Announcing the PhyRC 2027 Challenge: Physical Robot Caregiving (Cornell × KAIST)

[Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee]

Dear Colleagues,

The EmPRISE Lab at Cornell University and the Robust Intelligence & Robotics (RIRO) Lab at KAIST are thrilled to announce the PhyRC 2027 Challenge, the second edition of our competition to facilitate innovation in physical robot caregiving.

This edition has a single, deeper track: Mobile Manipulation for Robot-assisted Dressing, evaluated through two phases: Phase 1: Simulation and Phase 2: Real Robot. We would like to thank Hello Robot for generously sponsoring a Stretch 4 robot for the winning team.

The inaugural PhyRC Challenge at ICRA 2025 drew 56 teams from 17 countries and culminated in live real-robot finals in Atlanta, where no team solved the complete dressing task.

Competition Phases:

Simulation Phase (Phase 1), Oct 15 - Dec 15, 2026: We will use NVIDIA Isaac Sim as the simulation platform. Teams are required to complete the robot-assisted dressing task in the simulation environment. We will provide the simulation environments including the human avatars, robots, and environmental objects. Submissions are evaluated automatically on a leaderboard.

Real Robot Prep and Evaluation (Phase 2), Jan - May 2027: Select teams with the best simulation results will be invited to compete with real robots. The robots perform the same task in the real world, except this time with a manikin rather than a human avatar. We will provide the real-world environment including the manikin, chair, and garments. Venue and detailed evaluation protocol will be announced in due course.

Task Details (see the website for task visualizations and the full rubric):

Mobile manipulation for robot-assisted dressing: Assistive dressing is an ADL task during which the caregiver helps the care recipient put on garments. A manikin is seated in a chair, and the robot must pick up a closed-topology T-shirt, thread it over the body, and dress both arms as fully as possible. In Phase 1 (Simulation Phase), you will be using two Stretch 4 robots to do this task in NVIDIA Isaac Sim. There are no restrictions on algorithms, methodologies, or third-party libraries.

Teams are scored on picking up the T-shirt, getting each wrist through a sleeve, pulling the garment across the body, and overall arm coverage, with efficiency accounted for by dividing the score by total task time. Object positions and the human configuration are randomized, and each solution is evaluated multiple times from randomized initial states.

Prize:

Winning team: Hello Robot Stretch 4 robot, sponsored by Hello Robot.

Key Dates:
Registration Opens: Aug 17, 2026
Registration Deadline: Oct 15, 2026 (11:59pm AoE)
Phase 1 (Simulation): Oct 15 - Dec 15, 2026 (2 months)
Phase 1 Results Announced: End of December, 2026
Phase 2 (Real Robot Prep and Evaluation): Jan - May 2027

Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZ7V6CdXvp1L8_cTQJFKvNmiNCi23d8sbpV3nCNvdW1D5FPg/viewform

For more information, visit the PhyRC 2027 Challenge website: https://emprise.cs.cornell.edu/phyrc/challenge-2027/

If you have any questions, please email phyrc.c...@gmail.com

Please feel free to forward this information to anyone who may be interested.

Best regards,
The PhyRC 2027 Organizing Team
EmPRISE Lab, Cornell University × RIRO Lab, KAIST