Call for Papers and Demos

We are pleased to announce the 21st edition of the “Robotics: Science and Systems” (RSS) conference to be held at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, USA, from June 21 - 25, 2025.

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

Important Dates

RSS 2025 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.

Detailed submission instructions are available here.

Highlights of RSS 2025

• RSS 2025 and its accompanying workshops are planned as in-person events.

• Demo submissions will be possible for RSS 2025 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). 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 includes a rebuttal stage. The submissions will undergo an initial review process and initial decisions will be announced by March 17. The submissions above the threshold will have one week to prepare a short rebuttal to address the reviewers’ and Area Chair’s concerns and provide clarifications. An Area Chair meeting will finalize decisions, taking into account both the initial reviews and the rebuttal, by April 10.

• RSS 2025 will require papers to include a “Limitations” section, describing shortcomings and open problems related to the proposed contribution.

• RSS 2025 requires authors to submit the title/abstract of their paper(s) by January 17, one week before the full paper submission. This gives extra time to the Program Committee for coordinating the review process.

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.