Software pervasiveness in both industry and digital society, as well as the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are continuously leading to emerging needs from both software producers and consumers. Infrastructures, software components, and applications aim to hide their increasing complexity in order to appear more human-centric. However, the potential risk from design errors, poor integrations, and time-consuming engineering phases can result in unreliable solutions that can barely meet their intended objectives. In this context, Software Engineering processes keep demanding for the investigation of novel and further refined approaches to Software Quality Assurance (SQA).

Software testing automation is a discipline that has produced noteworthy research in the last decade. The search for solutions to automatically test any concept of software is critical, and it encompasses several areas: from the generation of the test cases, test oracles, test stubs/mocks; through the definition of selection and prioritization criteria; up to the engineering of infrastructures governing the execution of testing sessions locally or remotely in the cloud.

AST continues with a long record of international scientific forums on methods and solutions to automate software testing. This year AST 2022 is the 3rd edition of a conference that was formerly organized as workshops since 2006. The conference promotes high quality research contributions on methods for software test automation, and original case studies reporting practices in this field. We invite contributions that focus on: i) lessons learned about experiments of automatic testing in practice; ii) experiences of the adoption of testing tools, methods and techniques; iii) best practices to follow in testing and their measurable consequences; and iv) theoretical approaches that are applicable to the industry in the context of AST.

The AST 2022 conference theme is “Software Quality and Trustworthy AI”. Among the others, an aim of this edition is to promote discussions on the mutual influences (both methodological and technological) between SQA and approaches that take advantage of recent improvements in the field of AI. Being Trustworthy also means at least: robustness, safety, explicability, accountability, reproducibility, privacy, legal and equitable; these are some of the said aspects covered by the theme.

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Topics of Interest
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Submissions on the AST 2022 theme are especially encouraged, but papers on other topics relevant to the automation of software test are also welcome.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:
* Test automation of large, complex system
* Metrics for testing - test efficiency, test coverage
* Tools for model-based V&V
* Test-driven development
* Standardization of test tools
* Test coverage metrics and criteria
* Product line testing
* Formal methods and theories for testing and test automation
* Test case generation based on formal and semi-formal models
* Testing with software usage models
* Testing of reactive and object-oriented systems
* Software simulation by models, forecasts of behavior and properties
* Application of model checking in testing
* Tools for security specification, models, protocols, testing and evaluation
* Theoretical foundations of test automation
* Models as test oracles; test validation with models
* Testing anomaly detectors
* Testing cyber physical systems
* Automated usability and user experience testing
* Automated Software Testing fo AI applications
* AI for Automated Software Testing

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Key Aspects
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We are interested in the following aspects related to AST:
* PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION: Analysis and specification of requirements for AST, and elicitation of problems that hamper wider adoption of AST
* METHODOLOGY: Novel methods and approaches for AST in the context of up-to-date software development methodologies
* TECHNOLOGY: Automation of various test techniques and methods for test-related activities, as well as for testing various types of software
* TOOLS AND ENVIRONMENTS: Issues and solutions in the development, operation, maintenance and evolution of tools and environments for AST, and their integration with other types of tools and runtime support platforms
* EMPIRICAL STUDIES, EXPERIENCE REPORTS, AND INDUSTRIAL CONTRIBUTIONS: Real experiences in using automated testing techniques, methods and tools in industry
* VISIONS OF THE FUTURE: Foresight and thought-provoking ideas for AST that can inspire new powerful research trends

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Submissions
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Three types of submissions are invited:
* Regular Papers: Research Paper, and Industrial Case Study (up to 10 pages plus 2 additional pages of references)
* Short Papers: Research Paper, Industrial Case Study, and Doctoral Student Research (up to 4 pages plus 1 additional page of references)
* Industrial Abstracts (up to 2 pages for all materials)

The page limit is strict (i.e., no additional pages in any case) and the submissions in PDF must strictly conform to the ACM formatting instructions.

As short papers, DOCTORAL STUDENTS working on software testing are encouraged to submit their work. AST will have an independent session to bring doctoral students working on software testing, with experts assigned to each paper together, to discuss their research in a constructive and international atmosphere, and to prepare for the defense exam. The first author in a submission must be the doctoral student and the second author the advisor. Authors of selected submissions will be invited to make a brief presentation followed by a constructive discussion in a session dedicated to doctoral students.

Industrial abstract talks are specifically conceived to promote industrial participation: We require the first author of such papers to come from industry. Authors of accepted papers get invited to give a talk with the same time length and within the same sessions as regular papers.

Submissions must be unpublished original work and should not be under review or submitted elsewhere while being under consideration. Further details about submissions are available at the conference web-site:
* https://conf.researchr.org/home/ast-2022

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Submission Site
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The submission website is:
* https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ast2022

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Proceedings
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The accepted regular and short papers, case studies, and industrial abstracts will be published in the ICSE 2022 Co-located Event Proceedings and included in the IEEE and ACM Digital Libraries.

Authors of accepted papers are required to register and present their accepted paper at the conference in order for the paper to be included in the proceedings and the Digital Libraries.

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM or IEEE Digital Libraries.

Further details about publication process are available at the conference web-site:
* https://conf.researchr.org/home/ast-2022

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Venue
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* 21-22 May 2022
* Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
* Event co-located with: ICSE 2022

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Organizing Committee
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* W. Eric Wong (General Chair)
* Guglielmo De Angelis (Program Co-Chair)
* Hyunsook Do (Program Co-Chair)
* Bao N. Nguyen (Program Co-Chair)
* Alejandra Garrido (Proceedings Chair)
* Emanuele De Angelis (Web Chair)