The physical conference gathering has been canceled due to COVID-19. All accepted papers have been published by AAAI Press and authors are invited to present at FLAIRS-34.

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are closely related areas though their research interests and topics diverted in past. Recently, the progress in both areas brings robotics and artificial intelligence together again and higher-level deliberative functions such as action planning are being integrated into usually reactive robotics systems to increase their autonomy as well as to simplify their control. The special track addresses research results on the border between robotics (and general intelligent agents) and AI techniques with the aim to bridge the enlarging gap between the areas.

The goal of the track is bringing researchers for now diverted areas of robotics, intelligent agents, and artificial intelligence back together to work on novel integrated approaches for development of autonomous systems, both physical and virtual.

This track is intended to AI community that applies own results in real environments using physical (robots) and virtual agents as well as to researchers in related areas namely robotics, computer games, and intelligent agents to present own challenges and solutions and to grasp novel AI techniques applicable in real-life problems.

The Florida AI Research Society (FLAIRS) hosts the conference in cooperation with the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) since 1988 so FLAIRS is one of the oldest AI conferences. The 33-rd conference is organized at DoubleTree Ocean Point Resort&Spa, North Miami Beach, Florida, USA in May 17-20, 2020.

This is already the seventh edition of the special track, the previous editions were organized at 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

Papers and contributions are encouraged for any work relating to increasing autonomy and reasoning capabilities of agents either physical (robots) or virtual (such as game characters). We in particular encourage submissions that are integrating approaches and methods from different areas and contribute to bridging more research areas such as robotics, computer games, and intelligent agents. Topics of interest may include (but are in no way limited to):

• system architectures bridging sensory and action elements with reasoning capabilities
• perception, processing and action: sensors, vision, motion systems
• planning domain/world representation for real-life problems
• automated extraction/acquisition of planning domain/world models
• goal reasoning
• life-long autonomy
• motion, path, and action planning
• planning and execution
• robot control and behavior: localization, navigation, planning, simulation, visualization, virtual reality modeling
• evolutionary and cognitive robotics
• entertainment robotics
• applications of autonomous intelligent robots: robots for exploration, service, hazardous environments, …
• intelligent virtual agents, autonomous characters, and computer games

Interested authors should format their papers according to AAAI formatting guidelines. The papers should be original work (i.e., not submitted, in submission, or submitted to another conference while in review). Papers should not exceed 6 pages (4 pages for a poster) and are due by November 18, 2019. For FLAIRS-33, the 2020 conference, the reviewing is a double blind process. Please do not disclose your name and affiliation in the paper. Papers must be submitted as PDF through the EasyChair conference system, which can also be accessed through the main conference web site. Note: do not use a fake name for your EasyChair login - your EasyChair account information is hidden from reviewers. Authors should indicate the Autonomous Robots and Agents special track for submissions. The proceedings of FLAIRS will be published by the AAAI. Authors of accepted papers will be required to sign a form transferring copyright of their contribution to AAAI. FLAIRS requires that there be at least one full author registration per paper and presentation during the conference.

Paper submission deadline: 18th November 2019
Notification of paper decisions: 20th January 2020
Poster abstract submission: 3rd February, 2020
Poster abstract notification: 10th February, 2020
AUTHOR registration: 17th February, 2020
Final version of papers due: 24th February 2020

All dates are assumed as midnight HST.

• Renan Maidana, Roger Granada, Darlan Jurak, Maurício Magnaguagno, Felipe Meneguzzi and Alexandre Amory. Energy-Aware Path Planning for Autonomous Mobile Robot Navigation
• Muhammad Hassan Tanveer, Antony Thomas and Hongxiao Zhu. Recreating Bat Behavior on Quad-rotor UAVs—A Simulation Approach
• David Mathias, Annie Wu, Laik Ruetten and Eric Coursin. Improving Multi-Agent System Coordination Via Intensity Variation
• Annie Wu, David Mathias, Joseph Giordano and Anthony Hevia. Effects of Response Threshold Distribution on Dynamic Division of Labor in Decentralized Swarms
• Md Suruz Miah, Amr Elhussein, Fazel Keshtkar and Mohammed Abouheaf. Model-free Reinforcement Learning Approach for Leader-Follower Formation using Nonholonomic Mobile Robots
• Dave Mobley, Judy Goldsmith and Brent Harrison. Discovering Hierarchies for Reinforcement Learning Using Data Mining (short paper)
• Skanda Vaidyanath, Kallirroi Georgila and David Traum. Using Reinforcement Learning to Manage Communications Between Humans and Artificial Agents in an Evacuation Scenario (short paper)

In cooperation with Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.