Autonomous Flight in GPS-Denied Environments for Agriculture and Forestry
Vijay KumarUniversity of Pennsylvania
Personal website
Workshop on Field Robotics - ICRA 2025
Important dates
- Paper submission deadline: March 30, 2025, 11:59 p.m. (Anywhere on Earth)
- Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2025
- Camera-ready submission: May 1, 11:59 p.m. (Anywhere on Earth)
- Workshop date: May 19, 2025
The best submissions will be invited to submit a full-length paper in a Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics.
- Official Invitations sent: June 2025
- Deadline of submission to IEEE T-FR: October 2025
Context
Field robotics tackles the problem of developing, deploying, and evaluating autonomous mobile systems in unstructured and often dynamic environments. Typical commercial applications are in agriculture, construction, mining, and forestry. The range of physical mediums is also very diversified: in the air, on the ground, underground, on the water, and underwater. These can be located on Earth, or on other celestial bodies (e.g., planets, moons, or asteroids). As such, field robotics works under wildly diverse and radically different assumptions than other areas of robotics, which tend to have well-defined working hypotheses. Therefore, this creates its own set of challenges. This workshop will thus offer the opportunity to present work and discuss how these unique challenges can be solved.
This workshop will bring together experts, researchers, and practitioners to discuss the latest advancements in field robotics. Participants will gain valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities that arise in deploying robots in diverse field scenarios, such as rugged terrains, remote locations, and hazardous environments. Practical case studies and real-world applications will be presented to showcase the successful, and not-so-successful cases of field robotics. The workshop will encourage fruitful dialogues and collaborative discussions, culminating by a panel at the end of the workshop. Attendees will leave with a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art technologies, the main actors, and upcoming challenges. As major outcomes, we aim to consolidate the community around field robotics and prepare an editorial article on the current status of robotics deployed in real environments.
Program
All invited speakers are confirmed.
| Time | Speaker | Topic/title |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30- 8:50 | Organizers | Welcome and opening remarks |
| 8:50- 9:20 | Robin Murphy (Texas A&M University) | Invited talk #1 - 30 Years of Robotics for Disasters |
| 9:20- 10:00 | Ten emerging researchers | Spotlight talks #1 (3 min/pers) |
| 10:00- 10:50 | - | Coffee break and poster session |
| 10:50- 11:20 | Kazuya Yoshida (Tohoku University) | Invited talk #2 - Terrestrial field tests for a modular and heterogeneous AI robot system for lunar exploration |
| 11:20- 11:50 | Marco Hutter (ETH Zurich) | Invited talk #3 - Robot Navigation with Common Sense |
| 11:50- 13:10 | - | Lunch |
| 13:10- 14:10 | Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania) | Keynote - Autonomous Flight in GPS-Denied Environments for Agriculture and Forestry |
| 14:10- 14:40 | Panel | Questions: What is the role of simulation, and data sets in field robotics? Should we keep an annual workshop or create a separate conference? Why do old laboratories stop doing field deployments? |
| 14:40- 15:00 | Organizers | Result announcement for the dataset competition |
| 15:00- 16:00 | - | Coffee break and poster session |
| 16:00- 16:30 | Frank Dellaert (Georgia Institute of Technology) | Invited talk #4 - Precision Robotics for Agriculture 2.0 |
| 16:30- 17:00 | Josh Marshall (Queen’s University) | Invited talk #5 - Digging Deep: Robotics for Mining in the 21st Century |
| 17:00- 17:30 | Organizers | Conclusion |
| 18:00- 19:30 | - | ICRA Welcome Reception |
*Note: All times are in the local time zone of ICRA 2025 (Atlanta).
Speakers
University of Pennsylvania
Personal website
Terrestrial field tests for a modular and heterogeneous AI robot system for lunar exploration
Kazuya YoshidaTohoku University
Personal website
Moonshot Program
Precision Robotics for Agriculture 2.0
Frank DellaertGeorgia Institute of Technology
Personal website
Digging Deep: Robotics for Mining in the 21st Century
Josh MarshallQueen’s University
Personal website
Call for papers
The workshop topics include, but are not limited to:
- Agriculture
- Construction
- Forestry
- Healthcare
- Intelligent Transportation Systems
- Marine Robotics
- Mining
- Search and rescue
- Space exploration
Submission guidelines
FR workshop accepts contributions based on the following criteria:
- The submission should be from 2 to 8 pages long. The paper should follow the IEEE RAS template.
- The review process is single-blind.
- Submissions should contain a clear focus on field robotics and feature lessons learned and/or field experience reports.
- We welcome prospective and conceptual papers as well.
- The papers should be submitted on Microsoft CMT.
- Accepted papers will be available on the workshop website. The authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their results in a poster session during the workshop.
Competition
This year, the field robotics workshop features multiple competition tracks designed to address key challenges in field robot deployment. The competition focuses on SLAM and vision-based tasks of 2D and 3D Semantic Segmentation in challenging environments like dense vegetation. Participants have access to extensive datasets, including recordings from wheeled, tracked, and multi-legged robots navigating challenging off-road terrains from the GOOSE and GOOSE-Ex dataset. The SLAM dataset features radar-based perception data for off-road environments and multispectral data for scenarios where passive sensors are crucial.
The top-performing teams are invited to present their results during the workshop poster sessions and receive prizes. The competitions are open to all field robotics researchers and practitioners.
Please visit the competition websites for more details:
Any questions about the competition can be directed at field-robotics-competition-icra-25@googlegroups.com.
Organizers
Johann Laconte
French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE)
Personal website
French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE)
Personal website
Competition Organizers
 Jan Faigl |
 Gerald Steinbauer-Wagner |
 Miloš Prágr |
 Raphael Hagmanns |
 Miguel Granero |
 Vladimír Kubelka |
 Peter Mortimer |