field robot image

Important dates

Paper submission deadline: March 16, 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 or 23

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.

Preliminary 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 - Tentative title: The Future of Flying Robots
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

Tentative title: The Future of Flying Robots

Vijay Kumar
University of Pennsylvania
Personal website

30 Years of Robotics for Disasters

Robin Murphy
Texas A&M University
Personal website

Robot Navigation with Common Sense

Marco Hutter
ETH Zurich
Personal website

Precision Robotics for Agriculture 2.0

Frank Dellaert
Georgia Institute of Technology
Personal website

Tentative title: Navigation, mapping, planning, and control applied to autonomous marine systems

Stephan Williams
The University of Sydney
Personal website

Terrestrial field tests for a modular and heterogeneous AI robot system for lunar exploration

Kazuya Yoshida
Tohoku University
Personal website
Moonshot Program

Digging Deep: Robotics for Mining in the 21st Century

Josh Marshall
Queen’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 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 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:

Vision Tracks:

Any questions about the competition can be directed at field-robotics-competition-icra-25@googlegroups.com.