From Animals to Animats 18:  The 18th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB 2026)

Where: TU Berlin, Germany 

When: 19-22 October 2026

Website: https://www.sab-conference.org

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 15 May 2026

Notification of acceptance:19 June 2026

Camera-ready paper version due: 17 July 2026

Conference takes place: 19-22 October 2026

Objectives:

The interdisciplinary conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior: From Animals to Animats (SAB) 2026 brings together researchers from artificial intelligence, robotics, behavioral biology, psychology, neuroscience, and many other fields. The conference offers a unique opportunity to exchange ideas across disciplinary boundaries. We believe this exchange is necessary to advance our understanding of the mechanisms that enable general and robust behavior in natural animals and artificial agents.

The conference focuses on characterizing and comparing organizational principles and architectures underlying adaptive behavior in animals and animats. Animats denote the conceptual connections between animals and synthetic agents. The conference therefore actively seeks submissions that bridge several of the aforementioned disciplines, combining their methodological foundations to arrive at novel insights and approaches. Of particular interest are research projects which connect natural behavior to synthetic agents, including those leveraging modern machine learning and deep learning techniques for behavioral modeling, analysis, and synthesis.

Selected papers will be invited to a special issue in the journal Adaptive Behavior and will be published with Springer Nature.

SAB accepts submissions in several tracks:

 -  Conference papers are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published in conference proceedings “From Animals to Animats 18: SAB 2026” Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer Nature.

 -  Conference papers without inclusion in the proceedings. These papers will undergo a light peer-review. Papers will be included on the conference website but they will not be formally published so that your research results can still appear in your disciplinary journals.

 -  Poster abstracts are peer-reviewed for general suitability of the content. Accepted posters will be presented at a poster session and, time permitting, will be able to present a spotlight presentation to the conference attendees.

 -  Position papers are peer reviewed; they offer a novel, visionary perspective on the convergence of different branches of behavior-based research in both artificial and biological systems. These papers are supposed to trigger a lively discussion.

 -  Workshop or Tutorial proposals will be peer reviewed. Workshops and Tutorials will take place on September 20. The event should be relevant to the expected audience of SAB.

Topics of interest:

Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, and Computational neuroscience 

o Action selection, behavioral sequencing

o Communication and language

o Emotion and motivation

o Internal models and representations

o Reinforcement learning

o Sensory-motor coordination, motor control

o Software agents and virtual creatures

Philosophical Issues

o Consciousness

o Ethics

o Mind/Body problem

Robotics

o Autonomous robotics

o Bio-inspired and hybrid robotics

o Cognitive robotics

o Developmental robotics

o Humanoid robotics

o Navigation and mapping

o Neurorobotics

Self-Organizing Systems

o Body and brain co-evolution

o Collective and social behavior

o Dynamical systems approaches

o Evolutionary and co-evolutionary approaches 

o Self-assembling and self-replication

Paper and Abstract Submission:

Author Guidelines for All Tracks

All submissions must be written in English and formatted in the Springer LNCS style. Please refer to the LNCS Springer style guide for style templates and formatting instructions. We strongly encourage authors to prepare papers using LaTeX. The LNCS package for LaTeX and the instructions file can be downloaded directly from Springer’s website.

https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines 

Additional Guidelines for Conference and Position Papers

All submitted papers (conference papers with and without inclusion in the proceedings, as well as position papers) must not exceed 12 pages, including references.

Additional Guidelines for Poster Abstracts

All submitted poster abstracts must not exceed 3 pages, including references.

How to Submit

All submissions will be handled through the CMT (Conference Management Toolkit) system. Authors must create a CMT account before submitting their paper. (For instructions: https://sab2026.scioi.de/call-for-contributions/ )

Where to Submit

SAB submission website (CMT)

https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/User/Login?ReturnUrl=%2FSAB2026%2FSubmission%2FIndex 

Paper Review & Acceptance:

All submitted full papers will be peer-reviewed based on relevance, originality, quality of presentation, and technical quality. The authors of all accepted papers are kindly requested to revise their papers following the reviewers’ comments. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their research work either as an oral presentation or as a poster.

Workshop Tutorial Proposals:

We will consider proposals for workshops and tutorials. Workshops and tutorials will be held on the first day of the conference (19 October 2025) and must be held in-person. Proposals will be reviewed by the Organizing Committee. To submit a workshop or tutorial, please follow the below template and submit here: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/SAB2026/Track/6/Submission/Create 

Template

Similar to paper submissions, please follow the LNCS Springer style guide for templates and formatting instructions. For your workshop or tutorial proposal, please include the following information, as displayed on our website. 

https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

https://sab2026.scioi.de/call-for-contributions/

Publication:

All accepted papers (oral and poster presentations) will be published by Springer Nature in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series.

https://link.springer.com/conference/sab 

Program Committee:

Francisco Javier Bellas Bouza – Universidade da Coruña

Maren Bennewitz – Universität Bonn

Marcel Brass – Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Lola Cañamero – CY Cergy Paris Université

Nikolaus Correll – University of Colorado Boulder

Richard José Duro Fernández – Universidade da Coruña

Heiko Hamann – Universität Konstanz

Alex Kacelnik – University of Oxford

Jens Krause – Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Oliver Kroemer – Carnegie Mellon University

Poramate Manoonpong – Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology

Justus Piater – Universität Innsbruck

Tony Prescott – University of Sheffield

Pawel Romanczuk – Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Gregor Schöner – Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Dylan Shell – Texas A&M University

Gaurav Sukhatme – University of Southern California

Jochen Triesch – Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies

Elio Tuci – Université de Namur

Myra Wilson – Aberystwyth University

Florentin Wörgötter – Universität Göttingen

Program Chairs:

Oliver Brock – Technische Universität Berlin

Jeff Krichmar – University of California, Irvine

The conference will be held at Science of Intelligence/TU Berlin and the Universität der Künste (UDK), Berlin, Germany. 

We look forward to welcoming you at SAB 2026!

Best regards,

SAB Organizing Committee

organisers@sab-conference.org