Workshop on Intelligent Space Robotics and Systems

ICRA 2026 Workshop • Date: June 5, 2026 • Location: TBD

Poster Stands: TBD • Session Room: TBD

Call for Papers Submit Remote Partcipation RSVP

Introduction

This workshop brings together global leaders and rising experts in space robots and systems to address the challenges and opportunities of off-world autonomy. To date, more robots than people have lived and worked in space, underscoring their vital role in humanity's quest to understand, explore, and develop the universe. With global access to space rapidly expanding, new opportunities are emerging in on-orbit servicing, planetary exploration, lunar activities, resource prospecting, remote sensing, and human habitation. At the same time, advances in perception, manipulation, locomotion, mapping, and navigation for robots on Earth are accelerating the readiness of autonomy for deployment in space.

Robots are often the scouts of humanity—able to reach the most distant and hazardous regions of space—and will be essential partners in enabling humans to live and work beyond Earth. This workshop will highlight cutting-edge research and foster bold discussions on how robotics can extend human reach, open new frontiers, and help realize our long-term aspiration of exploring the universe ourselves.

Invited Speakers

  • Carlos Pérez del Pulgar

    Carlos Pérez del Pulgar

    University of Málaga

    Website

  • Christian Ott

    Christian Ott

    TU Wien

    Website

  • Dongheui Lee

    Dongheui Lee

    TU Wien

    Website

  • Kuldeep Barad

    Kuldeep Barad

    Redwire Space - Luxembourg

    Website

  • Genya Ishigami

    Genya Ishigami

    Keio University

    Website

  • Giusy Falcone

    Giusy Falcone

    University of Michigan

    Website

(Listed alphabetically)

Call for Papers / Demos

We welcome submissions on space autonomy, planetary exploration, orbital robotics, earth observation, novel space hardware, and space systems. Research questions that we would like to explore are:

  • What new space applications become possible through the adoption of unconventional robot morphologies such as soft and deployable designs?
  • How can emerging sensing technologies and fusion methods improve perception in space robotics and expand the range of feasible applications?
  • What methods should we use for estimation for space robotics, including new localization and navigation algorithms?
  • How might new simulation tools, foundation models, and scene representations be applied to advance space autonomy?
  • What models and architectures are best suited for Earth observation and geospatial AI?
  • What unique challenges or bottlenecks exist for autonomous space robotics (data scarcity, onboard compute, environmental, edge cases), and what steps can we take as a community to improve them?

Submission Guidelines

The workshop will invite extended abstracts of up to 3 pages (excluding references, acknowledgments, and limitations), formatted in the IEEE conference template and submitted via OpenReview. All authors of contributions need to have an account on OpenReview in order to submit an abstract. Submissions will be reviewed in a double-blind process by workshop organizers and attendees. Please, make sure your submission complies with the IEEE RAS double-blind peer review guidelines. Not adhering to these guidelines can result in the submission being desk rejected. Each submission must nominate one author as reviewer to evaluate two other contributions, following a reciprocal review model. Reviewer assignments will use OpenReview's assignment system, optimizing objectives such as semantic relevance and conflict of interest detection. Accepted abstracts will be published on the workshop website and presented as posters. We request authors of accepted works to prepare a poster (max. size: 45” x 44.5” (114cm x 113cm)) and a 90-second video summarizing their work, which will be showcased during the spotlight sessions and made available on the workshop website. Brief Q&As will follow each spotlight for those authors available in person during the workshop. Please note the deadline for submitting the spotlight presentation videos and poster designs is May 18, 2026. We encourage submissions of in-progress work and extensions of previously published material; originality is welcome but not required.

Note: ICRA 2026 conference policy requires that all presenters of accepted abstracts must register for workshops.

Submission Portal

Timeline

  • Submission Portal Opens: Feb 1, 2026
  • Submission Deadline: Apr 3, 2026 (updated!) Apr 10, 2026 11:59 p.m. (Anywhere On Earth)
  • Notification of Acceptance: Apr 27, 2026*
  • Camera-Ready Deadline: May 8, 2026 (updated!) May 9, 2026 11:59 p.m. (Anywhere On Earth)
  • Spotlight Presentation Videos and Poster Design deadline: May 18, 2026 11:59 p.m. (Anywhere On Earth)
  • Workshop Date: Jun 5, 2026

*If you are expecting longer visa processing timeline due to your home country, please email the workshop organizers to discuss an expedited review timeline.

Workshop Schedule

Time (Local) Event
08:30 - 08:45 Opening Remarks
08:45 - 09:15 Carlos Pérez del Pulgar (UMA) - Challenges on Robotic Exploration of Lava Caves on the Moon and Mars
09:15 - 10:00 Accepted Abstracts Spotlight: Locomotion, Manipulation, & Control
  • A Dual-Simulator Framework for Physics Based Locomotion and Vision Based Navigation of Planetary Rovers [09:15 - 09:17]
  • Towards Low-Gravity Planetary Exploration: Reinforcement Learning for Quadrupedal Walking, Jumping, and Attitude Control [09:17 - 09:19]
  • Soft Deployable Airless Wheel for Lunar Lava Tube Exploration [09:19 - 09:21]
  • Differentiable Co-Optimization of Mass-Limited Legged Robots Across Variable Gravity [09:21 - 09:23]
  • Toward Density-Aware Granular Loco-Manipulation for Obstacle-Aided Mobility on Steep Slopes [09:23 - 09:25]
  • Autonomous Soft Growing Robots for Lunar Pit and Lava Tube Exploration [09:25 - 09:27]
  • Design of Supernumerary Robotic Limbs for the Augmentation of Astronauts Performing Partial-Gravity Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs) [09:27 - 09:29]
  • Manipulation Challenges of Robotic Lunar Construction With Regolith-Filled Sandbags [09:29 - 09:31]
  • A Dexterous and Compliant Gripper With Soft Hydraulic Actuation for Microgravity Manipulation [09:31 - 09:33]
  • Autonomous Bulldozer for Lunar Terrain Manipulation [09:33 - 09:35]
  • GIRAF - Greatly Increased Reach for Adaptive Fieldwork [09:35 - 09:37]
  • Woven-based Compliant Soft Gripper for Space Debris Removal Missions [09:37 - 09:39]
  • The iMETRO Dynamic Simulation: An Open-Source Simulator for Intravehicular Space Robotics Research [09:39 - 09:41]
  • Learning to Detumble: Adaptive Post-Capture Stabilization of Uncooperative Space Debris [09:41 - 09:43]
  • Parallel Thruster-Propeller Control for Emulating Spacecraft Proximity Dynamics on a Free-Flyer [09:43 - 09:45]

Poster Overview [09:45 - 10:00]
10:00 - 11:00 Coffee Break + Poster Session 1
11:00 - 11:30 Kuldeep Barad (Redwire Space) - Towards Vision-based Manipulation and Grasping for ISAM: Challenges and Opportunities
11:30 - 12:00 Giusy Falcone (University of Michigan) - Weak‑Force Actuation for Space Mobility: Attitude, Drag, and Lasers
12:00 - 12:30 Dongheui Lee (TU Wien) - Robot Learning and Shared Autonomy for Lunar Assembly Tasks
12:30 - 13:30 Lunch Break
13:30 - 13:45 Introduction to the Afternoon Session
13:45 - 14:15 Genya Ishigami (Keio University) - Towards an Accurate Analysis of Landing and Roving Technologies
14:15 - 14:25 TABxStartups: Francisco Cuellar, CEO of TUMI Robotics
14:25 - 15:00 Accepted Abstracts Spotlight: Navigation & Perception
  • A Hybrid AI-assisted Hazard Detection and Avoidance Pipeline for Autonomous Lunar Landing [14:25 - 14:27]
  • Gremlin: AI-Based Adversarial Stress-Testing for Autonomous Space Systems [14:27 - 14:29]
  • Bioelectric-Inspired Potential Games for Decentralized Multi-Agent Cave Exploration with Information Homeostasis [14:29 - 14:31]
  • SpaceTry: An LLM-Assisted Simulation Testbed for Space Mission Autonomy Engineering [14:31 - 14:33]
  • Large Exploration by Small Payloads: Underwater Deployables via Robot Swarms [14:33 - 14:35]
  • What Breaks Monocular SLAM in Microgravity? An Initial Benchmark on Rotation-Dominant Astrobee ISS Sequences [14:35 - 14:37]
  • Equivariant Neural Inertial Odometry for Microgravity Space Robotics [14:37 - 14:39]
  • Safety-Bounded Space Robot Navigation via Vision-Language Model Integration [14:39 - 14:41]
  • STELLAR: Sample-Efficient Test-Time Adaptation of Scene Representations for Planetary Navigation under Compute Constraints [14:41 - 14:43]
  • TMF-Net: Multi-modal Transformer Fusion for Relative Pose Estimation of Non-Cooperative Targets [14:43 - 14:45]
  • From SLAM Drift to Goal Drift: Measuring Coordination Sensitivity on Lunar Analogue Terrain [14:45 - 14:47]
  • Map-Free Monocular Visual Localization via Conic Geometric Cues for Astrobee Free-Flyers [14:47 - 14:49]
  • Learning Physically Informed Maps for Off-world Autonomous Scientific Discovery [14:49 - 14:51]
  • Vision-Based Relative State Estimation for Non-Cooperative Spacecraft Using Deep Learning and Adaptive Kalman Filtering [14:51 - 14:53]
  • TinyML for On-Board Earth Observation: From Ultra-Low-Power MCUs to In-Sensor Computing [14:53 - 14:55]

Poster Overview [14:55 - 15:00]
15:00 - 16:00 Coffee Break + Poster Session 2
16:00 - 16:30 Christian Ott (TU Wien) - Increasing Transparency in Teleoperation Under Large Time-Delays for Orbital and Planetary Space Applications
16:30 - 17:15 Panel Discussion / Round Table + Pizza Party
17:15 - 17:30 Closing Remarks

Organizers

Location

Conference Venue: ICRA 2026 • City: Vienna, Austria • Room: TBD

Poster Stand Numbers: TBD • Please check onsite signage for details.

Organizational Support Committee

Thank you to our organizational support committee member, Ignacio López-Francos, for helping publicize and source high-quality reviews.

Sponsors

Contact

For questions and comments, please contact the organizers: space-robotics-workshop@googlegroups.com