[Woskshop] Call for Papers: ICRA workshop on simulators for marine applications

[Ignacio Carlucho]

Call for Papers: ICRA workshop on simulators for marine applications 

Dear Colleagues, 

We are happy to invite you to our workshop AQ²UASIM: Advancing Quantitative and QUAlitative SIMulators for marine applications, to be held at ICRA 2025.

Important dates:

In an effort to accommodate participants who need more time for travel arrangements, we have established two submission deadlines for the call for papers: 

1st deadline:

The first submission deadline is 5th of March, 2025.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent on 15th of March 2025.

2nd deadline:

The second submission deadline is 1st of April, 2025.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent on 15th of April, 2025.

Underwater robotics is a less developed field due to high-entry barriers, including the need for costly equipment and specialized facilities such as pools or access to seas and lakes for testing. These factors make engaging in underwater robotics difficult for many research institutions.

With this workshop, we aim to familiarize participants with existing simulators and explore areas for future research and development to enhance these tools, ensuring they better meet the evolving needs of industry and academia. 

Furthermore, we aim to highlight the role of simulation systems in overcoming these challenges, enabling researchers and industry leaders to design, test, and optimize control strategies, autonomy and software architectures in a cost-effective, risk-free environment. By advocating for the use of realistic, open-source simulators, we aim to lower these barriers, allowing more institutions to participate in underwater robotics research

This workshop will take place on one May 23rd, as part of the ICRA’25 workshop program. This workshop is planned to be in-person mode. 

Invited Speakers:

• Prof. Yvan R. Petillot - Professor at Heriot-Watt University, UK

• Prof. Pere Ridao - Professor at University Of Girona, Spain

• Dr. Joshua Mangelson - Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University, USA

• Mr. Marc Steinberg - Office of Naval Research Program Manager, USA

• Prof. Kevin Koser - Professor at Christian-Albrechts-Universit¨at, Germany

• Dr. Corina Barbalata - Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University, USA

We invite researchers to submit work that advances marine robotics, underwater applications, and realistic simulation environments. While our main focus is on simulation, we also welcome contributions that inform or enhance simulation development—especially those that help bridge the gap between simulation and real-world performance. Authors are encouraged to describe their research pipelines, including how and where their methods are tested (e.g., in simulation, field trials, or hybrid approaches), and to demonstrate relevance to practical marine or underwater applications.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

- Practical solutions for ocean exploration, aquaculture, or environmental projects

- Underwater manipulation and intervention

- Sonar, computer vision, and hybrid sensing technologies

- SLAM and navigation strategies for marine environments

- Artificial intelligence or machine learning to reduce the sim-to-real gap

- Novel simulation techniques for underwater robotics (e.g., multibody dynamics, fluid-structure interactions)

- Open-source datasets, tools, and frameworks for marine robotics

We accept long papers (6 pages + references) and short pages (2 pages), presenting mature or early preliminary work. The submission website is: https://easychair.org/cfp/AQ2UASIM

To recognize outstanding contributions, we will present a Best Paper Award. The winner will be awarded a prize of 300USD, and will be selected by an independent committee based on technical merit. We thank the IEEE technical committee. All accepted papers will be made available on the workshop's website.

More details about the workshop, including schedule, can be found on the workshop’s website: https://sites.google.com/view/aq2uasim/home

Organizing Committee:

• Dr. Markus Buchholz, Heriot-Watt University, UK

• Dr. Ignacio Carlucho, Heriot-Watt University, UK

• Arjo Chakravarty, Intrinsic, Singapore

• Dr. Patryk Cieślak, University of Girona, Spain

• Dr. Joan Esteba, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE

• Dr. Fausto Ferreira, University of Zagreb, Croatia

• Valerio Franchi, University of Girona, Spain

• Michele Grimaldi, Heriot-Watt University, UK

• Mart Kartasev, KTH, Sweden

• Kalin Norman, Brigham Young University

• Evan Palmer, Oregon State University

• Dr. Özer Özkahraman, KTH, Sweden

• Dr. Mabel Zhang, Heriot-Watt University Orkney Campus, UK

Advisory Committee:

• Dr. Maria Koskinopoulou, Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University, UK

• Prof. Nuno Gracias, Professor at University of Girona, Spain

• Dr. Claire Dune, Associate Professor at University of Toulon, France

• Dr. JunFeng Wu, Associate Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

• Hayat Rajani, Senior Engineer, University of Girona, Spain