First Workshop on Agents and Robots for reliable Engineered Autonomy

Autonomous agents is a well-established area that has been researched for decades, both from a design and implementation viewpoint. Nonetheless, the application of agents in real world scenarios is largely adopted when logical distribution is needed, while still limited when physical distribution is necessary. In parallel, robots are no longer used only in industrial applications, but are instead being applied to an increasing number of domains, ranging from robotic assistants to search and rescue. Robots in these applications often benefit from (or require) some level (semi or full) of autonomy. Thus, multi-agent solutions can be exploited in robotic scenarios, considering their strong similarity both in terms of logical distribution and interaction among autonomous entities.

The autonomous behaviour responsible for decision-making should (ideally) be verifiable since these systems are expensive to produce and are often deployed in safety-critical situations. Thus, verification and validation are important and necessary steps towards providing assurances about the reliability of autonomy in these systems. This workshop aims to bring together researchers from the autonomous agents and the robotics communities, as combining knowledge coming from these two research areas may lead to innovative approaches that solve complex problems related with the verification and validation of autonomous robotic systems. Consequently, we encourage submissions that combine agents, robots, and verification, but we also welcome papers focused on one of these areas, as long as their applicability to the other areas is clear.

List of Topics

Agent-based modular architectures applicable to robots
Agent oriented software engineering to model high-level control in robotic development
Agent programming languages and tools for developing robotic or intelligent autonomous systems
Coordination, interaction, and negotiation protocols for agents and robots
Distributed problem solving and automated planning in autonomous systems
Fault tolerance, health-management, and long-term autonomy
Real world applications of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems in robotics
Real-time multi-agent systems
Reliable software engineering of autonomy
Runtime verification of autonomous agents and robotic systems
Task and resource allocation in multi-robot systems
Verification and validation of autonomous systems
Testing and simulation tools and techniques for autonomous or robotic systems
Self healing entities and systems

Submission Instructions

Participants are invited to submit either:

a full length research paper — a technical paper for describing technically sound, innovative ideas that can advance the engineering/reliability of agents and robots; an application/case study paper, with emphasis on robotic applications where agents techniques have been applied; a survey paper on one of the topics of interest.
a short paper — a position paper describing relevant questions and issues that the participants feel should be addressed; a demo paper describing a demonstration of an agent/robotic application, system or tool; a new idea in the field which is not ready for publication as regular paper.

Regular papers must not exceed fifteen (15) pages single column and short papers must not exceed seven (7) pages single column, excluding references and appendices. Submissions are accepted in PDF format only. Each submission will receive at least three, single-blind reviews. We are negotiating with a publisher for publishing the proceedings of the workshop. We are also in the process of applying for a special issue for the post-proceedings where revised selected papers will be published.

At least one of the authors of an accepted paper should attend the workshop to present their work.

Formatting guidelines should follow LNCS: https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
Submission link: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=area2020#

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: 1st March 2020
Paper Notification: 8th April 2020
Camera Ready: 8th May 2020
Workshop: 8th June 2020

Organisers

Rafael C. Cardoso, University of Liverpool (UK)
Angelo Ferrando, University of Liverpool (UK)
Tobias Ahlbrecht, Clausthal University of Technology (Germany)
Claudio Menghi, University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Daniela Briola, University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)

Program Committee

Gleifer Vaz Alves, Federal University of Technology – Paraná (Brazil)
Mehrnoosh Askarpour, Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
Amel Bennaceur, The Open University (UK)
Olivier Boissier, Mines Saint-Étienne (France)
Rafael H. Bordini, PUCRS (Brazil)
Jürgen Dix, Clausthal University of Technology (Germany)
Michael Fisher, University of Liverpool (UK)
Meng Guo, Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (Germany)
Nico Hochgeschwender, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (Germany)
Jomi F. Hübner, UFSC (Brazil)
Bruno Lacerda, University of Oxford (UK)
Brian Logan, University of Nottingham (UK)
Leonardo Mariani, University of Milano Bicocca (Italy)
Viviana Mascardi, Genoa University (Italy)
Ilaria Matteucci, Istituto di Informatica e Telematica, CNR (Italy)
Ettore Merlo, Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal (Canada)
Alexandre de Oliverira Zamberlan, UFN (Brazil)
John-Paul Ore, Department of Computer Science at NC State University (US)
Liliana Pasquale, University College Dublin and Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre (Ireland)
Fabrizio Pastore, SnT Centre for Security Reliability and Trust (Luxembourg)
Patrizio Pelliccione, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and University of L'Aquila (Italy)
Pedro Ribeiro, University of York (UK)
Alessandro Ricci, University of Bologna (Italy)
Oliviero Riganelli, University of Milano Bicocca (Italy)
Lavindra da Silva, University of Cambridge (UK)
Christos Tsigkanos, Technical University of Vienna (Austria)

Contact Information

For more information contact us at area2020.workshop@gmail.com