ERAS 2025

Submissions

Papers should be in the IEEE conference format. The submissions link will be placed here when submissions open.

Call for Contributions

The 1st International Conference on Engineering Reliable Autonomous Systems (ERAS) will be held in Worcester, MA, USA from May 29 to May 30, 2025.

ERAS aims to offer a space for all stakeholders across autonomous system reliability to come together to discuss the key challenges and present progress made towards solving them. The scope of the conference is on all the aspects of engineering reliable autonomous systems, ranging from systems and software engineering to their verification and evaluation. For the purpose of this conference, "autonomous systems" is synonymous with "systems that make their own decisions and can take their own actions," and includes everything from autonomous decision-making software running in a virtual environment to teams of autonomous robots operating in a distributed physical environment, everything from simple reactive systems with no planning capability to complex systems incorporating machine learning and reasoning engines. Contributions addressing aspects of reliability across the entire life cycle of the system are welcome.

Technical Scope

We invite submissions of original unpublished technical papers on topics including but not limited to:

General Understanding of Autonomy

Understanding the issues of autonomy, especially under the excess uncertainty of complex deployments (uncertainty and complexity permeate autonomous system design and operation - reliability requires that we address them)
Development of scientific foundations for autonomy that can drive the development of reliable systems
Application of the scientific method to autonomous systems experimentation and evaluation
Reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of autonomous systems experiments
Research challenges and roadmaps for future development

Specification and User Needs

Defining, ensuring, and assessing system properties (safety, security, functionality, reliability, dependability, trustworthiness, …)
Stakeholder communication, expressing user needs and experiences, designer decisions and assumptions, test and evaluation results, operational expectations
Specification of requirements
System purpose, goals, and expectations as expressed by designers, testers, certification agents, users, customers, bystanders, etc.
Establishing trust and understanding of autonomous system behavior

Design and Systems Engineering for Reliability

System engineering and design principles (including reliable / dependable robot control architectures, systems that incorporate a range of artificial intelligence capabilities, and assurance for design as well as design for assurance)
Fault handling (including prediction, detection, isolation, identification, response, recovery, prevention, tolerance, removal) and runtime methods for recognition and recovery (monitoring, diagnosis, reonfigurability, verification, assurance) - runtime systems that provide resilience and dynamic functionality - autonomy that exists within the system to handle cases that fall outside nominal bounds)
Understanding and analysing trade-offs in system development (e.g. efficiency vs. transparency/verifiability/explainability; design-time vs. run-time; "Hoping for the best" vs. "Expecting the worst")

Assessing and Communicating Reliability

Test and evaluation techniques, principles, methods, tools, etc.
Verification and validation of autonomy (including techniques, processes, principles, methods, tools, verification of decision making, handling of unknown unknowns, uncertainty, and complexity)
Verification and validation of test and evaluation techniques, tools, etc.
Assurance and evidence (including types of evidence, confidence, evidence gathering, specific assurance cases for autonomous systems, structuring and design principles for assurance case development / integration of evidence into assurance)
Measurement and metrics
Mapping from evaluation results to operational performance
Context and impact of verification and evaluation on reliability
Runtime evaluation and assessment
Perceived and actual reliability

Reliability in Context

Licensure, regulatory approval, and certification
Standards and industry benchmarks
Legal and ethical considerations (including insurance and liability as well as government and public service considerations)
Industrial case studies and considerations
Life cycle considerations and methodologies (impact of reliability concerns on need identification, specification, design, development, evaluation and assessment of trustworthiness, operation, decommission)
Case studies (focused in specific application domains (e.g. healthcare diagnosis and intervention / autonomous driving / domestic robotics), specific environmental domains (e.g. space / maritime / volcanos / office buildings) and specific research domains (e.g. controls / perception))
Problem sets, reliability benchmarks and competitions

Important Dates

Regular Paper (6-8 pages) Submissions	January 30, 2025
Short/Position Paper (2-4 pages) Submissions	February 20, 2025
Workshop/Panel Submissions	February 20, 2025
Paper Acceptance Notification	March 20, 2025
Camera-Ready Paper Deadline	April 3, 2025
Author Registration / Early Registration	April 3, 2025
Conference Dates	May 29-30, 2025

Engineering Reliable Autonomous Systems

May 29-30, 2025
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

Submissions

Call for Contributions

Technical Scope

Important Dates

Download the Call for Papers (pdf)