AREA 2025

5th Workshop on Agents and Robots for reliable Engineered Autonomy

25th October 2025 at ECAI 2025 - Bologna
Registration @ ECAI

Call for papers

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.

  • 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

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.

Participants are invited to submit the following types of paper:
  • 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.
  • 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 sixteen (16) pages single column excluding references and appendices and short papers must not exceed eight (8) 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.

A paper will be selected for the Best Paper Award based on reviewers' scores and recommendations.

The AREA workshop is going to be an in-person event (following ECAI 2025 guidelines).

The proceedings of the workshop will be published with CCIS. Formatting guidelines should follow LNCS style.

Submissions are managed through OpenReview.net, use the "Submit Here" button below to submit your paper.
Important: OpenReview requires profile moderation for new accounts:
  • Profiles created without an institutional email are subject to a moderation process, which may take up to two weeks.
  • Profiles created with an institutional email will be activated automatically.

At least one author of each accepted paper has to register to the workshop (via ECAI 2025 website).

  • Matt Luckcuck - University of Nottingham
  • Bettina Könighofer - Graz University of Technology
  • Tobias Ahlbrecht - Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology
  • Viviana Mascardi - DIBRIS (Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering), University of Genova
  • Livia Lestingi - Politecnico di Milano
  • Marie Farrell - The University of Manchester
  • Vadim Malvone - Télécom Paris
  • Stefano Tedeschi - Université de la Vallée d'Aoste
  • Christian Colombo - University of Malta
  • Gleifer Alves - UTFPR (Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná), Campus Ponta Grossa
  • Roberta Calegari - University of Bologna
  • Mehrnoosh Askarpour - McMaster University/GM Canada
  • Giovanni Ciatto - University of Bologna
  • Babak Esfandiari - Carleton University
  • Eva Onaindia - Universitat Politècnica de València
  • Claudio Menghi - University of Bergamo
  • Daniela Briola - University of Milano Bicocca
  • Stefania Monica - University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
  • Matteo Rossi - Politecnico di Milano
  • Ian Gray - University of York
  • Stefano Mariani - University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Tentative Programme

Time Activity
09:15 - 09:30 Opening Remarks
Session 1: Agent Programming & Reasoning
09:30 - 09:55 “Selecting the Most Specific Plan in AgentSpeak Programs” — Ethan Le Trung, Babak Esfandiari
09:55 - 10:20 “A Formal Factorization Approach of Non-Deterministic Plans: Application to an Anti-Poaching Robotic Mission Scenario” — Baptiste Pelletier, Caroline P. C. Chanel, Alexandre Albore
10:30 - 11:00 Coffee Break
Invited Talk
11:00 - 12:00 Alessandro Ricci — TBA
Session 2: Verification & Safety
12:00 - 12:25 “Corroborative V&V for Autonomous Systems: Integrating Evidence and Discrepancy Analysis for Safety Assurance” — Dhaminda B. Abeywickrama, Christopher Bishop, Simon Watson, Frederic Wheeler, Michael Fisher, Louise A. Dennis
12:30 - 14:00 Lunch Break
14:00 - 14:25 “Towards Safe Action Policies in Multi-robot Systems with Causal Reinforcement Learning” — Giovanni Briglia, Stefano Mariani, Franco Zambonelli
Invited Talk
14:30 - 15:30 Alessandro Farinelli — TBA
15:30 - 16:00 Coffee Break
Session 3: Robotics & Perception
16:00 - 16:25 “A wearable stereo vision-based obstacle detection system for visually impaired individuals” — Andrea Ruo, Dario Napolitano, Valeria Villani
16:25 - 16:50 “Sim-to-Real 6-DoF Pose Estimation for UAVs using Synthetic RGB-D Data” — Jan Rodziewicz-Bielewicz, Marek Wernikowski, Marcin Korzeń, Radoslaw Mantiuk
Session 4: Learning & Control
16:50 - 17:15 “Conversational Text-to-SQL: A Comprehensive Survey of Paradigms, Challenges, and Future Directions” — Yufei Yang, Zewu Peng, Fangfang Zhou, Xu yao, Yuhao Zhang
17:15 - 17:40 “BC-MPPI: A Probabilistic Constraint Layer for Safe Model-Predictive Path-Integral Control” — Chidinma Ezeji, Michael Ziegltrum, Giulio Turrisi, Tommaso Belvedere, Valerio Modugno
17:40 - 17:50 Closing Remarks

Important dates

dates

Invited Speakers

Alessandro Ricci

Alessandro Ricci

University of Bologna (Italy)

Alessandro Farinelli

Alessandro Farinelli

University of Verona (Italy)

Organisers

Angelo Ferrando

Angelo Ferrando

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy)

Rafael C. Cardoso

Rafael C. Cardoso

University of Aberdeen (UK)