[Meetings] RSS 2026 Call for Papers

[rssconference]

RSS 2026 welcomes Science/Systems papers that report on novel
scientific and systems contributions, and will be reviewed via a
double-blind review process. As always, we solicit your best work.

Important Dates

Timeline

January 23, 2026, 11:59pm AoE, Abstract/Title Submission Deadline
January 30, 2026, 11:59pm AoE, Paper Submission Deadline
February 6, 2026, 11:59pm AoE, Supplementary Material Submission Deadline
March 27, 2026, 11:59pm AoE, Reviews Released and Rebuttal Invitations
April 3, 2026, 11:59pm AoE, Rebuttal Submission Deadline
April 27, 2026, 11:59pm AoE, Paper and Demo Acceptance Notification
July 13–17, 2026,—, RSS 2026, Sydney, Australia

Paper Format

A template for paper 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 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. 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:

Overleaf

Acrobat

dvips

Paper Length

RSS 2026 has a maximum paper length of 8 pages, excluding references.
Remember however that this is a ceiling, not a floor, and reviewers
are likely to look favorably upon papers that are not unnecessarily
long or verbose.

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 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.

Rationale: After RSS 2025 had no hard limit on paper length, we
received widespread feedback from (Senior) Area Chairs and Reviewers
requesting re-introduction of page limits to encourage authors to be
concise, in recognition of the effort it takes to review the work.
Furthermore, a hard page limit implicitly encourages submission of a
result with the right level of granularity for the conference. We
understand that both models (with or without page limits) have their
merits, and reasonable researchers can make (and have made) the case
for either. Depending on feedback from the community, we might keep
tweaking this policy in the future.

Double-Blind Submission

RSS 2026 continues the tradition of double-blind reviews. 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 all submissions:

Authors’ names and affiliations should not appear anywhere in the
title or text of the submission, except for in the References section,
subject to the guidelines below.

Acknowledgments to people or funding agencies should not appear in the
submission.

There should be no links to external websites (e.g. YouTube, github,
authors institute pages) in the blinded submission. We recommend
avoiding links even if they are anonymized. Links to external
resources can be provided (and are highly encouraged) in the final
camera-ready version of the paper.

Authors must ensure that all metadata associated with the submission
is anonymized.

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.

Supplementary Materials

Authors may submit supplementary material such as a video or an
expanded version of a proof. The deadline for supplementary material
is a few days after the paper submission deadline. Note that reviewers
are not required to view this material and include it in their
assessment of the paper.

Authors 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.

Rebuttal Preparation

A subset of papers will be invited to submit one-page rebuttals that
will be considered by reviewers and the Program Committee when making
final acceptance decisions. A template for the rebuttal will be made
available in due time. Detailed information about the rationale and
scope of the rebuttal process can be found in our Rebuttal Guidelines.

Review Guidelines

This year, we are providing a new set of guidelines for reviewers:
Review Guidelines

Demos

RSS 2026 will not have a separate category for demo papers. If the
authors of an accepted paper intend to present a live demo, we applaud
their choice, and will do our best to provide them with the needed
resources (e.g. space, power) to do so, most likely during the poster
session where the paper is assigned. However, acceptance decisions
will not take into account the likelihood of a live demo during the
conference.

Multiple Submissions

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:

Submission is permitted for papers presented or to be presented at
conferences or workshops that do not have published proceedings, or
with only abstracts published.

It is acceptable to submit to RSS work that has been made available as
a technical report (or similar, e.g., in arXiv) without citing it.

Important Submission Policy: Submitting a paper that is currently
under submission to another conference (e.g. ICRA, ICLR, CVPR) is
considered a double submission and is strictly forbidden by RSS rules.
If you have a paper on the same topic currently under review, you
should only submit an RSS paper if it has substantial innovation with
respect to the paper that is already in submission (i.e., it would
qualify as a different and novel paper and you would not withdraw it
even if the paper under review is accepted). Submitting to RSS a paper
that is already under review, and then withdrawing it in case the
other conference accepts it, is a violation of our code of ethics, and
will be treated as such by our conference board.

Plagiarism

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.

Use of AI-Generated Text

Policies around the use of text generated or “polished” by AI agents
or LLMs are difficult to formulate and enforce uniformly and fairly.
As such, we do not have a formal policy on this topic.

However, it is important to note that authors are completely
responsible for any text that is included in their submission,
including text generated by an AI agent. This includes, but is not
limited to, ensuring that the entirety of the submission meets our
standards on plagiarism, ethics, that all citations are appropriate,
and that all results are completely reproducible. If any part of a
submission violates these guidelines, the authors will bear
responsibility, regardless of the source of the text.

Uploading Files for Paper Submissions

Paper submission and review will occur in the OpenReview system at the
following link [link coming soon]:

Logging into the system: All first authors require an OpenReview
account. If you already have an OpenReview account, use those
credentials to login and update your profile. If you do not, sign up
as a new user. New OpenReview profiles created without an
institutional email will go through a moderation process that can take
up to two weeks. New OpenReview profiles created with an institutional
email will be activated automatically.

Although we use OpenReview, the review process will be private, i.e.,
the papers will only be public after acceptance and the reviews will
not be publicly visible.

Conflict domains: When you login for the first time, OpenReview will
prompt you to enter your conflict domains. If you already have an
OpenReview account, update your conflict domains. Please finish this
step before you start the submission process.

Abstract Submission: All submissions require the title/abstract of
their paper(s) to be submitted by January 23, one week before the full
paper submission. The PDF and Supplementary Material are not required
for the title/abstract deadline, but must be uploaded by the time of
their respective deadlines.

Paper submission: Make sure your role is “Author”. Your main
submission file may now be uploaded. Paper descriptions must be in the
conference style format and must be submitted as a PDF. Submissions
may be edited, updated and replaced up to the paper submission
deadline.

Paper ID: After clicking the Submit link, your paper submission will
be assigned an ID. To make sure your PDF submission is
reviewer-friendly, enter this ID at the end of your title as
instructed in the paper template.

Supplementary material: Authors may submit supplementary material,
such as a video or an expanded version of a proof (100MB max, accepted
formats: zip). The link to upload Supplementary Material is available
from the start, but is not required until the Supplementary Material
deadline. The deadline for the submission of supplementary material is
one week after the deadline for paper submissions.

https://roboticsconference.org/information/cfp/
As always, we solicit your best work!