There are two types of submissions to RSS: (i) Science/Systems papers, and (ii) Demo papers. Both types of papers appear in the RSS proceedings.
Science/Systems papers report on novel scientific and systems contributions via a conference paper, and are reviewed via a double-blind review process. Demo papers must be accompanied by a conference demonstration (see details below), and can be reviewed via a single-blind review process as the demonstration content may reveal the affiliation of the authors.
A single contribution should only be submitted as one type, either a Science/System paper or a Demo paper. If there is a novel robotic systems contribution that is properly evaluated against alternatives and does not obviously reveal the authors, the authors should submit it as a Science/System paper. If the authors’ contribution entails a demonstration and cannot be easily anonymized, authors should submit it as a Demo paper.
Details on the two types of submission and guidance for preparation are provided below.
Type of Submission: Demo papers will be published as part of the RSS conference proceedings. These submissions should demonstrate systems that are innovative given the state-of-the-art of robotics research across any of the subject areas of RSS 2025. Open-source and open-access systems or interactive systems that are accessible by the community are especially encouraged. Demo papers can relate to hardware or software contributions or their integration. They can also relate to critical system components and useful tools for the community. Examples of such submissions can correspond to demonstrations of:
What to Submit? Each submitted Demo paper will include a manuscript describing the system (see format and length recommendations below) and demonstrations of the system itself, which can be accessed by reviewers via the supplementary material (e.g., executable software, multimedia showing the operation of robotic hardware, demonstrations of the achieved scalability, etc.), or via a link to a website that is accessible at the time of the review period.
Single-blind: Demo paper submissions are allowed (but not required) to be single-blind in contrast to Science/System papers, which must be double-blind. Demo paper submissions are understood to be demonstrating unique systems that will obviously reveal the authors or their affiliations. Demo papers are not opportunities to bypass the double-blind requirement of Science/System submissions. The reviewers will be asked to evaluate whether a submission was appropriately submitted under the Demo paper category.
Submission Requirements: The authors of Demo paper submissions are required to start the title of the submission with the word “Demonstrating” to communicate to the reviewers the type of the submission and that they are allowed to be single-blind. The authors of Demo papers are also asked to include a short 1-paragraph section at the time of the submission titled “Intended Demonstration” (e.g., before or after the introduction section of their submitted manuscript), of how they envision that the RSS live audience will experience the demonstrated system. See examples of ways to demonstrate a system below. This section can be removed at the time of the Camera-Ready submission, if the Demo paper is accepted.
Conference Demonstration: Authors of accepted demo papers will be asked to demonstrate their system to the RSS attendees. Examples of how this can be achieved include: (i) an interactive demonstration of a software package at the conference, (ii) live demonstration of robotic hardware brought at the conference, (iii) videoconferencing to demonstrate a remote real-world deployment of a robotic system’s abilities. The authors of demo papers are asked to describe at the time of the submission how the RSS live audience will experience the demonstrated system.
Evaluating Demo Papers: A Demo paper should outline the design of the system and provide sufficient details to allow the evaluation of its validity, quality, and relevance to RSS. A Demo paper can do this by addressing some of the following questions:
Review and Camera-ready: The review process for Demo paper submissions will take place in parallel with the review of Science/System paper submissions. It will be handled by the same Program Committee. The proposed demonstrated system needs to be ready at Camera-Ready time to allow the proposed demonstration to take place. Additional improvements are allowed but should not diverge significantly from the description in the submitted Demo paper.
Examples of Demo Papers The Demo paper category was introduced in RSS 2023 and examples of accepted submissions are the following:
Note: Commercial sales and marketing activities are not appropriate for submissions in the RSS Demo Track and should be arranged instead via the RSS Sponsorship program.
A template for paper and demo submissions is available in LaTeX and Word. Do not modify the formatting provided in the templates. Any change to font sizes, page dimensions, line spacing, etc. may delay publication. Please do not include any additional markings such as Draft or To appear in… on the pages. Make sure your paper does not contain page numbers.
We only accept a PDF format for the main submission file. Delays in the production of proceedings are usually caused by PDF file submissions that do not embed all fonts.
Before submitting your PDF file, please open it in Acrobat Reader. In the File menu under Document Properties, you will find information on the fonts used by your document. The PDF file must only contain Type-1 fonts (and Embedded True Type fonts if prepared under Word). On Linux, you may also use pdffonts. Below are instructions to embed PDF fonts for various typesetting systems:
RSS 2025 has no page length requirements on paper or demo submissions. Paper lengths have been typically around 8 pages in the past, and we expect that most submitted papers will have a similar length. The expectation for demo papers submissions is that they can be even shorter than that if the focus is on the supplementary material or an online website that allows the reviewers to experience the demonstrated system.
The main PDF should contain a concise and lucid presentation of the merits of the paper, including a discussion of its contributions, prior work, and a description of key technical ideas and methods used. The paper must include a “Limitations” section, describing shortcomings and open problems related to the proposed contribution. The paper should be self-contained and include all the material necessary for an expert to verify the central claims in the paper.
Additional supplemental text, such as appendices, data listings, or expanded proofs, should be included as supplementary material (see below). Reviewers will review supplemental material at their discretion for Science/System papers. For Demo papers, the reviewers will be guided to prioritize the supplemental material if the system is primarily available through the corresponding files.
Authors should anticipate that their papers may be rejected if the key technical result is not concisely presented. Reviewers may perceive a paper as too long if it is verbose, repetitive, or belabors obvious points. A paper that is 15 pages long is not necessarily going to be rejected, but the authors must make a compelling case that the length is essential to the key ideas in the paper. Moreover, the aesthetics of a paper also make the case for conciseness, since too much whitespace and poorly cropped figures are detrimental to the “feel” of a high-quality paper. Conversely, reviewers may perceive a paper as too short if it omits important details.
Note: RSS was inspired to make this decision following other conferences, such as SIGGRAPH and FOCS. Researchers have wasted untold hours massaging formatting rules, figure sizes, and trimming paragraphs to fit page limits. The nominal reason for page limits in the electronic era is an upper bound on reviewers’ effort since they are expected to review “all the material” in the submission. It is inevitable that reviewers do not review material uniformly and will skim over text that is uninteresting or too dense; hence, page length is a poor proxy for reviewer effort. We will trust that authors will recognize that respecting reviewers’ time is a necessary condition to get published.
RSS 2025 continues the tradition of double-blind reviews for Science and Systems papers. Authors should not list their names on the title page, and anonymity should be maintained in the paper. Authors are asked to take particular care when referencing their own work — careless use of self-citations can easily violate the requirements for double blind reviewing and this will result in papers being desk rejected.
The following principles should be applied for submissions in the Science/System paper category:
In self-citing authors previous work, avoid expressions such as “In the authors earlier work…”, rather use alternative expressions such as “In previous work…” or “In related work…”, in a manner that does not distinguish their own work from the work of others. Authors should otherwise cite work, including their own, as required for the completeness of the submission.
In presentation of experimental work, avoid logos in pictures, or overt references to an individual laboratory. Use expressions such as “The experimental equipment…” rather than “The University of XYZ’s Robby the Robot…”. Otherwise, authors should include photographs, graphics and other presentation material as in the normal manner for a paper submission.
Note: Demo submissions are allowed (but not required) to be single-blind in contrast to science and systems papers, which must be double-blind.
Authors may submit supplementary material such as a video or an expanded version of a proof. Especially in the context of Demo papers, authors are asked to provide supplementary material that allow the reviewers to experience and evaluate the demo. The deadline for supplementary material is a few days after the paper submission deadline.
Note that reviewers of Science/System paper submissions are not required to view this material and include it in their assessment of the paper.
Authors of Science/System papers must ensure that all external links are removed for the initial and revised submissions, to ensure that their identities are not revealed for regular papers. External links are welcome to be included in the final camera-ready version of the paper.
RSS submissions that are identical (or substantially similar) to versions that have been previously published, or accepted for publication, or that have been submitted in parallel to other conferences are not appropriate for RSS and violate the conference’s dual submission policy.
Exceptions to this rule are the following:
None of the above should be construed as overriding the requirements of other publishing venues. In addition, keep in mind that author anonymity to RSS reviewers might be compromised for authors availing themselves of exceptions 1 and 2.
RSS is intolerant of plagiarism. Submitted papers are expected to contain original work executed by the authors with adequate, proper, and scholarly citations to the work of others. It is the job of the authors to clearly identify both their own contribution(s) and published results / techniques on which they depend or build. RSS reviewers are charged to ensure these standards are met. In cases of alleged plagiarism, the program chair will be guided by Section 8.2.4 Allegations of Misconduct as laid out by the IEEE in this document.
We are following the example of ICML and adopt the following policy:
Papers that include text generated from a large language model (LLM), such as ChatGPT, are prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s experimental analysis. Note the following clarification on the above statement:
We plan to investigate any potential violation of the LLM policy when a submission is brought to our attention with a significant concern about a potential violation. Any submission flagged for the potential violation of this LLM policy will go through the same process as any other submission flagged for plagiarism.