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 31-st conference is organized at Crowne Plaza Melbourne Oceanfront, Melbourne, Florida, USA in May 21-23, 2018.

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

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 20, 2017. For FLAIRS-31, the 2018 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.

Paper submission deadline: 20th November 2017
Notification of paper decisions: 22nd January 2018
Poster abstract submission: 5th February, 2018
Poster abstract notification: 12th February, 2018
AUTHOR registration: 19th February, 2018
Final version of papers due: 26th February 2018

All dates are assumed as midnight HST.

• Maintaining Ad-Hoc Communication Network in Area Protection Scenarios with Adversarial Agents
  Marika Ivanova, Pavel Surynek and Diep Thi Ngoc Nguyen
• A Reinforcement Learning Approach to Autonomous Speed Control in Robotic Systems
  Nima Aghli and Marco Carvalho
• Intelligently Assisting Human-Guided Quadcopter Photography
  Saif Alabachi and Gita Sukthankar
• A Complete Coverage Algorithm for 3D Structural Inspection using an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
  Venkat Ramana Reddy Garlapati and Raj Dasgupta
• Specialization vs. Re-Specialization: Effects of Hebbian Learning in a Dynamic Environment
  Vera Kazakova and Annie Wu
• Reasoning with Doxastic Attitudes in Multi-Agent Domains
  Ben Wright and Enrico Pontelli
• Inter-agent variation improves dynamic decentralized task allocation (short paper)
  Annie Wu and Cortney Riggs