Call for Participation: Maritime Shipping Competition (MSC) at the 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2025)

Join us in pushing the boundaries of digital solutions for maritime transport and be part of an exciting challenge at AAMAS 2025!

We are excited to invite researchers and practitioners to participate in the Maritime Shipping Competition (MSC), hosted as part of the 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2025), with final presentations taking place on 19th or 20th of May 2025 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. This competition provides an opportunity to showcase and compare innovative approaches in auction bidding and transpiration scheduling.

About the Competition

Maritime transportation is one of the backbones of international trade and supply chains. While the sector has shown growth in recent years, maritime transportation is also facing critical challenges around geopolitical tensions, climate change and disruptions at key chokepoints, e.g. the Panama and the Suez Canals. Shipping companies are investigating digital solutions, including digital twin and multi-agent technologies, to improve fleet utilisation, e.g. via transportation scheduling, to reduce costs but also greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these digital solutions are in their infancy and could benefit from innovative applications of approaches from multiagent system, artificial intelligence, scheduling, auction bidding and related technologies.

The competition will require to develop a software agent in Python that operates the trade auctions and fleet transmutation scheduling for a maritime shipping company. Participating will allow you to compete for prizes.

We will run a warm-up competition to get early feedback and a final competition with results being presented at AAMAS.

Participation and Timeline

We welcome contributions from teams up to five people across academia, industry, and independent research communities. Participants are required to submit an agent implemented in Python and a short 2-4 page report.

• Warm-up Competition Submission Deadline: 24/03/2025
• Warm-up Competition Results Release: 07/04/2025
• Competition Submission Deadline: 28/04/2025
• Announcement of Presentation Slots: 05/05/2025
• Competition Results Presentation and Winner Announcement: 19 or 20/05/2025

Submissions should be made via msc.aamas2025@soton.ac.uk, following the instructions provided at https://jbuerman.github.io/Maritime-Shipping-Competition-AAMAS2025/.

All submission dates are 23:59h AoE (Anywhere on Earth).

Competition Session at AAMAS

All teams will have the opportunity to present their agent and strategy at the session at AAMAS 2025. A presentation will be necessary to compete for the innovative ideas prize.

Awards & Recognition

The competition will feature certificates and performance based prizes and a prize for an innovative ideas.

The first three teams according to the average tournament ranking will receive a certificate and a cash prize. The overall winner will receive £500, the runner-up will receive £300 and the team placing third will receive £100.

Additionally, the team with the most interesting strategy agent prize will receive £100. This prize will be judged on the day of the competition at AAMAS after the presentations.

How to Get Involved

To participate, please visit https://jbuerman.github.io/Maritime-Shipping-Competition-AAMAS2025/ for detailed guidelines. For any inquiries, contact us at msc.aamas2025@soton.ac.uk.

Organising Committee

• Enrico Gerding, University of Southampton, UK
• Enrico Marchioni, University of Southampton, UK
• Baharak Rastegari, University of Southampton, UK
• Jan Buermann, University of Southampton, UK

The competition and prizes are made possible thanks to the Centre for Maritime Futures at the University of Southampton with support from Shell plc.