis, Alessandro Farinelli, and Matteo Murari: Bayesian Active Malware Analysis. 2. Ryan Beal, Georgios Chalkiadakis, Timothy Norman, and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn: Optimizing Game Tactics in Football.

Notice: Openings for two funded MSc studentships

Notice! Opportunities for prospective MSc students: We anticipate to have openings for two (2) funded MSc studentships on recommender systems, supervised by Assoc. Prof. Georgios Chalkiadakis. Please inquire via email after 20/2/2020 to arrange an interview.

Co-Chairing EUMAS-2020

Georgios Chalkiadakis is the co-Chair (with Program Chair duties) of EUMAS 2020 - the 17th European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (22-23 April 2020 @Thessaloniki, Greece). EUMAS is the annually-held designated conference of EURAMAS, the European Association for Multi-Agent Systems.

Best Student Paper award at KSEM-2019!

The paper "Extracting hidden preferences over partitions in hedonic cooperative games" (http://tiny.cc/y5dzbz ) received the Best Student Paper award of the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering, and Management (https://ksem2019.unipi.gr/)!

We are co-organizing the First AAAI Workshop on AI in Team Sports @AAAI-2020, New York, USA (February 2020)

Sports is a domain that has grown significantly over the last 20 years to become a key driver of many economies. According to a recent report, the estimated size of the global sports industry is $1.3 trillion, and has an audience of over 1 billion. As the market has grown so has the amount of data that is collected. This means that there are a number of challenging problems in sports to predict and optimise performance but, so far, such problems have largely been dealt with by domain experts (e.g., coaches, managers, scouts, and sports health experts) with basic analytics. The growing availability of datasets in sports presents a unique opportunity for the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) communities to develop, validate, and apply new techniques in the real world. In team sports, real-world data is available over long periods of time, about the same individuals and teams, in a variety of environmental contexts, thereby creating a unique live test-bed for AI and ML techniques. While research in AI for team sports has grown over the last 20 years, it is as yet unclear how they relate to each other or build upon each other as they tend to either focus on specific types of team sports or specific prediction and optimisation problems that are but one part of the whole field. Hence, this workshop will help fuel discussions in the area and bring together the AI and sports analytics communities to encourage new research that will benefit both communities and industry.

Demonstration paper competing for an IBM-funded Best Demonstration Paper Award at PAAMS-2019

The demonstration paper "AncientS-ABM: A Novel Tool for Simulating Ancient Societies" (https://goo.gl/HTAasa) was accepted for presentation at the 17th International Conference on Prestigious Applications for Multi-Agent Systems and will be competing for a 2,000 euros IBM-funded Best Demonstration Paper Award.

We are co-organizing the Twenty Years of the Price of Anarchy (20PoA) workshop!

Chania, 2-5 July 2019

We are organizing ACAI-2019!

The EurAI's (www.eurai.org) 2019 Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence will take place at ECE-TUC! Scholarships available! Check out: http://acai2019.tuc.gr

We are organizing HAISS-2019!

The 2019 Hellenic Artificial Intelligence Summer School will take place at ECE-TUC! Scholarships available! Check out: http://acai2019.tuc.gr

Three papers accepted at EUMAS-2018!

Three scientific articles, co-authored by Assoc. Prof. Georgios Chalkiadakis and some of his current (Konstantia Xenou; Athina Georgara; Thaleia Ntiniakou) and former (Michail-Angelos Papilaris) students, were accepted for presentation and publication in the proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (EUMAS-2018)

Participation in the Organizing Committee of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2019)

The Associate Professor Dr Georgios Chalkiadakis will be a member of the Organizing Committee of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems AAMAS-2019. AAMAS is the largest and most influential conference in the area of agents and multiagent systems.

Graduate student Konstantia Xenou qualified to participate in the finals of the Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) 2018

The intelligent negotiating agent “ConDAgent” developed by our graduate student Konstantia Xenou qualified to participate in the finals of the Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) 2018 / ANAC Genius Multialateral Negotiation League, to be held in Stockholm during the 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 23rd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI-2018).

Tutorial at AAMAS-2018

Assoc. Prof. Georgios Chalkiadakis will co-teach the tutorial "From Game Theory to AI in Games" (with Georgios Yannakakis - Univ. of Malta), at the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2018), Stockholm, Sweden, July 2018.

Board of Directors of the European Association for Multi-Agent Systems (EURAMAS)

Assoc. Prof. Georgios Chalkiadakis has been elected in the Board of Directors of the European Association for Multi-Agent Systems (EURAMAS) for a four years term.

Opportunity for a funded PhD at the intersection of Smart Grid, HCI, and AI/MAS research

The successful candidate will be co-supervised by Vassilis Vlachokyriakos (University of Newcastle, Open Lab) and Georgios Chalkiadakis (Technical University of Crete, InteLLigence Lab). Deadline for Applications: 29 January 2018. Please contact V. Vlachokyriakos and G. Chalkiadakis before applying, since a nomination process is involved in order for funding to be secured. Details at the link provided above.

Jul-2016   AGT@IJCAI-2016: The 2nd IJCAI Workshop on Algorithmic Game Theory

Over the past fifteen years, research in theoretical computer science (TCS), artificial intelligence (AI), and microeconomics has joined forces to tackle problems involving incentives and computation. This research field, commonly named Algorithmic Game Theory (AGT), is becoming increasingly more relevant due to the prominence of the Internet as the computing platform. The Internet pairs the concepts of market and computation, thus paving the way to cross fertilization. AI, in particular, plays a double role in this new connected world. On one hand, we have intelligent algorithms working on our behalf, buying and selling physical and virtual goods at tantalizing speed, sharing sensitive and/or private user information, and in general trying to react rationally to complex incentives. On the other hand, algorithms form the infrastructure of the net, mediating the interaction of both humans and machines, and operating as mechanisms that impose incentives. Due to the invasive presence of incentives and the importance of rationality in decision making, the research in AGT is rooted in and has applications for a number of different academic disciplines. This is witnessed by the ever growing list of contributions published in classical TCS/AI venues as well as the creation of dedicated academic conferences and journals. With this workshop, we intend to bring together the rich variety of scientists that IJCAI attracts in order to have a multidisciplinary forum within which discuss and analyze current and novel challenges that the research in AGT faces. The workshop fits particularly well with the recent IJCAI Computer and Thought Awards; indeed, in the last 20 years, 6 out of the 12 winners had worked on topics in the intersection of AI and economics/AGT: specifically, Sarit Kraus (1995), Nicholas Jennings (1999), Tuomas Sandholm (2003), Peter Stone (2007), Carlos Guestrin (2009) and Vincent Conitzer (2011).

May-2016   The 1st SETN WORKSHOP ON AI FOR THE SMART GRID (AI4SG)

The transition to a new generation of electricity networks, the so-called Smart Grid, that will be able to make efficient use of renewable energy sources, support real time and efficient demand response, as well as the large scale deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) are vital should the climate change is to be controlled. However, in order for such a transition to be successful, a number of problems must be solved. Artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-agent systems (MAS) techniques and methodologies can be instrumental in addressing sustainability problems and questions, for example to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the way we manage and allocate our natural and societal resources. This will also enrich and transform AI, by providing new challenges. Moreover, the IEEE Intelligent System Applications subcommittee has recently recognized the usefulness of Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches in solving key power system challenges. As such, an increasing number of publications in leading AI and MAS conferences and journals address Smart Grid-related problems, and a number of relevant workshops have already appeared in leading AI and MAS conferences (e.g. the AAAI-15 Workshop on Computational Sustainability, the AAAI-16 Workshop on AI for Smart Grids and Smart Buildings, and others). Against this background, the aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers from the AI, power systems and transportation communities, and function as a place for recent advancements in this field to be presented and discussed. This workshop will be dedicated to papers concerned with innovative notions, models, algorithms, techniques, methodologies, and systems, in order to address problems in the field of AI and the Smart Grids. AI4SG will be held in conjunction with the 9th Hellenic Conference on Artificial Intelligence (SETN-16).

Jul-2015   AGT@IJCAI-2015: The First IJCAI Workshop on Algorithmic Game Theory

Over the past fifteen years, research in theoretical computer science (TCS), artificial intelligence (AI), and microeconomics has joined forces to tackle problems involving incentives and computation. This research field, commonly named Algorithmic Game Theory (AGT), is becoming increasingly more relevant due to the prominence of the Internet as the computing platform. The Internet pairs the concepts of market and computation, thus paving the way to cross fertilization. AI, in particular, plays a double role in this new connected world. On one hand, we have intelligent algorithms working on our behalf, buying and selling physical and virtual goods at tantalizing speed, sharing sensitive and/or private user information, and in general trying to react rationally to complex incentives. On the other hand, algorithms form the infrastructure of the net, mediating the interaction of both humans and machines, and operating as mechanisms that impose incentives. Due to the invasive presence of incentives and the importance of rationality in decision making, the research in AGT is rooted in and has applications for a number of different academic disciplines. This is witnessed by the ever growing list of contributions published in classical TCS/AI venues as well as the creation of dedicated academic conferences and journals. With this workshop, we intend to bring together the rich variety of scientists that IJCAI attracts in order to have a multidisciplinary forum within which discuss and analyze current and novel challenges that the research in AGT faces. The workshop fits particularly well with the recent IJCAI Computer and Thought Awards; indeed, in the last 20 years, 6 out of the 12 winners had worked on topics in the intersection of AI and economics/AGT: specifically, Sarit Kraus (1995), Nicholas Jennings (1999), Tuomas Sandholm (2003), Peter Stone (2007), Carlos Guestrin (2009) and Vincent Conitzer (2011).

May-2015   The 6th Workshop on Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems (CoopMAS-2015 @ AAMAS-2015)

This is the sixth instantiation of this international workshop on cooperative games and multiagent systems, traditionally held as part of the AAMAS conference. The workshop is intended to focus on topics in cooperation in multi­agent systems, cooperative game theory, cooperative solution concepts, coalition formation, and applications. The use of cooperative game theory to study how agents should cooperate and collaborate, along with the related topic of coalition formation, has received growing attention from the multiagent systems, game theory, and electronic commerce communities. The focus of much of the current work in this area has been on exploring methods by which agents can form coalitions so as to solve problems of joint interest, make group decisions, and distribute gains arising from such cooperation. The domain of cooperative game theory is characterized by several unique features. First, the problem of finding good ways for agents to collaborate may require solving complex combinatorial problems, and is by itself an important research area. Second, in practice, collaborating agents are typically required to make collective decisions, coordinate and come up with joint plans. This requires designing appropriate methods for such interaction. Furthermore, in many such domains, agents are self-interested, i.e. each agent may have its own agenda or goal. Achieving stable and lasting collaboration in such environments requires careful planning. For example, gains from collaboration must be divided amongst the agents in certain ways, or the coalition would break apart. Finally, in certain such settings, agents must deal with human participants, who must be modelled properly in order to achieve good outcomes. As a consequence of the above features, solving problems in this domain requires designing sophisticated algorithms and mechanisms, bringing together state of the art methods from several fields. In many cases, to solve such problems one needs to take into account both computational and game-theoretic considerations, and occasionally also apply a heuristic approach. Cooperation is, and always has been, at the very core of multiagent systems research. Papers on cooperative games have been present in past AAMAS conferences (in sessions such as Game Theory, Coordination and Cooperation, Coalitions). One goal of the workshop is to gather together the researchers from the community to discuss current work in progress. The CoopMAS-2015 workshop will be an ideal environment to allow open discussion and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration. We believe such an exchange of ideas between researchers from various fields, such as game theory, artificial intelligence, combinatorial optimization and knowledge representation will make it possible to advance the state of the art in this field from both theoretical and practical perspective. We hope that the workshop’s informal atmosphere will encourage the participants to offer a wide range of methods to address problems of collaboration between agents, an will allow achieving significant progress in this area.

Oct-2014   Interact in FI-WARE Excellence Challenge 2014

he research project "Interact" will participate in the first phase of the FI-WARE Excellence Challenge to be held 13 to 17 October 2014 at Startup Weekend FI-WARE Canarias edition in the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. "Interact", already ranks among the first 38 of the 700 projects participated and funded by FI-WARE Challenge 2014 competition in Sao Paolo, Brazil and utilizes the services of cloud computing for recognition of movements using modern motion sensors. The project is part of the research activities of Intelligent Systems Laboratory, School of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete.

Jul-2014   16th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS 2014)

The 16th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS 2014) will be held at at the Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece , from the 14th July to the 18th July 2014!!!!

May-2014   5th Workshop on Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems

Assistant Professor Georgios Chalkiadakis is a co-organizer of the 5th Workshop on Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems (@AAMAS conference, Paris, France, May 2014).

Mar-2014    Future Internet Assembly | Athens 2014 | Reshaping Infrastructure For Innovation

Members of the Intelligence Systems Lab are participating in the Future Internet Assembly (FIA) 2014 event in Athens in order to demonstrate work on the FI-STAR project. FIA Athens 2014 Brings Together Key European Internet Stakeholders this March in Athens to Reshape the Future Internet Infrastructure for Innovation. In FIA Athens, the team features an exhibition of the innovative Interact project and it will demonstrate to other participants by giving a hands-on experience on the latest prototype. More information could be found on the FIA (https://www.fi-athens.eu) site.

Jan-2014   FI-WARE Challenges at Campus Party Brazil 2014

Participation of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory with Interact (Cloud Motion Sensor Services). Interact is one of the 40 out of nearly 700 submissions from all over the globe that will compete in the finals at Campus Party Brazil 2014 as stated from FI-WARE! Interact is a Future Internet (FI) project that associates person’s surrounding motion sensor input devices that manifest a moving lucidness environment for gesture recognition. The project is currently integrated in the intellicloud infrastructure of the Intelligence Systems Laboratory, Technical University of Crete. People could use their hands to express themselves, and live their lives in Smart Cities thus could use next generation motion sensors as part of their everyday activities to interact with FI applications.

Interact project highlights new business openings for SMEs that develop motion sensor applications. The project utilizes motion devices in order to offer a cloud-based service and a motion sensor API for transforming specific hand language and gestures into text and voice.

Jul-2013   CretaMASSS-2013/HAISS’13-Agents, this July (22-26), @ ECE-TUC

The first ever IFAAMAS-sponsored Multiagent Systems Summer School in Greece, CretaMASSS-2013, will be held at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the Technical University of Crete, at Chania, Crete, Greece, from the 22nd to the 26th of July 2013. We are pleased to announce that CretaMASSS-2013 is endorsed and co-organized by the Computational Social Choice ICT COST Action IC1205. The event is also endorsed by EURAMAS and ACM-SIGART. Moreover, we are pleased to announce that the event has also been endorsed by the Hellenic AI Society (EETN- Ελληνική Εταιρεία Τεχνητής Νοημοσύνης); after this endorsement, the official title of the School is “CretaMASSS-2013/HAISS’13-Agents”, since it also incarnates the 3rd, Agents-themed version of the bi-annual Hellenic Artificial Intelligence Summer School (HAISS’13-Agents). CretaMASSS-2013/HAISS’13-Agents offers a well-balanced tutorial curriculum, covering topics such as Teamwork, Information Sharing in Large MAS, Game Theory, Economies and Markets, the Smart Grid, Robotics, and Agent-Based Software Development. The event will have the form of half-day tutorials (TU), 3-4 hours long each, along with at least one panel discussion session, and along with specific short (30 mins or 1 hour long) research talks (RT).

Jun-2013   Symposium: "Perspectives in Health Education using e-tools"

Organized by the european project Leonardo da Vinci, Transfer of Innovation, e-TRAWELSPA: e-TRAINING FOR WELLNESS IN SPA SERVICES, Project No LLP-LdV-ToI-2011-RO-022, http://etrawelspa.upit.ro)

Apr-2012   Kouretes @ German Open 2012

Our RoboCup team will participate in the Standard Platform League of RoboCup German Open 2012.

Jul-2011   Kouretes @ RoboCup 2011

Our joint RoboCup team "Noxious-Kouretes" will compete in the Standard Platform League (SPL) at RoboCup 2011 in Constantinople.

Oct-2010   Kouretes RoboCup Show @ Athens Digital Week

Kouretes will be demonstrating RoboCup SPL games with the Nao humanoid robots.

Sep-2010   Kouretes @ Mikropolis

A wonder city for kids with the participation of Kouretes, our RoboCup team.

May-2010   RoboCup SPL Tournament @ SETN-2010

The 6th Hellenic Conference on Artificial Intelligence (SETN) will host a small RoboCup SPL tournament featuring our team Kouretes, Team SPQR (Italy), and Nao Team-Humboldt (Germany). Michail G. Lagoudakis will also deliver an invited talk on the Challenges of the RoboCup Competition.

Oct-2009   Kouretes RoboCup Show @ Athens Digital Week

Kouretes will be playing demonstration RoboCup SPL games against the Turkish team Cerberus.

Oct-2008   Kouretes RoboCup Show @ Festival della Creativita

Kouretes will be playing demonstration RoboCup games against the Italian team SPQR.

Oct-2008   Kouretes RoboCup Show @ Athens Digital Week

Kouretes will be playing demonstration RoboCup games against the Italian team SPQR.

Jul-2006   AAAI-06 Workshop on Auction Mechanisms for Robot Coordination

Mar-2006   Board of European Students of Technology (Chania) - Spring Course on Robot Programming

Robot Programming - Creating Intelligent Machines

Aug-2004   International Workshop on Semantic Intelligent Middleware for the Web and the Grid

Jul-2004   Third International Workshop on Agents and Peer-to-Peer Computing (AP2PC 2004)

Jun-2004   3rd MULTIMINE seminar 21-30 June 2004 on Multimedia Data Mining with emphasis on Medical - Biomedical Applications

The 3rd MULTIMINE seminar on Multimedia Data Mining was completed successfully.

Mar-2004   IX Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2004)

Sep-2003   International Workshop on Databases, Information Systems and Peer-to-Peer Computing

Jul-2003   International Workshop on Agents and Peer-to-Peer Computing (AP2PC 2003)