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Mailing List:
Join the Cognitive Systems mailing list
for the most up-to-date information.
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Logistics and Registration Information:
Details about the conference venue and hotels are now available at the
logistics page. Information about
air and ground transportation will be added soon.
Overview
The Thirteenth Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems will
take place from Tuesday, October 6, to Friday, October 9,
2026, at the
Informatics Forum
of the University of Edinburgh.
The conference aims to bring together researchers to advance the
original goals of artificial intelligence: to explain cognition
and learning in computational terms and to reproduce a broad range of
intelligent behaviors and human abilities in computational artifacts.
The conference welcomes many types of research, including demonstrations
of new capabilities, empirical studies of implemented systems, and
formal analyses of complex tasks. The term "cognitive" refers to any
computational artifact that thinks or reasons, whether or not it works
the same way as humans. Topics of interest include:
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Conceptual Inference and Reasoning
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Problem Solving, Planning, and Heuristic Search
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Common Sense and Qualitative Modeling
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Memory Storage and Retrieval
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Structural Learning and Knowledge Capture
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Natural Language Understanding and Generation
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Discourse and Dialogue Processing
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Vision, Audition, and High-level Perception
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Mental Imagery and Iconic Processing
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Cognitive Models and Architectures
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Cognitive Robotics and Embodied Cognition
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High-level Execution and Control
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Multi-Tasking and Attention
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Social Cognition and Interaction
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Cognitive Aspects of Emotion and Personality
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Metacognition and Meta-level Reasoning
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Collaboration and Teaming
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We encourage participation from anyone who is interested in computational
approaches to complex cognition, human-level intelligence, and related
topics.
Paper Submissions
We invite researchers to submit papers for presentation at the conference
via Easychair (link coming soon).
Papers should have no more than sixteen (16) single-column pages and must
follow the formatting
instructions. Appendixes will not count toward the 16-page limit.
The meeting will consider two types of submissions.
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Technical papers should report an implemented cognitive system,
the detailed design for such a system, or an analysis of some complex task.
Authors of technical papers should examine the
review form carefully
before submission, as referees will expect them to address the questions
therein.
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Commentaries should review the state of the field, pose challenge
problems, or relate alternative frameworks. These essays will be reviewed
separately, with the main criteria for acceptance being relevance to
the conference, clear statements of positions, and effective communication.
They may be less than 16 pages.
For this year’s conference, we have two submission deadlines for papers:
Early and
Regular. The early deadline is for authors
who may need earlier notification, e.g., for travel planning or visa
purposes. The regular decision deadline is for authors who may wish to
have more time to prepare their submissions.
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The presentation format (oral versus poster) will be determined after
the regular decision round.
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Papers not accepted on the early decision round may be invited for
revision and resubmission to the regular decision round.
Both decision rounds will be fully peer reviewed and papers accepted
from each round will appear in the conference proceedings.
Authors of papers that are accepted for oral presentation at the conference
may be invited to publish an expanded version as an article in the associated
electronic journal
Advances in
Cognitive Systems.
Workshop and Tutorial Submissions
We also invite proposals for workshops or tutorials to be held on the
first day of the conference. These events will support focused community
discussion and knowledge exchange.
Please email workshop and tutorial proposals to the program chair,
Maithilee Kunda (mkunda@ed.ac.uk), with the subject line: “ACS 2026
workshop/tutorial proposal”, who will review them.
Proposals should have no more than three (3) pages (A4 size) and are
NOT required to follow the ACS format. They should include a title,
the organizers and their affiliations, an abstract, the motivation and
objectives, the content and relevance to cognitive system, a list of
speakers (confirmed or tentative), the duration (half or full day),
and a tentative schedule.
| Important Dates |
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| — Workshop Proposals Due |
July 7, 2026 |
| — Early Paper Abstracts Due |
July 7, 2026 |
| — Early Paper Submissions Due |
July 14, 2026 |
| — Early Paper Decisions Sent |
August 4, 2026 |
| — Regular Paper Abstracts Due |
August 7, 2026 |
| — Regular Paper Submissions Due |
August 14, 2026 |
| — Regular Paper Decisions Sent |
September 3, 2026 |
| — Conference Schedule Released |
September 10, 2026 |
| — Final Papers Due |
September 22, 2026 |
| — Conference |
October 6-9, 2026 |
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The time zone for each deadline is 11:59 pm Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12:00) |
Schedule, Logistics, and Registration
The Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems will run from
Tuesday, October 6, to Friday, October 9, 2026 at the
Informatics Forum
of the University of Edinburgh in
Edinburgh, UK. The meeting will include extended technical presentations,
leisurely breaks to encourage discussions, and poster receptions to
foster additional interactions among participants.
Details about the conference venue and hotels are now available at the
logistics page. Information about
air and ground transportation will be added soon.
The schedule for conference and workshops will be available shortly
after paper decisions have been made.
Program Chair
- Maithilee KundaUniversity of Edinburgh
Organizing Committee
- Will Bridewell US Naval Research Laboratory
- Matthew Klenk Toyota Research Institute
- Pat Langley ISLE / Georgia Tech Research Institute
- Jamie Macbeth Smith College
- Héctor Muñoz-Avila Lehigh University
- Sergei Nirenburg Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
