Call for papers

RoboCup International Symposium 2026 https://2026.robocup.org/symposium/ Monday 6 July 2026 Incheon, Republic of Korea.

The 29th RoboCup International Symposium will be held on 6 July 2026, at the Songdo ConvensiA, Incheon, Republic of Korea. The symposium will be in conjunction with RoboCup 2026 (30 June to 6 July 2026).

We call for submissions of papers reporting innovative, original research with relevance to areas of robotics and artificial intelligence as listed below. Within the described scope of topics, we also encourage submissions of high-quality overview articles, papers describing real-world research, and papers reporting theoretical results. Researchers are invited to submit their work independently of whether they participate in the RoboCup competitions or have a RoboCup team.

In addition to the main track, this year introduces an Open Platforms & Tools Track focusing on interactive tools, hardware, and software frameworks with a high degree of usability.

IMPORTANT DATES Submission of full papers: 8 April 2026 Notification to authors: 29 May 2026 Submission of camera-ready copies: 19 June 2026 RoboCup Symposium 2026: 6 July 2026 (RoboCup on 30 June - 5 July 2026)

SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS All papers will be peer-reviewed and evaluated by members of the program committee. The proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium will be published and archived within the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) series by Springer-Verlag after the conference.

Papers should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gui...) and must be electronically submitted through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcs26)

Submission Types: 1. Main Track: Submissions are limited to 12 pages (including references). 2. Open Platforms & Tools: Submissions are limited to an Extended Abstract of max 4 pages, including a mandatory URL to a tutorial website (see track details below).

OPEN PLATFORMS & TOOLS TRACK To foster practical exchange within the robotics community, the former Development Track has been reimagined for 2026 to focus on usability and interactivity.

We invite submissions of open-source hardware designs, software frameworks, tools, datasets, and benchmarks that other teams can use. The goal of this track is to reward the creation of solutions that lower the barrier to entry or accelerate research for others.

Submission Requirements: • Extended Abstract: A maximum 4-page paper describing the tool, its innovation, and its application to RoboCup or general robotics. • Tutorial Website: The abstract must include a link to a publicly accessible website containing documentation and a step-by-step tutorial. The tutorial must be sufficient to guide a new user through installing the software or building the hardware.

Presentation Format: Accepted contributions will be presented at an Interactive Demonstration Session (replacing the traditional poster). Authors will be provided with a table and power to demonstrate their tool live to Symposium attendees.

MAIN TRACK TOPICS Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Robot Hardware and Software - mobile robotics - humanoid robotics - sensors and actuators - embedded and mobile devices - robot construction and new materials - robot system integration - robot software architectures - robot programming environments and languages - real-time and concurrent programming - robot simulators - sim2real learning * Perception and Action - 3D perception - distributed sensor integration - sensor noise filtering - real-time image processing and pattern recognition - motion and sensor models - sensory-motor control - robot kinematics and dynamics - high-dimensional motion control

* Robot Cognition and Learning - world modelling and knowledge representation - learning from demonstration and imitation - localisation, navigation, and mapping - planning and reasoning - decision making under uncertainty - neural systems and deep learning - complex motor skill acquisition - reinforcement learning and optimisation - motion and sensor model learning

* Human-Robot Interaction - robot social intelligence - fluency of interaction - speech synthesis and natural language generation - natural language recognition - explainable robot behaviours - emotion recognition and reaction - understanding human intent and behaviour - safety, security and dependability - enabling humans to predict robot behaviour

* Multi-Robot Systems - team coordination methods - communication protocols - learning and adaptive systems - teamwork and heterogeneous agents - dynamic resource allocation - adjustable autonomy

* Education and Edutainment - robotics and artificial intelligence education - educational robotics - robot kits and programming tools - robotic entertainment

* Applications and Benchmarking - search and rescue robots - robot surveillance - service and social robots - robots at home, at work and in public spaces - robots in the real world - performance metrics - human-robot interaction

PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Matteo Leonetti (King’s College London, UK) Asad Norouzi (Seneca Polytechnic, Canada) Jaeseo Park (Incheon Technopark, Republic of Korea)

CONTACT You can contact the PC chairs at r***6@easychair.org.

On behalf of the program committee, Matteo Leonetti King's College London https://www.sensiblerobotsresearch.org/ https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/matteo-leonetti