Call for Papers

The 8th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2025, will have a focus on interdisciplinarity and the aim of strongly pushing the horizons of soft robotics.

Submission for Extended Abstracts
Submission Site for Rising Stars

Overview

We encourage multidisciplinary works investigating soft robotic science through the lenses of different disciplines and fields, including (not solely) material science, biology, zoology, neuroscience, philosophy, social sciences, modelling, control theory, artificial intelligence, art, etc. Works reflecting on new ways to enhance the community’s growth and leverage inclusivity are also strongly encouraged.

RoboSoft 2025 will be a high quality forum to interact across the boundaries of the different disciplines and range of topics, and it will be based on rigorously selected works bringing outstanding quality, originality and interest across disciplines.

Four types of submissions are invited to the conference. 

The following three types will be eligible for oral or poster presentations:

  1. Contributed Papers (published in proceedings)
  2. Extended Abstracts (not published in proceedings)
  3. Paper transfers from other IEEE Journals (RA-L, RAM, T-RO, T-MRB) (already published)

In addition to the above, there will be an option eligible for a spotlight oral presentation:

  • Rising Stars at RoboSoft (not published in proceedings)

The best ROBOSOFT 2025 papers on medical robotics and bionics will be selected to appear on a special issue of T-MRB. More information coming soon!

Submission Site

For papers and workshops, this year we will be using the OpenReview platform as the conference management system.  We will also be using double blind reviewing. This means that:

  • To be able to submit a paper, at least one author must be registered on OpenReview (ideally 7 days before the submission) 
  • The reviews will be made openly available on this platform post-review
  • Papers should be anonomized for blind review. You should leave of all authors names and identification from the submitted paper and other best efforts should be made for anonomization. See full details here of how to do this.

The submission site is here. The template and IEEE publication process will remain the same.

Deadlines

Contributed Papers: October 15th October 31th, 9 AM PST [Updated 21/10]

Extended Abstracts: January 15th, 9 AM PST

Rising Stars submissions: January 15th, 9 AM PST

Paper Transfers

To present a paper you have already submitted to an IEEE Journal, you can transfer them to RoboSoft. The transfer of papers from the following IEEE journals has been enabled:

  • RA-L: transfer window March 1st, 2024 to January 15th, 2025 (see here) 
  • T-RO: transfer window March 1st, 2024 to January 15th, 2025 (see here)
  • T-MRB: all papers appearing in the issues going from the 2nd of 2024 to the 1st of 2025 (included)
  • RAM: transfer window March 1st, 2024 to January 15th, 2025

Please email us if you have any questions regarding this.

Format

Contributed Papers

Manuscripts should be six pages (US letter size) in length, with a maximum of up to two extra pages that can be purchased. The number of pages includes the references, appendices, and acknowledgments. Papers should be formatted in standard IEEE format. Templates for LaTex and MS-Word are available at the RAS paper submission support page. Videos to complement the submission are strongly encouraged.

Video Submission Guidelines for Contributed Papers
Videos should be submitted with your paper and have the following format:

  • File size: 20MB
  • File extension check and correction: mpeg, mp4, mpg
  • Maximum duration: 3 minutes
  • Minimum height: 480
  • Minimum frame rate (fps): 20
  • Scan type: progressive

Extended Abstracts

Extended Abstracts

We welcome extended abstracts (up to 2 pages plus 1 page for references) that describe novel results or research directions. These contributions will not be published in the proceedings. The inclusion of a graphical abstract and/or of an accompanying video is strongly encouraged. Papers should be formatted in standard IEEE format. Templates for LaTex and MS-Word are available at the RAS paper submission support page. 

We encourage you to submit and show-case your best work.  There will be an award for the best extended abstract and top works will be selected for oral presentations. 

These works can either represent preliminary results or report already published work. For the latter case, the original publication should be clearly mentioned with a variation of “this work is an extract from the paper [x]”.

Video Submission Guidelines for Contributed Papers
Videos should be submitted with your paper and have the following format:

Scan type: progressive, File size: 20MB, File extension check and correction: mpeg, mp4, mpg, Maximum duration: 3 minutes, Minimum height: 480, Minimum frame rate (fps): 20.

Rising Stars at RoboSoft

What? At RoboSoft 2025 we want to showcase the Rising Stars in our community.  We are asking for submissions from those who would like to give a single-track presentation to highlight their ongoing work or research direction.  This can be on a broad topic, or your latest paper.  Presenting already published, under review, or unpublished content is encouraged. 

Who? This submission format is intended for late-stage PhD researchers, postdoctoral researchers, or early-career professors.  

How? The author should submit a short abstract (up to 2 pages), a video presentation summarising the work (up to 2 minutes, max size 20 MB), and a career summary (1 page). Templates for LaTex and MS-Word are available at the RAS paper submission support page, and the career summary can be submitted as an MS Word or PDF file using any preferred style.

Submission Form Here

Rules for Double-Blind Process

To make your paper submission anonomous, you should make best efforts to do so by following these rules.

  1. Do not include names and affiliations anywhere in the manuscript, appendix and supplementary material.
  2. Acknowledgments to people or funding agencies should be deleted.
  3. In self-citing authors’ previous work, avoid expressions such as “In our/the authors earlier work…”, rather use neutral expressions such as “In previous work…” or “In related work…”, in a manner that does not distinguish one’s own work from others.
  4. Remove any author/affiliation/lab names and logos from figures and videos.
  5. Blur faces from persons in videos and pictures. 
  6. Robot identities should NOT be hidden, neither for unique robots. They are allowed to appear in pictures and videos. However, hide the individual name of the robots from the paper except if it is a widespread robot (eg Nao, Spots,…).
  7. Remove any author information from all submitted files’ metadata. This information is often added automatically from the identity information and can be found in “properties” under the “file” menu in word processors and PDF readers. 
  8. There should be no links to external websites that reveal identity (e.g. YouTube, github, authors institute pages) or use tools to anonymize them like https://anonymous.4open.science/.
  9. Careless use of self-citations is always forbidden.
  10. Using tools as arXiv is allowed by authors, reviewers should not actively search for those articles to know identities.

Violations of those rules for material submitted for review can result in the paper being desk rejected. This information (except excess self-citations) can be added after the completion of the peer review process.