RSS 2026 — Robotics: Science and Systems

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2026 is the 22nd edition of one of the most prestigious and selective conferences in robotics. It runs 13–17 July 2026 at the University of Technology Sydney and the International Convention Centre, Sydney, Australia. RSS has a long history of bringing together researchers from every area of robotics for an intensive, focused week of single-track presentations, workshops, poster sessions and tutorials — and it is that single-track format that sets it apart: every attendee sees every accepted paper, a deliberate choice that keeps the community intellectually unified and the bar for acceptance famously high.

On the programme

The core of RSS is its rigorously peer-reviewed paper programme, presented in a single track over the main conference days, complemented by a day of workshops and tutorials, poster and demo sessions, and signature community elements such as the Early Career Spotlight, RSS Pioneers (for senior PhD students and early postdocs) and the Pathways@RSS initiative. Accepted papers are published openly via Robotics: Science and Systems Proceedings. The 2026 edition's sponsor roster reflects where the field's money and momentum sit: Toyota Research Institute, NVIDIA, Anduril, the Robotics and AI Institute (RAI), and a notable cluster of humanoid and embodied-AI companies including AGIBOT, LimX Dynamics, Booster Robotics, Sharpa and Spirit AI, with support from the New South Wales government and Business Events Sydney.

Where it fits in today's AI

Robotics is having its "foundation-model moment": the same scaling and learning ideas that transformed language and vision are now reshaping how robots perceive, plan and act, and the line between "AI" and "robotics" is blurring fast. RSS sits at the scholarly centre of that convergence. It is where the field's most carefully vetted work on robot learning, manipulation, locomotion, perception, planning and human–robot interaction is presented and stress-tested — the research that, a few years later, shows up in the embodied-AI products everyone else is racing to ship. The 2026 sponsor list is itself a signal: the surge of humanoid and embodied-AI startups now courting the academic community shows how quickly frontier robotics research is being pulled toward commercialisation. Holding the conference in Sydney also matters for global balance — it brings a top-tier robotics venue to the Asia-Pacific and to Australia's growing robotics and autonomous-systems research base, widening access for researchers across the region. For roboticists and embodied-AI researchers, RSS is one of the two or three venues whose proceedings define the state of the art; for everyone tracking where physical AI is heading, it is the most reliable early read. Standard registration runs ahead of the July dates, and the full preliminary programme and accepted-paper list are posted on the conference site.

Within the robotics calendar RSS occupies a distinctive niche: where the larger IEEE conferences (ICRA, IROS) run many parallel tracks, RSS's single-track, highly selective format makes acceptance a strong signal of quality and gives the whole community a shared intellectual experience each year. Its Pioneers and Early Career programmes deliberately invest in the next generation of robotics researchers. For PhD students, faculty, industrial research scientists and embodied-AI engineers, presenting or simply attending RSS is among the highest-signal ways to engage with the field's research frontier — and the 2026 move to Sydney makes that frontier markedly more accessible to the Asia-Pacific.