Call for Contributions

Call for Contributions

Submission:

We kindly invite researchers and domain experts to contribute to this Workshop on “Accelerating Discovery in Natural Science Laboratories with AI and Robotics — 4th Edition: Robot Scientists Across Labs, Judged by Scientists”. Prospective workshop participants are welcome to submit papers (2-4 pages + citations, IEEE format) and/or challenges (up to 2 pages + video):

• Papers: Submissions will be selected for presentation based on the pertinence to the workshop and the quality of the research. 

Among the paper submissions, 2-3 senior doctoral students / early career researchers from natural sciences and robotics backgrounds will be selected to present their bodies of work in the Pioneers of Natural Sciences Laboratory Robotics Talk before the poster spotlights and in the poster session during the coffee break. To be eligible for this, please additionally submit a one-page cover letter describing the applicant’s motivation for applying and outlining relevant research work and an academic CV. 

• Challenges: Submissions (template available at the link below) are invited for real-world challenges in lab automation that current automation solutions cannot yet solve, but that could potentially be addressed by a general-purpose robot manipulator.
  In particular, we are looking for tasks where pre-programmed waypoints or offline trajectory planning are insufficient, and more intelligent robot behavior is required. This includes scenarios where the robot needs to use visual or other sensory inputs to make real-time decisions, or where domain-specific knowledge (e.g., from chemistry or biology) is essential to completing the task. If applicable, please briefly mention safety considerations.
  We expect all challenges to include a short video showing how they are currently solved manually, or how a human typically performs them. Videos should ideally be 1–3 minutes long and uploaded as a shareable link (e.g., YouTube, Google Drive).

Six out of up to 12 selected contributions will be presented in both the spotlight and the interactive poster sessions. The remaining selected contributions will be presented in the interactive poster session without a preceding spotlight presentation.

We encourage researchers from academia and industry (both hardware and software companies) to participate in this workshop with their submissions.
For submission, please use this link: < link will be published soon >
We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Review process:
All submissions will be peer-reviewed in a single-blind process by the workshop organizers and external reviewers. The papers will be selected based on originality, relevance to the workshop topics, contributions, technical clarity, and presentation.

Publication:
All selected papers and challenges will be published on the workshop website at least one day before the workshop.

Note: Submissions to this workshop are intended for presentation and discussion purposes only and will not be formally archived in conference proceedings or indexed in digital libraries. As such, submission to this workshop does not preclude authors from submitting the same or extended versions of their work to other conferences or journals in the future. 

Topics of Interest

This workshop covers, but is not limited to, the following topics of interest:

• Application of Robotics, AI, and Automation to Life Sciences, Materials Research, Clinical Laboratories, and Pharmaceutical Development

• Case Studies in Implementing Laboratory Automation

• Cognitive Robotics and Artificial Intelligence for Laboratory Environments

• Generic Robotic Skill Development of Laboratory Tasks

• Human-Robot Collaboration/Interaction in Laboratories

• Integration of Robotic Systems and Laboratory Instruments

• Knowledge Discovery and Transfer of Experimental Results: From Hypothesis to Fundamental Understanding

• Machine Vision Methods for Laboratory Robotics

• Mobile Manipulation for Laboratory Automation

• Multimodal Sensing and Perception for Robots in Labs

• Robotics, AI, and Automation in Laboratories: Past, Present, and Future

• Self-Driving Labs

• Standardization in Laboratory Automation