The 2nd Space Robotics Workshop (SRW) will be held in conjunction with the IEEE SMC-IT/SCC from July 28th to 29th 2025, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, CA. The workshop will bring together experts in robotics, autonomy, AI, and aerospace to shape the next era of innovation driving our return to the Moon, the sustainable exploration of Mars and beyond, and the expansion of commercial activity beyond Earth orbit.
As national space agencies and commercial ventures capitalize on next-generation robotics, we stand at a critical juncture. Increasing mission complexity, evolving space architectures, expanding commercial services, and the rapid progress in AI present both unprecedented opportunities and new challenges in how we explore, operate, and build a sustainable space economy. Rapid advances in terrestrial robotics are directly influencing the development of space robotics and are poised to play a central role in enabling more autonomous, resilient, and ambitious missions, while also laying the groundwork for future off-world economic activities.
Building on the foundation laid during our inaugural event, this year’s workshop will focus on the recent breakthroughs in the field of robotics, the current state of space robotics, the rise of the commercial space sector supporting the lunar economy, and emerging concepts aimed at enabling more capable, adaptable, and cost-effective missions.
The program will be organized around a set of focused technical sessions, with keynote talks, spotlight presentations, panels, and a poster session.
Call for Papers to the 2nd Space Robotics Workshop
We invite submissions on research and development at the intersection of robotics, autonomy, and space applications for the 2nd Space Robotics Workshop, which will be held in conjunction with the IEEE SMC-IT/SCC from July 28th to 29th 2025, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, CA. Contributions should highlight innovative methods, systems, and technologies for exploration, in-space services, or science operations beyond Earth.
Relevant topics:
- Autonomous navigation and manipulation for planetary and orbital robotics.
- In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) and In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) enabled by advanced autonomy.
- AI Agents for perception, decision-making, planning, and multi-robot coordination in space environments.
- Photogrammetry, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), and other volumetric representations techniques for space applications.
- Foundation models & language-vision-action models for robotics.
- Human-robot teaming strategies for crewed and uncrewed missions, including shared autonomy and intent recognition.
- Sim-to-Real transfer and domain adaptation for robotic systems operating in space.
- High-fidelity simulation and digital twins for development, testing, and mission rehearsal.
- Long-duration autonomy and adaptive learning in unstructured, dynamic, or high-latency environments.
- Autonomous surface operations, including science-driven exploration, sample collection, and real-time decision-making.
- Robotics platforms and control architectures for Lunar, Martian, and deep-space missions.
- Mission concepts, technology demonstrations, and commercial initiatives accelerating the adoption of space robotics.
- Trust, verification, and validation frameworks to ensure robust, explainable, and resilient autonomous behavior.
Submission Guidelines
- Full papers can be up to 10 pages, not including references. Paper templates are available here: IEEE Templates.
- All accepted papers will be published in the IEEE conference proceedings, indexed with the IEEE Xplore database. Note that IEEE has a “Podium and Publish” policy for conferences, which means that no manuscript will be published in IEEE Xplore without first being presented at the conference.
- Submissions can be made through the EasyChair portal at this link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=smcitscc2025. Be sure to select the “Space Robotics Workshop” track.
- All accepted papers will be presented as posters during the workshop and will be included in the proceedings. A select number of top submissions will also be invited for spotlight presentations as part of the workshop program.
- Selected papers may be invited to appear in a special issue of a reputable journal. More details will be made available in the future.
Important Dates
- May 2nd, 2025 – Paper submission deadline
- May 23rd, 2025 – Paper acceptance notification
- June 20th, 2025 – Final camera-ready paper deadline
