Autonomy is treated as the fundamental part of intelligence - for a system to be assumed intelligent, some level of autonomy needs to be demonstrated. This has been well studied in robotics especially at low-level to mitigate inaccuracies of sensors, actuators, and unpredictability of environment. AI also proposes formal tools to handle similar issues. 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 from areas of robotics, intelligent agents, and artificial intelligence 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 since 1988 so FLAIRS is one of the oldest AI conferences. The 38-th conference is organized at Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront Resort, at Daytona Beach, Florida, USA in May 20-23, 2025.

This is the twelth edition of the special track. The previous editions were organized at 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

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 FLAIRS formatting guidelines. The papers should be original work (i.e., not accepted, in submission, or submitted to another conference while in review) and should not exceed 6 pages (4 pages for short papers presented as a poster). This limit excludes references. Rejected full papers might be accepted as short papers or posters, if reviewers found interest in the idea but the paper quality was not sufficient to be published in full length. Appendices after the references are permitted but might not be reviewed, and appendices will not be permitted in the final version of the paper if it is accepted. For FLAIRS-38, the 2025 conference, the reviewing is a double blind process. Please do not disclose your name and affiliation in the paper (but include them in the EasyChair meta-data). 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 submission is a two-step process. First, the abstract of the paper needs to be registered in EasyChair by January 20, 2025. Then, the full paper in PDF is due by January 27, 2025. Remember, without registering your abstract on time, you will not be allowed to submit the paper later.

FLAIRS requires that there is at least one full author registration per paper and presentation during the conference. Accepted papers will be published by FloridaOJ (indexed by Scopus and dblp).

• Abstract submission deadline: January 20, 2025 (Note: Abstract is required to submit full paper!)
• Paper submission deadline: January 27, 2025
• Notification of paper decisions: March 10, 2025
• Camera-ready version of papers due: April 9, 2025

All dates are assumed as midnight anywhere on Earth.

• TBA