[TYPES/announce] First CFP: FMA - Formal Methods for Aerospace

[Manuela Bujorianu]

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                                 CALL FOR PAPERS

               International Workshop on Formal Methods for Aerospace (FMA)

             A satellite workshop of the 16th International Symposium
                               on Formal Methods-FM

                 Eindhoven, The Netherlands,  3rd November 2009

            
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/Manuela.Bujorianu/FMA.htm


PDF version: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/fma09cfp.pdf


BACKGROUND:
Aerospace systems are not only safety critical, but also mission  
critical, and often have very high performance requirements. For  
example, while there is no safety issue regarding a planetary rover,  
the system performance must justify the great cost of deploying it.  
Consequently, if we are to tackle to development and analysis of  
aeronautical systems is a formal way, we must enrich traditional  
formal methods with new (or, at least, rarely investigated) research  
issues. This naturally leads to a interdisciplinary approach, which  
might: underline the importance of some research problems from  
aeronautics to the formal method community; and promote new formal  
techniques combining principles from artificial intelligence and  
control engineering.
The source of new problems comes from the great diversity of  
aeronautical systems, including satellites, UAVs, terrestrial or other  
kinds of flying robots. These systems can be involved in complex  
activities such as space exploration, telecommunications support, fire  
detection, geo-mapping, weather prognoses, geo-rectification, search &  
rescue, traffic surveillance, target tracking, etc. From these  
applications, concepts such as autonomy, collective behaviour,  
information fusion, cognitive skills, coordination, flocking, are  
required and new solutions, such as digital pheromones, swarms, system  
of systems of robots, sensing, physical actuation, are developed.  
Considering this rich landscape of research problems and potential  
solutions, interdisciplinarity seems to be the most natural route.  
Formal methods could benefit from integration with well-developed  
methods from other disciplines. Many such opportunities are easily at  
hand, for example the coordination of UAVs or satellites, which have  
been successfully tackled using various techniques from control  
engineering and numerical tools from dynamic programming. In addition,  
there exist an abundance of examples of the use of artificial  
intelligence techniques in aeronautics (target tracking, rover  
planning, multi-agent technologies and so on). The implementation of  
these methods could benefit from formal development. Conversely, from  
the cross-fertilization of multidisciplinary approaches we can expect  
more robust, safe and mechanizable development and verification  
methods for aerospace systems.

AIM AND SCOPE:
The main workshop objective is to promote a holistic view and  
interdisciplinary methods for design, verification and co-ordination  
of aeronautical systems, by combining formal methods with techniques  
from control engineering and artificial intelligence. The very  
demanding safety, robustness and performance requirements of these  
systems require unprecedented integration of heterogeneous techniques  
and models. The aim of FMA is to bring together active researchers  
from all the above areas to discuss and present their work. Relevant  
topics include, but are not limited to (all with a focus on potential  
application in aerospace design or engineering):
new modeling paradigms
formal verification of safety and performance properties
combining formal and analytical techniques in modeling and verification
heterogeneous and hybrid system models
probabilistic and stochastic modeling and verification methods
agent technologies
multi-agent coordination
runtime monitoring
trajectory specification languages
runtime monitoring

PAPER SUBMISSION:
We invite submissions of high quality, original papers in the above  
areas. Papers should be written in English, formatted according to the  
Springer LNCS style, and not exceed 16 pages including figures,  
references, etc. At least one author of the accepted papers should  
register at the workshop. Submissions must be made via  
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fma09.

The pre-proceedings will be available as an online technical report  
and disseminated at the workshop. We are in negotiation for a journal  
special issue for selected (extended and revised) papers.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Deadline for submission:          21st August 2009
Notification of acceptance:        28th September 2009
Camera Ready Copy due:            11th October 2009

WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS:

Manuela Bujorianu  (Manchester, UK)
Michael Fisher (Liverpool, UK)
Corina Pasareanu (CMU (SV), USA)



Programme Committee:

Howard Barringer  (Manchester, UK)
Marius Bozga  (Verimag, FR)
Ricky Butler  (NASA, USA)
Ernst-Erich Doberkat  (Dortmund, DE)
Alessandro Giua  (Cagliari, IT)
Jianghai Hu  (Purdue, USA)
Rom Langerak  (Twente, NL)
John Lygeros  (Zurich, CH)
Savi Maharaj  (Stirling, UK)
Tiziana Margaria  (Potsdam, DE)
Cesar Munoz  (NASA, USA)
Flemming Nielson  (DTU, DK)
Dusko Pavlovic  (Oxford, UK)
Cristina Seceleanu  (Malardalen, SE)
Roberto Segala  (Verona, IT)
Ferucio Tiplea  (Iasi, RO)
Antonios Tsourdos  (Cranfield, UK)
Mike Whalen  (Minnesota, USA)
Virginie Wiels  (ONERA, FR)