Professor Sara Bernardini

Sara’s research is in Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically decision-making for intelligent autonomous systems, such as ground robots, drones and underwater vehicles. She is a world-leading expert in automated planning, which involves equipping artificial agents with the ability to synthesise plans to reach specific goals. Sara’s long-term objective is to provide the theoretical foundations for creating agents that can seamlessly support humans in undertaking sophisticated and temporally extended tasks, which, going beyond perception and pattern matching, require deliberation at the cognitive level.

At the heart of Sara’s research is the desire to combine theoretical and technical advancements in AI with the demands of the real world. Over the past few years, she has led several projects on intelligent autonomous systems for extreme environments. She has worked closely with industry and stakeholders, ensuring her solutions are crucial to tackling end users’ practical problems. She has worked in several domains, such as space mission operations, nuclear decommissioning, mining, underwater missions, and offshore energy, leading several projects funded by Innovate UK, EPSRC, NERC, the Turing Institute, and the Leverhulme Trust.

Complementing her technical work, Sara has assumed significant leadership roles in the AI scientific community, contributing to shaping the research landscape. She is a member of the AAAI Executive Council, where she leads the Partnership Committee, and the ICAPS Executive Council. She was the Program Chair of ICAPS 2024, the flagship international conference on automated planning and scheduling, and the Associate General Chair of AAAI-23. At AAAI-23, she initiated the Bridge Program, fostering cross-fertilisation between AI and other disciplines, a program she has continued at AAAI-24 and AAAI-25. Sara is also the managing guest editor of the Artificial Intelligence (IF:14.4) Special Issue on ‘Risk-Aware Autonomous Systems’, a testament to her commitment to AI safety.

Sara’s research is regularly published in top-ranked AI and robotics journals and conferences, such as AIJ, JAIR, RA-L, TOCHI, AAAI, IJCAI, IROS, and ICAPS.

• Optimizing Pathfinding for Goal Legibility and Recognition in Cooperative Partially Observable Environments

Sara Bernardini, Fabio Fagnani, Alexandra Neacsu, and Santiago Franco

Artificial Intelligence. Vol 333, August 2024. Elsevier.

• Lazy Evaluation of Negative Preconditions in Planning Domains

Santiago Franco and Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 17th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS)

Kananaskis, Canada, June 2024.

• Unlocking AI Literacy: The SMaILE-App Gaming Experience

S. Franco, M.G. Ballatore, G. Como, L. Damonte, A. Neacsu, M. Vanelli, and S. Bernardini

Proc. of the IEEE CTSoc International Conference on Gaming, Entertainment & Media (GEM 2024)

Turin, Italy, June 2024.

• SMaILE-App: A Mobile Game Application to Teach the Principles of Artificial Intelligence to Generation Z

M.G. Ballatore, S. Bernardini, G. Como, L. Damonte, S. Franco, A. Neacsu, and M. Vanelli

In: E. Guarcello and A. Longo ed(s). School Children and the Challenge of Managing AI Technologies. Routledge, pp.87-94. June 2024.

• Helpful Information Sharing for Partially Informed Planning Agents

Sarah Keren, David Wies, and Sara Bernardini
Proc. of the 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-23).

Macao, China, August 2023.

• Exploiting Geometric Constraints in Multi-Agent Pathfinding

Dor Atzmon, Sara Bernardini, Fabio Fagnani, and David Fairbairn
Proc. of the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-23).

Prague, Czech Republic, July 2023.

• Learning Interpretable Heuristics for WalkSATYannet Interian and Sara BernardiniProc. of the 20th Int. Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR-23).

Rhodes, Greece, September 2023.

• Adaptive Temporal Planning for Multi-Robot Systems in Operations and Maintenance of Offshore Wind Farms

Ferdian Jovan and Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-23).

Washington, DC, USA, February 2023.

• A Network Flow Interpretation of Robust Goal Legibility in Path Finding

Sara Bernardini, Fabio Fagnani, Santiago Franco, Alexandra Neacsu

Proc. of the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-22).

Singapore, June 2022.

• Hybrid Discrete-Continuous Path Planning for Lattice Traversal

Julius Sustarevas, Santiago Franco, Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-22). Kyoto, Japan, October 2022.

• A multi-robot system for autonomous deployment and recovery of a blade crawler for operations and maintenance of offshore wind turbine blades

Z. Jiang, F. Jovan, P. Moradi, T. Richardson, S. Bernardini, S. Watson, A. Weightman, D. Hine

Journal of Field Robotics, 1– 21. September 2022.

• Modular Robots for Enabling Operations in Unstructured Extreme Environments

Mohammed E. Sayed, Jamie O. Roberts, Karen Donaldson, Stephen T. Mahon, Faiz Iqbal, Boyang Li, Santiago Franco Aixela, Georgios Mastorakis, Emil T. Jonasson, Markus P. Nemitz, Sara Bernardini, Adam A. Stokes

Advanced Intelligent Systems. January 2022.

• A Unifying Look at Sequence Submodularity

Sara Bernardini, Fabio Fagnani, Chiara Piacentini

Artificial Intelligence. Volume 297, August 2021, 103486, Elsevier.

• Informed Autonomous Exploration of Subterranean Environments

Ali Akbari, Sara Bernardini

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Volume 6, no. 4, pp. 7957-7964, Oct. 2021.

• Informed Autonomous Exploration of Subterranean Environments

Ali Akbari, Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-21).

Prague, Czech Republic, October 2021.

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• Autonomous Building of Structures in Unstructured Environments via AI Planning

Jamie O. Roberts, Santiago Franco, Adam A. Stokes, Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-21).

Guangzhou, China, June 2021.

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• vPlanSim: An Open-Source Graphical Interface for the Visualisation and Simulation of AI Systems

Jamie Roberts, Georgios Mastorakis, Brad Lazaruk, Santiago Franco, Adam Stokes, Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-21).

Guangzhou, China, June 2021.

• Multi-Robot Coordination in Operations and Maintenance of Offshore Wind Farms with Temporal Planning

Fedian Jovan, Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-21).

Guangzhou, China, June 2021.

• Through the Lens of Sequence Submodularity

Sara Bernardini, Fabio Fagnani, Chiara Piacentini

Proc. of the 30th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-20).

Nancy, France, June 2020.

ICAPS-2020 Best Paper Honourable Mention Award

• Multi-Robot Platform for the Autonomous Operation and Maintenance of Offshore Wind Farms

Sara Bernardini, Ferdian Jovan, Zhengyi Jiang, Peiman Moradi, Tom Richardson, Rasoul Sadeghian, Sina Sareh, Simon Watson, Andrew Weightman

Proc. of the 19th Int. Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS-20). Auckland, New Zealand, May 2020.

• An Optimization Approach to Robust Goal Obfuscation

Sara Bernardini, Fabio Fagnani, Santiago Franco

Proc. of the 17th Int. Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR-20). Rhodes, Greece, September 2020.

• Reasoning about Plan Robustness versus Plan Cost for Partially Informed Agents

Sarah Keren, Sara Bernardini, Kofi Kwapong, David Parkes

Proc. of the 17th Int. Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR-20). Rhodes, Greece, September 2020.

• Intelligent Exploration and Autonomous Navigation in Confined Spaces

Aliakbar Akbari, Puneet Singh Chhabra, Ujjar Bhandari, Sara Bernardini

Proc. of the 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-20).

Las Vegas, NV, USA, October 2020.

• Target Search on Road Networks with Range-Constrained UAVs and Ground-based Mobile Recharging Vehicles

Kyle Booth, Chiara Piacentini, Sara Bernardini, Christopher Beck

Proc. of the 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-20).

Las Vegas, NV, USA, October 2020.

• Target Search on Road Networks with Range-Constrained UAVs and Ground-based Mobile Recharging Vehicles

Kyle Booth, Chiara Piacentini, Sara Bernardini, Christopher Beck

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Volume 5, Issue 4, October 2020.

• The Design of Prometheus: A Re-configurable UAV for Subterranean Mine Inspection

Liam Brown, Robert Clarke, Ali Akbari, Ujjar Bhandari, Sara Bernardini, Puneet Chhabra, Ognjen Marjanovic, Thomas Richardson, Simon Watson

Robotics 2020, 9(4), 95, November 2020.

• Autonomous Target Search with Multiple Coordinated UAVs

Chiara Piacentini, Sara Bernardini, Chris Beck

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. Volume 65, Pages 519-568, August 2019.

• Extracting Mutual Exclusion Invariants from Lifted Temporal Planning Domains

Sara Bernardini, Fabio Fagnani, David E. Smith

Artificial Intelligence Journal. Vol. 258, 1-65, May 2018, Elsevier.

• Blending Human and Artificial Intelligence to Support Autistic Children’s Social Skills

Kaska Porayska-Pomsta, Alyssa Alcorn, Katerina Avramides, Sara Bernardini, et al.

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. Volume 25 (6), 1-35, December 2018.

• Combining Temporal Planning with Probabilistic Reasoning for Autonomous Surveillance MissionsSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek LongAutonomous Robots. 41: 181. 2017. Springer.

• Deterministic vs Probabilistic Methods for Searching for an Evasive TargetSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek Long, Chiara PiacentiniProc. of the 31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-17).

San Francisco, CA, February 2017.

• Boosting Search Guidance in Problems with Semantic AttachmentsSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek Long, Chiara PiacentiniProc. of the 27th Int. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-17).

Pittsburgh, PA, USA, June 2017.

• Policy Conflict Resolution in IoT via PlanningEmre Göynügür, Sara Bernardini, Geeth De Mel, Kartik Talamadupula, Murat SensoyProc. of the 30th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Edmonton, Alberta, May 2017.

• Leveraging Probabilistic Reasoning in Deterministic Planning for Large-Scale Autonomous Search-and-TrackingSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek Long, Chiara PiacentiniProc. of the 26th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-16). London, UK, June 2016.

• Planning Autonomous Underwater Reconnaissance OperationsSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek Long, Bram RidderProc. of the 10th Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK) – 26th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-16).

London, UK, June 2016.

• In Search of a Lost Target via Monte Carlo Simulation and Automated PlanningSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek LongProc. of the 6th Italian Workshop on Automated Planning and Scheduling (IPS-15).

Ferrara, Italy, September 2015.

• Planning the Behaviour of Low-Cost Quadcopters for Surveillance MissionsSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek LongProc. of the 24th Int. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-14).

Portsmouth, NH, USA, June 2014.

• Automated Planning of Simple Persuasion DialoguesElisabeth Black, Amanda Coles, Sara Bernardini,Proc. of the 15th Int. Workshop on Computational Logic in Multi-Agent Systems (CLIMA-14).

Prague, Czech Republic, July 2014.

• ECHOES: An Intelligent Serious Game for Fostering Social Communication in Children with AutismSara Bernardini, Kaska Porayska-Pomsta, Tim SmithInformation Sciences, Elsevier, Volume 264, 2013, pp.41-60.

• Autonomous Search and Tracking via Temporal PlanningSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek Long, John BooklessProc. of the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-13).

Rome, Italy, June 2013.

• Planning-Based Social Partners for Children with AutismSara Bernardini, Kaska Porayska-PomstaProc. of the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-13).

Rome, Italy, June 2013.

• Planning the Behaviour of Low-Cost Quadcopters for Surveillance MissionsSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek LongProc. of the 5th Italian Workshop on Automated Planning and Scheduling (IPS-13).

Torino, Italy, December 2013.

• Automated Planning and Policy Learning for Surveillance MissionsSara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek LongProc. of the 8th International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space (IWPSS-13).

Moffett Field, CA, USA, March 2013.

• Designing an Intelligent Virtual Agent for Social Communication in AutismSara Bernardini, Kaska Porayska-Pomsta, Harini SampathProc. of the 9th AAAI Conference on AI and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE-13).

Boston, MA, USA, October 2013.

• Building an Intelligent, Authorable Serious Game for Autistic Children and Their CarersKaska Porayska-Pomsta, Keith Anderson, Sara Bernardini, Karen Guldberg, Tim Smith, Lila Kossivaki, Scott Hodgins, Ian LoweProc. of the 10th Int. Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE-13).

Enschede, the Netherlands, November 2013.

• The TARDIS framework: Intelligent virtual agents for social coaching in job interviewsK. Anderson, E. André, T. Baur, Sara Bernardini, M. Chollet, E. Chryssafidou, I. Damian, C. Ennis, A. Egges, P. Gebhard, H. Jones, M. Ochs, C. Pelachaud, K. Porayska-Pomsta, P. Rizzo, N. SabouretProc. of the 10th Int. Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE-13).

Enschede, the Netherlands, November 2013.

• Modelling Users’ Affect in Job Interviews: Technological DemoKaska Porayska-Pomsta, Keith Anderson, Ionut Damian, Tobias Baur, Elisabeth Andre, Sara Bernardini, Paola RizzoProc. of the 21st Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP-13).

Rome, Italy, June 2013.

• Building Autonomous Social Partners for Autistic ChildrenSara Bernardini, Kaska Porayska-Pomsta, Tim Smith, Katerina AvramidesProc. of the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA-12).

Santa Cruz, CA, USA, September 2012.

• Developing Technology for Autism: An Interdisciplinary ApproachKaska Porayska-Pomsta, Chris Frauenberger, Hellen Pain, Thusha Rajendran, Tim Smith, Rachel Menzies, Mary Ellen Foster, Alyssa Alcorn, Sam Wass, Sara Bernardini, Katerina Avramides, Wendy Keay-Bright, Jingying Chen, Annalu Waller, Karen Guldberg, Judith Good, Oliver LemonJournal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Springer, 16 (2), 2012, pp. 117-127.

• State-of-the-art in TEL to support social communication skill development in children with autism: A multidisciplinary reviewKaterina Avramides, Sara Bernardini, Mary Ellen Foster, Chris Frauenberger, Lila Kossyvaki, Marilena MademtziInternational Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning. 4(5-6), 2012, pp. 359-372.

• Learner Modelled EnvironmentsKaska Porayska-Pomsta, Sara Bernardini,Handbook of Digital Technology Research. S. Price, C. Jewitt and B. Brown, Ed. SAGE publishers.

• Social Communication between Virtual Characters and Children with AutismAlyssa Alcorn, Helen Pain, Thusha Rajendran, Tim Smith, Oliver Lemon, Kaska Porayska-Pomsta, Mary Ellen Foster, Katerina Avramides, Chris Frauenberger, Sara BernardiniProc. of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-11).

Auckland, New Zealand, June 2011.

• Automatic Synthesis of Temporal InvariantsSara Bernardini, David E. SmithProc. of the 9th Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation (SARA-11).

Parador de Cardona, Spain, July 2011.

• Finding Mutual Exclusion Invariants in Temporal Planning DomainsSara Bernardini, David E. SmithProc. of the 7th International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space (IWPSS-11).

Darmstadt, Germany, June 2011.

• Finding Mutual Exclusion Invariants in Temporal Planning DomainsSara Bernardini, David E. SmithProc. of the Workshop on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (KEPS), 21st Inter. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-11).

Freiburg, Germany, 2011.

• Supporting Children’s Social Communication Skills through Interactive Narratives with Virtual CharactersMary Ellen Foster, Katerina Avramides, Sara Bernardini, Jingying Chen, Chris Frauenberger, Oliver Lemon, Kaska Porayska-PomstaProc. of ACM Multimedia 2010 (ACM-10).

Firenze, Italy, October 2010.

• ECHOES: Technology-Enhanced Learning for Exploring and Improving Social Interaction SkillsKaterina Avramides, Sara Bernardini, Jingying Chen, Chris Frauenberger, Mary Ellen Foster, Oliver Lemon and Kaska Porayska-PomstaProc. of the 4th International Conference on Cognitive Systems (CogSys-10).

Zurich, Switzerland, January 2010.

• Towards Search Control via Dependency Graphs in EUROPA2Sara Bernardini, David E. SmithProc. of the Workshop on Heuristics for Domain Independent Planning (HDIP), 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-09).

Thessaloniki, Greece, September 2009.

• Embodiment as a means for Scaffolding Young Children’s Social Skill AcquisitionKaska Porayska-Pomsta, Sara Bernardini, Thusha RajendranProc. of the Workshop on Children and Embodied Interaction: Seeking Common Ground, 8th Int. Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC-09).

Como, Italy, June 2009.

• Automatically Generated Heuristic Guidance for EUROPA2Sara Bernardini, David E. SmithProc. of the 9th Int. Symposium on AI, Robotics, and Automation for Space (iSAIRAS-08).

Hollywood, USA, February 2008.

 

• Translating PDDL2.2 into a Constraint-based Variable/Value LanguageSara Bernardini, David E. SmithProc. of the Workshop on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (KEPS), 18th Int. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-08).

Sydney, Australia, September 2008.

• Constraint-based Temporal Planning: Domain Modelling and Search ControlSara BernardiniDoctoral Consortium, 18th Int. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-08).

Sydney, Australia, September 2008.

• Developing Domain-Independent Search Control for EUROPA2Sara Bernardini, David E. SmithProc. of the Workshop on Heuristics for Domain Independent Planning: Progress, Ideas, Limitations, Challenges, (HDIP), 17th Int. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS-07).

Providence, RI, USA, September 2007.

• Model-Unified Planning and Execution for Distributed Autonomous System ControlPascal Aschwanden, Vijay Baskaran, Sara Bernardini, Chuck Fry, Maria D. Moreno, Nicola Muscettola, Chris Plaunt, David Rijsman, Paul TompkinsProc. of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Spacecraft Autonomy: Using AI to Expand Human Space Exploration.

Arlington, VI, USA, October 2006.

• Incremental compilation-to-sat proceduresMarco Benedetti, Sara BernardiniProc. of the 7th Int. Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT-04).

Vancouver, BC, Canada, May 2004.

• Cognitive robotics in domestic scenariosMarco Benedetti, Sara Bernardini, Luigia Carlucci AielloProc. of the International Conference on Aging, Disability and Independence, (ICADI-03).

Washington, D.C., USA, December 2003.

• Structure and Satisfiability in Propositional FormulaeSara BernardiniAI*IA Notizie. Vol. 4, pp.46-51, December 2003.