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Call for Papers
Second Workshop on Agents and Robots for reliable Engineered Autonomy (AREA)

Co-located with ECAI 2023
Workshop: 30th October - 1st September 2023 (EXACT DAY TO BE CONFIRMED)

(Conference: 30th September - 5th October, 2023)
Kraków, Poland

Info: https://areaworkshop.github.io/AREA2023/
Contact: area.workshop.info@gmail.com

We apologise for any duplicates of this CFP that you may receive of this.

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IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission Deadline: 25th July 2023 (AoE, UTC-12)
Paper Notification: 15th August 2023 (AoE, UTC-12)
Camera Ready: 3rd September 2023 (AoE, UTC-12)
Workshop: 30th September - 1st October 2023 (exact day TBA)

SCOPE

Aim

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 has largely been adopted in applications which are primarily software based, and remains limited in applications which involve physical interaction. In parallel, robots are no longer used only in tightly constrained industrial applications but are instead being applied in an increasing number of domains, ranging from robotic assistants to search and rescue, where the working environment is both dynamic and underspecified, and may involve interactions between multiple robots and humans.

This presents significant challenges to traditional software engineering methodologies. Increased autonomy is an important route to enabling robotic applications to function in these environments, and autonomous agents and multi-agent systems are a promising approach to their engineering. As autonomy and interaction increases, the engineering of reliable behaviour becomes more challenging (both in robotic applications and in more traditional autonomous agent settings), and so there is a need for research into new approaches to verification and validation that can be integrated in the engineering lifecycle of these systems.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from the autonomous agents and the robotics communities, since combining knowledge from these two research areas may lead to innovative approaches that solve complex problems related to the verification and validation of autonomous robotic systems. Therefore, we encourage submissions that combine agents, robots, software engineering, and verification, but we also welcome papers focused on one of these areas, as long as their applicability to the other areas is explicit.

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
- Engineering reliable interactions between humans and autonomous robots or agents
- Fault tolerance, health-management, and long-term autonomy
- Neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence
- Real world applications of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems in robotics
- Runtime verification of autonomous agents and robotic systems
- Task and resource allocation in multi-robot systems
- Verification and validation of autonomous systems

SUBMISSIONS

Participants are invited to submit either:

a full length research paper — a paper 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 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 a regular paper but would benefit from discussion.

Full-length research papers must not exceed twelve (12) pages single column excluding references and appendices and short papers must not exceed six (6) pages single column excluding references and appendices. All submissions must be in English and PDF format. Each submission will receive at least three single-blind reviews. All papers should be original and not be submitted elsewhere. The review process is single-blind: submissions should not be blind, reviewers will be.

The AREA workshop is going to be an in-person event (following ECAI 2023 guidelines). At least one author of each accepted paper has to register to the workshop (via ECAI 2023 website, links and fees will be made available soon).

The proceedings of the workshop will be published with EPTCS (http://www.eptcs.org/). Formatting guidelines should follow EPTCS style: http://style.eptcs.org/

Submission link: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=area2023

After the workshop, we will consider applying for a journal special issue (journal to be selected later), where revised selected and extended papers can be published.

WORKSHOP FORMAT

This event is planned as a one day workshop, with a duration of approximately eight hours (four in the morning and four in the afternoon). Depending on the number of submissions, we may organise a discussion panel at the end. We plan to have at least two invited talks.