FMAS 2022 : Fourth Workshop on Formal Methods for Autonomous Systems

FMAS 2022 is a two-day workshop that brings together researchers working on a range of techniques for the formal verification of autonomous systems, to present recent work in the area, discuss key challenges, and stimulate collaboration between autonomous systems and formal methods researchers.

Our twitter account is: https://twitter.com/FMASWorkshop and posts about this year’s workshop use the tag #FMAS2022

Autonomous systems present unique challenges for formal methods. They are often embodied in robotic systems that can interact with the real world, and they make independent decisions. Amongst other categories, they can be viewed as safety-critical, cyber-physical, hybrid, and real-time systems.

Key challenges for applying formal methods to autonomous systems include:

* the system’s dynamic deployment environment;
* verifying the system’s decision making capabilities – including planning, ethical, and reconfiguration choices; and
* using formal methods results as evidence given to certification or regulatory organisations.

FMAS welcomes submissions that use formal methods to specify, model, or verify autonomous systems; in whole or in part. We are especially interested in work using integrated formal methods, where multiple (formal or non-formal) methods are combined during the software engineering process.

Autonomous systems are often embedded in robotic or cyber-physical systems, and they share many features (and verification challenges) with automated systems. FMAS welcomes submissions with applications to:

* automated systems,
* semi-autonomous systems, or
* fully-autonomous systems.

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Topics
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Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

* Novel or Integrated Formal Methods that are suited to Autonomous or Automated Systems,
* Runtime Verification or other formal approaches to deal with the reality gap (the gap between models/simulations and the real world),
* Verification against safety assurance arguments or standards documents,
* Formal specification and requirements engineering approaches for autonomous systems,
* Case Studies that identify challenges when applying formal methods to autonomous systems,
* Experience Reports that provide guidance for tackling challenges with formal methods or tools, or
* Discussions of the future directions of the field.

Because the above list is not exhaustive, if you are unsure if your paper is in scope for FMAS please feel free to email us (details below) to discuss it.

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Submission and Publication
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There are four categories of submission:

* Vision papers 6 pages (excluding references) describe directions for research into Formal Methods for Autonomous Systems;
* Research previews 6 pages (excluding references) describe well-defined research ideas that are in their early stages, and my not be fully developed yet. Work from PhD students is particularly welcome;
* Experience report papers 15 pages (excluding references) report on practical experiences in applying Formal Methods to Autonomous Systems, focussing on the experience and lessons to be learnt;
* Regular papers 15 pages (excluding references) describe completed applications of Formal Methods to an Autonomous System, new or improved approaches, evaluations of existing approaches, and so on.

These categories are intended to help you show your intent for your paper, and to allow a fairer comparison of papers. For example, a Research Preview wont be judged as not developed enough for acceptance, purly because it is become compared to a Standard Paper. The category descriptions are not exhaustive and should be interpreted broadly. If you are unsure if your paper clearly fits into one of these categories, please feel free to email us (details below) to discuss it.

Submission will be via easychair; submissions must be prepared using the EPTCS LaTeX style. Each submission will receive at least three, single-blind reviews. If a paper is accepted, at least one of the authors must attend the workshop to present their work. We intend that accepted papers will be published via EPTCS.