Selected Papers from the 7th Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems Conference (MESAS 2020)

Dear Colleagues

We are on the edge of another scientific and technological revolution, which will have an almost certain dramatic impact on the development of the global society, outperforming all previous milestones of human progress.

This factor is caused by significant advances in the field of artificial intelligence, robotics, and industrial automation. The impact of these phenomena can no longer be easily predicted, even in the short term. There is already a sufficient amount of proof that clearly indicates the beginning of trends (up to 5 years) that will fundamentally change the nature of security, communications, transport, labor market, social environment, and interactions with machines.

This Special Issue seeks contributions (the last achieved results in the field of research, development and experimentation) across all domains affected by this scientific and technical progress, with particular focus on the operational implementation and modeling and simulation (M&S) of robotics and artificial intelligence, including the harmonization of current/future needs and technological capabilities.

The Issue will contain revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers that will be presented at the Seventh Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems Conference (MESAS 2020), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call. Papers are welcomed on topics that are related to the above-mentioned areas, within the aspects of theory, design, practice, and applications related to modeling and simulation, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and robotics, including, but not limited to:

Autonomous systems in the context of future warfare and security environment (concepts, applications, standards, etc.)

• Autonomous systems strategy, and concept development and implementation in all domains of operation
• Advances in artificial intelligence and its impact on future operations
• Security/cyber security, use of autonomous systems as lethal instruments, and safety of aviation

M&S of intelligent systems: research, development, and application

• Math modelling and simulation of AI tasks
• Multi-robot systems/swarms and distributed control
• AI/machine-learning for autonomous systems
• Co-simulation tools for multi-domain analysis
• Effectiveness, reliability, and cyber-security issues

 Future challenges of advanced M&S technology

• Key challenges of the research and development
• Human versus machine, advanced M&S projects, and impact on society
• Validation and the verification process for autonomous functions (V&V via M&S).

Prof. Dr. Ludek Zalud
Prof. Dr. Agostino Bruzzone
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Robotics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Modelling and simulation
• Autonomous systems
• Artificial intelligence
• Future warfare
• Security environment
• Cyber security
• Multi-robot systems
• Machine learning
• Validation
• Verification