Robotics: Science and Systems, 2027 welcomes Science and Systems papers that report on novel scientific and systems contributions. As always, we solicit your best work. This year, we are introducing new elements to the review and publication process. With the goal to rebalance our publishing structure toward long-term scientific progress and insightful, reproducible methodologies, we are implementing several structural changes, detailed below.
| Timeline | ||
|---|---|---|
| December 4, 2026 | 11:59pm AoE | Extended Abstract submission deadline |
| February 5, 2027 | 11:59pm AoE | Decision Stage 1 (Reject or Invitation to Rebuttal) |
| February 12, 2027 | 11:59pm AoE | Rebuttal submission deadline |
| February 26, 2027 | 11:59pm AoE | Decision Stage 2 (Reject or Invitation to execute an Extension Charter) |
| April 16, 2027 | 11:59pm AoE | Final paper submission deadline |
| April 19, 2027 | 11:59pm AoE | Supplementary material submission deadline |
| April 30, 2027 | 11:59pm AoE | Paper acceptance notification |
| May 14, 2027 | 11:59pm AoE | Camera-ready paper submission |
| July 6–11, 2027 | — | RSS conference in Athens, Greece |
RSS 2027 replaces the traditional single-deadline submission and rebuttal process with a two-stage development cycle to encourage engaged research shaping. This revised structure aims to preserve human involvement and oversight, despite the expected use of LLMs. Additionally, incorporating multiple decision stages acts as a cascading filter, allowing the Program Committee to sustainably manage a potentially unprecedented volume of submissions.
Reviewer and Chair names will be made public for papers that are accepted. We believe disclosing the identities of Program Committee members at this final stage will strengthen community bonds between authors and their respective reviewers and chairs. Furthermore, it gives committee members a chance to be acknowledged for their high-quality work and encourages the community to see reviewing as an essential activity for the progression of science and systems.
Submissions must be anonymized. Authors should not list their names on the title page, and anonymity must be maintained throughout 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 anonymity and this will result in papers being desk rejected.
The following principles should be applied for all submissions:
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: self-citations should be indistinguishable from citations of others, in terms of style and treatment. As a general rule, if an RSS paper builds on the authors’ previous work, then the amount of novel material in this paper should be exactly the same as if it was building on another group’s work. Authors should thus cite all 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.
Please note that, as discussed below, it is acceptable to submit to RSS work that has been made available as a preprint on sites such as arXiv. Reviewers will be instructed to not search preprint servers for de-anonymized versions of papers that have been assigned to them. However, this policy is impossible to enforce strictly. Thus, authors that chose to publish and/or advertise their paper as a preprint during the RSS review process should be aware that they run the risk of reviewers becoming aware of their identity. If authors want to ensure their anonymity during the review process, they should not publish or advertise preprints.
Any paper that breaks anonymity in a manner that is not consistent with the guidelines above will be subject to desk rejection.
A subset of papers will be invited to the rebuttal period. A template for the rebuttal will be made available in due course.
Review guidelines will be made available in due course.
To maintain the integrity of the review process and prevent shifting Conflicts of Interest (CoIs), the author list provided at Stage 1 is generally considered final. However, we recognize that executing the Extension Charter may require new collaborations. Requests to add authors, delete authors, or change author order between Stage 1 and Stage 2 must be submitted to the Program Chairs for approval. Additions will only be approved if they are directly justified by the work requested in the Extension Charter.
Stage 1 initial submissions have a strict maximum length of 6 pages consisting of up to 5 pages of content and 1 page of references. Papers that proceed to Stage 2 will be expanded into final submissions with a strict maximum length of 8 pages, excluding references. A template for paper submissions is available in LaTeX or Word. Do not modify the formatting provided in the templates. Any change to font sizes, page dimensions, line spacing, etc. may result in a Desk Rejection, or lead to delays in publication. Please do not include any additional markings such as “Draft” or “To appear in …” on the pages, and make sure your paper does not contain page numbers. We only accept a PDF format for the main submission file. Before submitting your PDF file, please open it in Acrobat Reader and verify in Document Properties that the file only contains Type-1 fonts (and Embedded True Type fonts if prepared under Word) to prevent delays in proceedings production.
The use of LLMs is permitted for both authors and reviewers. While disclosure is not mandatory, it is highly encouraged in the spirit of open methodological sharing. However, papers with “hallucinated” citations or references will be desk-rejected (automated checks will be performed to validate this). Authors are completely responsible for any text included in their submission, including ensuring that the entirety of the submission meets our standards on plagiarism and ethics, and that all results are reproducible.
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. Submitting a paper that is currently under submission to another conference is considered a double submission and is strictly forbidden. Exceptions to this rule are:
RSS does not tolerate 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. 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.
Paper submission and review will occur in the OpenReview system: