The Seventh International Workshop on Formal Methods for Autonomous Systems will be a 2.5 day peer-reviewed international workshop that brings together researchers working on a range of techniques for the formal verification of autonomous systems, to present recent work in the area, discuss key challenges, and stimulate collaboration between autonomous systems and formal methods researchers. Previous editions are listed on DBLP: https://dblp.dagstuhl.de/db/conf/fmas/index.html.

Scope

Autonomous systems present unique challenges for formal methods. They are often embodied in robotic systems that can interact with the real world, and they make independent decisions. Amongst other categories, they can be viewed as safety-critical, cyber-physical, hybrid, and real-time systems.

Key challenges for applying formal methods to autonomous systems include:

  • the system’s dynamic deployment environment;
  • verifying the system’s decision making capabilities – including planning, ethical, and reconfiguration choices; and
  • using formal methods results as evidence given to certification or regulatory organisations.

FMAS welcomes submissions that use formal methods to specify, model, or verify autonomous systems; in whole or in part. We are especially interested in work using integrated formal methods, where multiple (formal or non-formal) methods are combined during the software engineering process. We encourage submissions that are advancing the applicability of formal methods for autonomous systems, for example improving integration or explainability, automation or knowledge transfer of these technique; a wider discussion of these principles can be found in ‘A Manifesto for Applicable Formal Methods’.

Autonomous systems are often embedded in robotic or cyber-physical systems, and they share many features (and verification challenges) with automated systems. FMAS welcomes submissions with applications to:

  • automated systems,
  • semi-autonomous systems, or
  • fully-autonomous systems.

Topics

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Applicable, tool-supported Formal Methods that are suited to Autonomous Systems
  • Runtime Verification or other formal approaches to deal with the reality gap (the gap between models/simulations and the real world),
  • Verification against safety assurance arguments or standards documents,
  • Formal specification, modelling and requirements engineering approaches for autonomous systems,
  • Case Studies that identify challenges when applying formal methods to autonomous systems,
  • Experience Reports that provide guidance for tackling challenges with formal methods or tools, or
  • Discussions of the future directions of the field.

Special Topic: Human-AI Teams

In addition to the topics above we would like to invite work on formal methods for human AI-team work. We are interpreting AI broadly as autonomous, intelligent, or self-learning systems.

Papers intended for this special topic could include (but are not limited to):

  • Formal modelling of human behaviour,
  • Joint/shared cognition,
  • Human-Robot Interaction and communication,
  • Robot-driven teams,
  • Human-controlled swarms,
  • Application areas could include: aerospace, firefighting/search and rescue, infrastructure monitoring, hazardous environment inspection

Papers submitted for this special topic should be within the usual scope of FMAS.

Submission and Publication

Submissions must be prepared using the EPTCS LaTeX style.

There are four categories of submission:

  • Vision papers 6 pages (excluding references) describe directions for research into Formal Methods for Autonomous Systems;
  • Research previews 6 pages (excluding references) describe well-defined research ideas that are in their early stages, and my not be fully developed yet. Work from PhD students is particularly welcome;
  • Experience report papers 15 pages (excluding references) report on practical experiences in applying Formal Methods to Autonomous Systems, focussing on the experience and lessons to be learnt;
  • Regular papers 15 pages (excluding references) describe completed applications of Formal Methods to an Autonomous System, new or improved approaches, evaluations of existing approaches, and so on.

You will need to select one of the four submission categories during submission.

These categories are intended to help you show your intent for your paper, and to allow a fairer comparison of papers. For example, a Research Preview wont be judged as not developed enough for acceptance, just because it is being compared to a Standard Paper. The category descriptions are not exhaustive and should be interpreted broadly. If you are unsure if your paper clearly fits into one of these categories, please feel free to email us (details below) to discuss it.

Submission Details

Best Paper

FMAS 2025 will honor the best paper selected with respect to reviews, program committee discussions, and conference presentations with an award.

Special Issue

We will organise a journal special issue to collect extensions of papers accepted in FMAS 2025. Look out for more details as we announce them.

Important Dates

  • Submission: 22nd August 2025 (AOE)
  • Notification: 6th October 2025
  • Final Version due: 17th October 2025
  • Workshop: 17th-19th November 2025

Poster Session

FMAS 2025 will have the co-located a session for demos and posters with iFM2025. More details will be given close to the time.

Venue

FMAS 2025 will be held from 17th to 19th of November 2025, co-located with the International Conference on Integrated Formal Methods (iFM) 2025, hosted by TBC

We will accept participation in-person and remotely:

  • At least one author per paper must register and pay for on-site attendance at FMAS, even if the paper will be presented remotely – this is to ensure we cover the costs of running FMAS as a satellite workshop at iFM.
  • Presenting or participating online will be free.
  • If you are presenting your remotely, please contact us at FMASWorkshop@tutanota.com to let us know so that we can make the necessary arrangements.

Student Registration Fee Support

TBC

Organising Committee