Call for Papers and Demos

We are pleased to announce the 20th edition of the “Robotics: Science and Systems” (RSS) conference to be held at the Technical University of Delft in Delft, Netherlands, from July 15 - 19, 2024.

RSS is a single-track conference that connects researchers working on all aspects of robotics including scientific foundations, mechanisms, algorithms, applications, and analysis of robotic systems. The single-track format gives attendees an opportunity to learn about state-of-the-art research in all areas of robotics. The conference will consist of oral and poster presentations of accepted papers, demonstrations, invited talks, and panels.

The conference will preserve the RSS tradition of selecting excellent papers via a thorough and fair review process. Paper submissions will be evaluated in terms of their novelty, technical quality, significance, potential impact, and clarity.

The conference will again include the recently added category of Demo contributions, similar to conferences in related research areas, resulting in a Demo Track during the main conference.

Important Dates

RSS 2024 has no page length requirements on submissions. Traditionally, RSS submissions have been 8 pages given the paper template, which is available either in LaTeX or Word format. We expect that most submitted papers will have a similar length. We trust that authors will recognize that respecting reviewers’ time is helpful to the evaluation of their work.

Detailed submission instructions are available here.

Highlights of RSS 2024

• RSS 2024 and its accompanying workshops are planned as in-person events, excluding any unexpected developments with the COVID-19 pandemic or similar unfortunate global events.

• Demo submissions will be possible for RSS 2024 contributors. These single-blind submissions can range from early research demos (e.g., innovative, proof-of-concept given the state-of-the-art) to mature production-ready systems (e.g., accessible, large-scale industrial systems), which can be demonstrated during the meeting. Open-source and open-access systems or interactive systems that are accessible by the community are especially encouraged. Demos can relate to hardware or software contributions or their integration. They can also relate to critical system components and useful tools for the community. The deadline and the review process for demos will take place in parallel with the review of regular RSS paper submissions. Detailed submission guidelines for Demos will be available on the conference website and will be similar to last year’s process.

• The review process will continue RSS’ strong tradition in emphasizing quality, fairness, and rigor. Reviews for RSS papers of all types, i.e., “science”, “systems” and “demo” papers, will remain blind. As in previous iterations of the conference, authors are encouraged to submit “systems” papers and the program committee will be encouraged to evaluate them by gauging their potential impact and usefulness to the community.

• The conference will follow a two-stage review process this year. During the first round (up to March 29) a threshold decision will be made by the reviewers and the Area Chair given the initial submission. The submissions above the threshold will have 3 weeks to revise and resubmit as well as rebut any review comments as part of the authors’ response. For the second round of the review process, the revised submission and authors’ responses will be shared with the original reviewers and the Area Chair. An Area Chair meeting will finalise decisions regarding the revised submissions by May 13.

Subject Areas

RSS seeks high-quality research papers and demos that introduce new ideas and stimulate future trends in robotics. We invite paper and demo submissions in all areas of robotics, including:

• Assembly, Logistics and Manufacturing;
• Assistive, Entertainment and Service Robots;
• Autonomous Vehicle Navigation & Mobile Robots;
• Bioinspired Robots;
• Control & Dynamics;
• Cognitive Modeling & Knowledge Representation for Robots;
• Field Robotics (e.g., Aerial, Agricultural, Construction, Space, Underwater Robotics);
• Formal Methods for Robotics;
• Grasping & Manipulation;
• Human-Robot Interaction;
• Humanoid & Walking Robots;
• Mechanisms & Design;
• Medical Robotics;
• Multi-Robot & Networked Systems;
• Robot Learning: Foundation models;
• Robot Learning: Reinforcement learning;
• Robot learning: imitation learning;
• Robot learning: model learning;
• Robot learning: datasets and benchmarks;
• Robot Modeling & Simulation;
• Perceptual learning
• Robot Perception, Sensing & Vision;
• Robot Planning;
• Robot State Estimation, Localization & Mapping;
• Soft Robots.

Please check the conference website as well as the conference’s social media accounts for more information.

Detailed submission instructions are available here.