Proceedings

The AREA 2023 proceedings are available at https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~eptcs/content.cgi?AREA2023

Workshop Programme

Time in CEST timezone.

Long papers: 25 min (20 min + 5 min Q&A)
Short papers: 15 min (12 min + 3 min Q&A)

= short papers
= long papers

09:00	Welcome
09:05	Invited talk: Viviana Mascardi, Associate Professor, University of Genoa Title: Talking agents in the virtual world Abstract: What do chatbots and the metaverse have to do with reliability, cognitive agents, and robotic applications? ... In this talk I will explore the intriguing connections among them, presenting a small scale prototype of (reliable) "talking agents in the virtual world". Short Bio: Viviana Mascardi is Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Genova (UNIGE), Italy, DIBRIS (Dipartimento di Informatica, Bioingegneria, Robotica e Ingegneria dei Sistemi). She authored almost 30 papers in International and National Journals (including top ranked journals like ACM TOSEM and IEEE TKDE), 90 papers in International Book Chapters and International Conferences and Workshop Proceedings (including top ranked conferences like AAMAS, with CORE rating A*), and 30 papers in Italian Conferences and Workshop Proceedings. Her research interests include Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Multiagent Systems (MAS), Runtime Verification (RV), MAS modeling, verification, rapid prototyping using Computational Logic, semantic interoperability via Semantic Web technologies. Read more
09:50	Session 1: Robotics Online Proactive Multi-Task Assignment with Resource Availability Anticipation Déborah Conforto Nedelmann, Jerôme Lacan and Caroline Chanel From Robot Self-Localization to Global-Localization: An RSSI Based Approach Athanasios Lentzas and Dimitris Vrakas
10:30	Coffee Break
11:00	Session 2: Verification Safe and Robust Robot Behavior Planning via Constraint Programming Jan Vermaelen and Tom Holvoet Reasoning about Intuitionistic Computation Tree Logic Davide Catta, Vadim Malvone and Aniello Murano Runtime Verification for Trustworthy Computing Robert Abela, Christian Colombo, Axel Curmi, Mattea Fenech, Mark Vella and Angelo Ferrando The Impact of Strategies and Information in Model Checking for Multi-Agent Systems Vadim Malvone
12:30	Lunch
13:30	Invited Talk: Bruno Lacerda, Senior Researcher in Robotics, University of Oxford Title: Model-Based Reasoning under Uncertainty for Reliable Robot Mission Planning Abstract: In this presentation, I will argue that the synergy between three factors is critical for creating reliable mission planning algorithms for autonomous robots operating in uncontrolled environments. These factors are ... (i) utilising historical data gathered online to enhance decision-making under uncertainty models, (ii) implementing principled planning techniques that explicitly reason about the epistemic uncertainty inherent to these data-driven models, and (iii) incorporating rich specifications that go beyond typical expected reward maximisation problems. Developing frameworks that unify these three factors is an open problem in the field of robotics, which is heavily dependent on the specific application domain. I will offer an overview of various works undertaken at the GOALS lab at the Oxford Robotics Institute that consider these three factors in distinct ways. Moreover, I will describe how these works provide a foundation for creating integrated approaches that enable long-term deployment of robots capable of acquiring parametrised environmental models from historical data, plan considering the epistemic uncertainty of such models, and effectively adapt their behaviour to in-mission observations, continuously refining their estimate over the epistemic uncertainty online. Short Bio: Bruno Lacerda is a Senior Researcher at the Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford, UK. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computing Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Portugal, in 2013. Between 2013 and 2017, he was a Research Fellow at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK. His research focuses on the intersection of decision-making under uncertainty, formal methods, and mobile robotics. In particular, he is interested in using a combination of techniques from learning, planning and model checking to synthesise intelligent, robust and verifiable behaviour, for both single and multi-robot systems. Read more
14:15	Session 3: Robotics Adaptive Application Behaviour for Robot Swarms using Mixed-Criticality Sven Signer and Ian Gray Autonomous Systems' Safety Cases for use in UK Nuclear Environments [online] Christopher Anderson and Louise Dennis
15:00	Coffee Break
15:30	Session 4: Planning Rollout Heuristics for Online Stochastic Contingent Planning [online] Guy Shani and Oded Blumnethal Evaluating Heuristic Search Algorithms in Pathfinding: A Comprehensive Study on Performance Metrics and Domain Parameters Aya Kherrour, Marco Robol, Marco Roveri and Paolo Giorgini Multi-Robot Task Planning to Secure Human Group Progress Roland Godet, Charles Lesire and Arthur Bit-Monnot ORTAC+ : A User Friendly Domain Specific Language for Multi-Agent Mission Planning Caroline Bonhomme and Jean-Louis Dufour
17:00	Closing remarks

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.

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
• 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

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.

Submission Instructions

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, https://ecai2023.eu/registrations).

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

Important Dates (updated)

• Paper Submission Deadline (Final Extension): 30th July 2023 (AoE, UTC-12)
• Paper Notification: 14th August 2023 (AoE, UTC-12)
• Camera Ready: 3rd September 2023 (AoE, UTC-12)
• Workshop: 1st October 2023

Registration

Please register at https://ecai2023.eu/registrations, and make sure that you select and add AREA as one of the workshops you are going to participate.

Invited Speakers

• Viviana Mascardi, Genoa University (Italy)
• Bruno Lacerda, University of Oxford (United Kingdom)

Organisers

• Angelo Ferrando, University of Genova (Italy)
• Rafael C. Cardoso, University of Aberdeen (UK)

Program Committee

• Tobias Ahlbrecht, Clausthal University of Technology (Germany)
• Gleifer Vaz Alves, Federal University of Technology – Paraná (Brazil)
• Mehrnoosh Askarpour, McMaster University / GM (Canada)
• Francesco Belardinelli, Imperial College London (UK)
• Amel Bennaceur, The Open University (UK)
• Daniela Briola, University of Milano Bicocca (Italy)
• Louise A. Dennis, The University of Manchester (UK)
• Babak Esfandiari, Carleton University (Canada)
• Marie Farrell, The University of Manchester (UK)
• Enrico Ghiorzi, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - IIT (Italy)
• Jomi F. Hübner, UFSC (Brazil)
• Erez Karpas, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Israel)
• Rafał Kucharski, Jagiellonian University (Poland)
• Charles Lesire, ONERA (French Aerospace Lab) (France)
• Livia Lestingi, Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
• Matt Luckcuck, University of Derby (UK)
• Vadim Malvone, Telecom Paris (France)
• Stefania Monica, Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Italy)
• Chunyan Mu, University of Aberdeen (UK)
• Viviana Mascardi, Genoa University (Italy)
• Eva Onaindia, Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain)
• Fabio Papacchini, Lancaster University Leipzig (Germany)
• Mohammad Mehdi Pourhashem, University of Science and Technology of Mazandaran (Iran)
• Pedro Ribeiro, University of York (UK)
• Christos Tsigkanos, University of Bern (Switzerland)

Contact Information

For more information contact us at area.workshop.info@gmail.com