[Meetings] [CFP] IROS 2026 Workshop on NeuRo-SymBolic World Models (RoBoWoMo)

[Brennan Swick]

**Apologies for any cross-posting!**

Dear all,

TL;DR:

Event: NeuRo-SymBolic World Models (RoBoWoMo) Workshop at IROS 2026 (Pittsburgh, US)
Date: September 27, 2026
Website: https://worldmodelworkshop.github.io/

Late Submission Deadline: August 25, 2026
OpenReview submission link: https://bit.ly/SubmitToRoBoWoMo 

Workshop Overview: 
World models have emerged as a central paradigm in robot learning, planning, and reasoning, yet the term spans very different meanings across communities. High-dimensional neural models often suffer from data inefficiency, while symbolic systems require extensive domain engineering. This workshop focuses on bridging the gap between these isolated communities. We aim to bring together researchers across neural, symbolic, and hybrid backgrounds to clarify terminology, align assumptions, and identify shared challenges. By unifying these paradigms, we hope to elicit hybrid methods that drastically improve generalization, interpretability, and long-horizon reasoning for complex robotic domains.

Call for Papers: 

• Half Papers: Up to 4 pages (excluding references/appendices)
• Full Papers: Up to 8 pages (excluding references/appendices)

We welcome submissions covering neuro-symbolic unification, hybrid architectures, task-driven world modeling, benchmarking/evaluation, etc. All accepted papers will have the opportunity to be presented via lightning talks and a dedicated poster session, with the strongest submissions selected for longer spotlight presentations.

For more details on formatting, submission policies, and topics of interest, please visit our Call for Papers page: https://worldmodelworkshop.github.io/call_for_papers/ 

Important Dates (AoE):

• Early Submission Deadline: August 15, 2026
  
• Late Submission Deadline: August 25, 2026
• Late Author Notification: September 10, 2026
• Workshop Date: September 27, 2026

For schedule details: https://worldmodelworkshop.github.io/schedule 

Awards:

To recognize outstanding contributions and support early-career talent, we will be offering four Best Paper awards, with spotlight presentations!

Invited Speakers and Panelists: 

• Sherry Yang (New York University & Google DeepMind)
• Yilun Du (Harvard University)
• Tom Silver & Yixuan Huang (Princeton University)
• Siddharth Srivastava (Arizona State University)
• Emre Ugur (Bogazici University)
• Sungjin Ahn (KAIST & New York University)
• Jiajun Wu (Stanford University)

Organizers:

• Ahmed Jaafar* (Air Force Research Laboratory - AV)
• Brennan Swick* (Air Force Research Laboratory - National Research Council)
• Alper Ahmetoglu (Brown University)
• Naman Shah (Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence)
• Josh Roy (Princeton University)
• David Paulius (University of Notre Dame)
• Sudarshan Harithas (Brown University)
• Nathan Hertlein  (Air Force Research Laboratory)

Advisory Board:

• Thao Nguyen (Haverford College)
• James Hardin (Air Force Research Laboratory)
• Yuke Zhu (University of Texas at Austin)
• Justus Piater (University of Innsbruck)
• Hao Su (Fudan University)

We look forward to your submissions and to seeing you in Pittsburgh!

Best regards,
The RoBoWoMo Organizing Committee