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Call for Papers: NEW DATE & DEADLINE EXTENSION
First Workshop on Agents and Robots for reliable Engineered Autonomy (AREA)

Co-located with ECAI 2020
Workshop: 29th August, 2020

(Conference: 31st of August - 2nd of September, 2020)
Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Info: https://area2020.github.io/
Contact: area2020.workshop@gmail.com

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*Workshop proceedings will be published with EPTCS (http://www.eptcs.org/)

IMPORTANT DATES (UPDATED DUE TO COVID-19 OUTBREAK)*

Abstract Submission (optional): 3rd May 2020
Paper Submission Deadline: 10th May 2020 (AoE, UTC-12)
Paper Notification: 10th June 2020
Camera Ready: 10th July 2020
Workshop: 29th August, 2020

* These dates are strictly related to the ECAI conference rescheduling: if further changes will happen, they will be updated consequently. We are evaluating the possibility to have remote presentations and we will update this call when it is confirmed.

SCOPE

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. 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.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from the autonomous agents, software engineering and the robotics communities, as combining knowledge coming from these 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.

INVITED SPEAKERS

To be confirmed.

TOPICS

The main topics include but are not limited to:
- 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

SUBMISSIONS

We invite you to submit:
- Full research papers that must describe authors' original research work and results.
- Case study papers that should identify lessons learned, validate theoretical results (such as scalability of methods) or describe new tools, applications, and benchmarks.
- Research ideas: AREA encourages the submissions of new research ideas in order to stimulate discussions at the workshop.

Full and case study papers are limited to 15* single-column pages; research ideas papers are limited to 7* single-column pages. All submissions must be in English and in PDF format.
*excluding references and appendices

All papers should be original and not be submitted elsewhere. The review process is single blind: submissions should not be blind, reviewers will be.
Submissions are accepted in PDF format only.

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=area2020#

We will evaluate applying for a special issue on a Journal (to be selected) where revised selected and extended papers will be published.

Kind regards, the organizers:

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)