Call for Papers: 1st International Workshop on Software Engineering for Mission-Critical and Autonomous Systems: from Earth to Outer Space (CASE2Space) at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2027).
25 April – 1 May | Dublin, Ireland
https://conf.researchr.org/home/icse-2027/case2space-2027
Mission-critical and autonomous systems are increasingly built around software that must make decisions, coordinate physical assets, and operate under high degrees of uncertainty. Especially in domains such as space exploration, Earth observation, underwater and maritime robotics, autonomous transportation, UAVs, and UGVs, operational environments are challenging. It is typically remote, partially observable, bandwidth-limited, safety-constrained, or difficult, impossible, and/or expensive to reproduce. These conditions affect both engineering-time and runtime concerns: the software controlling and coordinating these systems is difficult to specify, validate, monitor, evolve, and certify, while at runtime uncertainty can jeopardize operational safety and mission success, when operating under limited human supervision.
The growing role of AI in and for these systems further amplifies software engineering challenges: when AI becomes part of, or is used to engineer, mission-critical autonomous systems, the main challenge is not simply to adopt AI, but to make it analyzable, monitorable, and governable under the operational constraints of critical domains.
CASE2Space 2027 invites researchers and practitioners to submit contributions on software engineering approaches, architectures, methods, tools, runtime mechanisms, and practical solutions for mission-critical, autonomous, and AI-enabled systems.
The workshop aims to create a meeting point between academic and industrial communities, where research can benefit from concrete operational constraints, and evidence needs from real-world use cases, while practitioners can benefit from methodological advances in design, testing, verification, and validation.
The main topics relevant to the CASE2Space workshop include, but are not limited to:
- Industrial experience reports and practitioner problem statements
- Requirements, specification, modeling, and design of mission-critical autonomous systems
- Software engineering under partial observability, limited communication, limited field access, remote operation, and resource constraints
- Verification, validation, testing, and certification of autonomous, robotic, and AI-enabled critical systems
- Simulation-based engineering, scenario-based testing, and virtual validation environments
- Runtime monitoring, runtime assurance, predictive monitoring, and anomaly detection
- AI-based techniques for engineering critical systems, including test generation, analysis, monitoring, and maintenance
- Engineering AI components for critical systems, including perception, planning, decision-making, and adaptation
- Explainability, traceability, analyzability, and governance of AI-enabled critical systems
- Model-based engineering, model-driven development, and formal methods for autonomous and critical systems
- Digital twins for mission support, operations, manufacturing, and system evolution
- Empirical studies, datasets, benchmarks, and tools for engineering mission-critical autonomous systems
- Applications in space, Earth observation, underwater and maritime robotics, autonomous transportation, UAVs, UGVs, and related domains
Important Dates
November 13, 2026 (AoE): Paper Submission
December 11, 2026 (AoE): Acceptance Notification
January 29, 2027 (AoE): Camera-ready Submission
Submissions
- Regular papers (up to 8 pages + references): research contributions, empirical studies, methods, tools, and substantial experience reports on software engineering for mission-critical and autonomous systems. Regular papers should clearly describe the problem tackled, the relevant state of the art, the proposed contribution, and the scientific or practical benefits.
- Short papers (up to 5 pages + references): position papers, emerging ideas, preliminary results, case studies, exemplars, and industrial problem statements that articulate a concrete challenge, motivate its relevance, and outline possible research or engineering directions.
- Extended abstracts (up to 2 pages + references): already published or mature research results to be presented and discussed within the workshop community, industry reports, lessons learned from practice, and open challenges from industrial or mission-critical domains. Extended abstracts are meant to stimulate discussion and do not need to present a complete research contribution.
All submissions must be written in English and conform to the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines. Each paper will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. Accepted regular and short papers will be published in the IEEE workshop proceedings in accordance with ICSE 2027 policies. Extended abstracts will not be included in the workshop proceedings.
Organizers
Francesco Basciani, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
Martina De Sanctis, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
Patrizio Pelliccione, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
Gianluca Filippone, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
Sara Pettinari, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
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