Call for Workshops

The Organizing Committee for the 2024 Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2024) invites the submission of proposals for full and half-day workshops and debates. Our workshops aim to spotlight cutting-edge discussions, ideas, and developments in robot learning, offering a vibrant forum for both established and emerging researchers.

Workshop Date: The workshops will take place on the last day of CoRL 2024 on November 9th.

The conference and workshops are planned as in-person events. We encourage only in-person workshops (both for participants and speakers) with exceptions to be coordinated with the Workshops chair after the acceptance notification.

Submission Deadline: Proposals must be submitted through OpenReview by June 22nd, 23:59 AoE [link to be provided soon]

New This Year:

1. Submission Platform: All proposals are to be submitted via OpenReview [link to be provided soon], streamlining the review and selection process.

2. Keywords Selection for Workshops: Proposals should select up to two keywords from the list below to represent the primary focus areas of their workshop upon submission of their proposal. An additional "Other" option is available for themes not covered by the provided keywords, allowing proposers to specify an alternative focus.

Keywords and Sub-Areas:

• Learning representations for robotic perception and control

• Learning and leveraging foundation models for robotics or pretraining and adaptation of general-purpose knowledge systems for robotics

• Imitation learning for robotics, e.g., by behavioral cloning and/or inverse reinforcement learning

• Reinforcement learning for control of physical robots

• Model-based and model-free learning for robotic control and decision-making

• Combination of learning- and planning-based approaches in robotics

• Probabilistic learning and representation of uncertainty in robotics

• Automatic robotic data generation and large-scale data collection for learning methods in robotic

• Learning for robot task and motion planning

• Learning for multimodal robot perception, sensor fusion, and robot vision

• Learning for human-robot interaction and robot instruction by natural language, gestures as well as alternative devices

• RoboNLP: intersection of learning for robotics and natural language processing

• Learning for hardware design and optimization

• Applications of robot learning in robot manipulation, navigation, locomotion, driving, flight, and other areas of robotics

• Robot systems, hardware, and sensors for learning and data-driven approaches

3. Separate Debates Submission: Besides workshops, we are introducing a separate submission category for debates. This aims to foster engaging discussions on controversial or emerging topics in robot learning. We encourage submitting debate proposals that will stimulate thought-provoking discussions on pivotal issues in robot learning. Proposals should detail the debate format, topics, and potential participants. Debates are an opportunity to explore diverse viewpoints and challenge the community to think critically about the future of robot learning. Upon submission, the applicants should select the type of event in Openreview and mention it on their submitted proposal. 

4. Merging of Similar Workshops: In the event of overlapping themes in high-quality submissions, proposers may be asked to merge workshops to foster a broader, more impactful discussion. Such a statement of willingness to collaborate with the Workshops chair on merging similar events should be included in the proposal. 

5. Invited Speakers Appearance Limit: To ensure diverse and accessible content, we encourage workshop organizers to diversify the list of speakers they invite for their proposed event. Invited speakers should not to commit to more than two events. If speakers have committed to more than two workshops, they should disclose this information to organizers. Such speakers can be included in the proposal as tentative. Upon workshop acceptance, speakers who committed to more than one workshops would have to confirm up to two appearances. Possible text to communicate this policy to the invited speakers is: 

“CoRL2024 implements a new speaker commitment policy to maximize diversity. Invited speakers are asked to limit their engagements to no more than two workshops. If you are considering or have already committed to multiple events, please inform us. This will enable us to mark your potential participation as tentative until our workshop's acceptance, at which point we'll need confirmation of your final commitment. "

Follow-up meetings of the organizers of accepted workshops with the Workshops Chair will further evaluate conflicts with speakers overcommitting, while the Workshops Chair commits to assist the organizers in adjusting their schedules. However, we highly encourage to consider more diverse options already during the proposal submission. Organizers should communicate this policy clearly to potential speakers and confirm their agreement.

 We encourage proposals that:

• feature a confirmed, high-quality, and diverse set of invited speakers. Diversity across various dimensions, including but not limited to seniority, gender, race, ethnicity, geographic location, and sector (industry, government, academia), is highly encouraged.

• promote innovative and interactive event structures, such as debates, panels, discussion sessions, and hands-on activities, to stimulate participant engagement.

• are likely to spark new research ideas, encourage critical reflection, or explore under-discussed topics, including negative results and open challenges.

• stand out for their timeliness and uniqueness, differentiating themselves from recent workshops at other robotics and machine learning conferences. Note: Proposals on similar topics may be advised to merge.

Submission Guidelines:

Proposals should be concise, ideally between 2-3 pages, with a maximum length of 5 pages. The proposal must include:

• Type of Event (half/full-day workshop or debate)

• Workshop title and abstract

• Organizers' information and bios

• Proposed format and schedule

• Summary, research questions/discussion topics/keywords specific to the event

• Keywords based on the provided list of robot learning topics

• List of invited speakers (confirmed and expected)

• Plans to Encourage Participation

• Acknowledgement to Attend the CoRL Workshop Organizers Meeting

• Commitment of Organizers Participation in CoRL2024 in person

• Special Requirements and Resources

• Any additional information relevant to the workshop's format

A template of the workshop proposals can be found here.

For any inquiries, please contact the CoRL 2024 Workshop Chairs at georgia.chalvatzaki@tu-darmstadt.de with [CoRL24 Workshops] in the subject line.

Submission opens: May 13th, 2024

Submission deadline: June 22th, 2024 (11:59pm AoE)

CoRL workshop organizer meeting: early September 2024

CoRL workshop day: November 9th, 2024