Towards a research agenda for learning-enabled safety-critical real-time systems
Workshop Goal
This workshop seeks to identify some central scientific issues that arise at the interface of Machine Learning and safety-critical real-time systems, that are of likely interest to the real-time computing community. The objective is to work towards defining a research agenda that both
- builds upon the technical competencies of the real-time systems community to address problems that must be solved so as to enable the safe and effective use of technologies and components based on Deep Learning and related AI technologies; and
- looks to Machine Learning to further enrich the technical competencies of the real-time systems community.
Rationale
Machine learning, deep learning, and other AI-related technologies have significantly influenced safety-critical real-time systems in recent years. Their impact is not only evident in the application layer of a real-time system, such as object tracking, avoidance, and navigation, but also throughout the system’s lifecycle, where they aid in the design, monitoring, maintenance, and diagnosis of these systems.
This evolution has been instrumental in the recent research developments within our community, leading to a surge of new challenges and research problems. Consequently, we believe it is an opportune moment to invite the community to contribute to the formation of a research agenda. This agenda aims to highlight past work and provide a vision for future developments in this rapidly expanding field.
To facilitate this, we welcome everyone interested in sharing their perspectives on future research at the intersection of machine learning and real-time safety-critical systems. We will also extend invitations to those who have dedicated substantial time to this field and can share their insights through invited talks and keynotes.
Recognizing that the development of such a research agenda requires open dialogue and the involvement of all interested parties, we plan to allocate significant time during the workshop for in-depth discussions, community building, and opinion gathering.
Workshop Format
A diverse set of activities and contributions are planned including invited keynotes, short talks, working sessions, and open discussions. To make the best of the day, we will primarily focus on two research themes (corresponding to the two enumerated objectives above):
- How can the expertise that is available in the real-time computing community help solve problems that arise when Learning-Enabled Components are used in safety-critical real-time systems?
- How can recent developments in Machine Learning be adapted to further enrich the repertoire of techniques that are currently in use in the real-time systems community?
and form working sessions around them. Each working session will have a keynote and a few (invited/ contributed) short talks, followed by open discussions.
New at ML-RT-Workshop 2025
This year, ML-RT-Agenda and RTSOPS will have a joint program in which a special session during the event will be dedicated to open problems on any aspect of learning-enabled or learning-assisted real-time systems.
Organizers
- Mitra Nasri, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (m.nasri@tue.nl, homepage)
- Sanjoy Baruah, Washington University in Saint Louis, USA (baruah@wustl.edu, homepage)
Call for contributions
Short perspective papers (limited to a maximum of 4 pages in IEEE double column format) are invited. Submission of a perspective paper is not a pre-requisite for attendance: given the intended interactive nature of the workshop, attendance and participation in discussions is already a highly valuable contribution to the success of our mission.
The workshop does not have a proceedings. We encourage all speakers to share their slides on the webpage of the workshop after the event.
Important dates
- Deadline to submit a perspective paper: May 20, 2025.
- We may be able to accommodate late submissions. Please contact us in case you would like to give a pitch.
- Notification of acceptance: June 5, 2024.
Submission instructions
Please send your pitch via email to the organizers.
Previous events
We have organized two successful workshops on this topic: ML-RT-Agenda’24, co-located with ECRTS’24, and WCM’24, held at RTSS’24. Building on the discussions and insights from these events, we are now arranging a special issue in the Real-Time Systems journal (Springer). As a follow-up, we are inviting a select group of speakers to contribute short papers sharing their perspectives.
ML-RT-Agenda 2024 (co-located with ECRTS’24 in Lille, France)
Our last year’s event at ECRTS’24 captured two keynotes (Tarek Abdelzaher and Giorgio Buttazzo) and many interesting talks. Here you can find a summary of the program of last year.
WMC 2024 (co-located with RTSS’24, York, UK)
Our WMC’24 workshop welcomed over 60 participants and featured 14 talks, an engaging keynote from Nicole Megow, and an extended open-discussion session.
Intended Outcome
The outcome of the workshop will be a report capturing a short summary of the event and discussions, the keynotes and talks, key challenges identified during the working sessions, and a draft of an initial research roadmap for the themes that are considered in the workshop.
Join our community
We plan to form a mailing list to keep touch with whomever is interested in the crossroad of machine learning and real-time systems. On the mailing list, we share our plans, future events, interesting achievements, and relevant news to the topic.
If you would like to join our community, please fill the following form.
