The 2nd Space Robotics Workshop (SRW) will be held in conjunction with the IEEE SMC-IT/SCC from July 28-29, 2025, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, CA. The workshop will bring together experts in robotics, autonomy, AI, and aerospace to shape the next era of innovation driving our return to the Moon, the sustainable exploration of Mars and beyond, and the expansion of commercial activity beyond Earth orbit.

As national space agencies and commercial ventures capitalize on next-generation robotics, we stand at a critical juncture. Increasing mission complexity, evolving space architectures, expanding commercial services, and the rapid progress in AI present both unprecedented opportunities and new challenges in how we explore, operate, and build a sustainable space economy. Rapid advances in terrestrial robotics are directly influencing the development of space robotics and are poised to play a central role in enabling more autonomous, resilient, and ambitious missions, while also laying the groundwork for future off-world economic activities.

Building on the foundation laid during our inaugural event, this year's workshop will focus on the recent breakthroughs in the field of robotics, the current state of space robotics, the rise of the commercial space sector supporting the lunar economy, and emerging concepts aimed at enabling more capable, adaptable, and cost-effective missions.

The program will be organized around a set of focused technical sessions, with keynote talks, spotlight presentations, panels, and a poster session.

Day 1 - July 28

• S01 - Lunar Resource Models to Inform Space Robotics
  10:30 AM - 12:00 PM PT
  Room TBD

  

  Rob Mueller
  NASA KSC

  

  Dennis Wingo
  Skycorp, Inc

  The mineral resources map of our solar system is largely blank. These blank spaces are particularly important to new Space companies with a case for high-value Offworld resources (e.g., volatiles, He-3 and other exotic materials). In short, we do not... [Expand]
• Lunch break
  12:00 - 1:00 PM PT
• Spotlight talks
  1:00 - 1:30 PM PT
• S02 - Mars Settlement Starts with Autonomy and Robotics
  1:30 - 3:00 PM PT

  

  Luis Sentis
  University of Texas at Austin, Apptronik

  

  Ignacio López-Francos
  NASA

  As we extend robotic exploration to Mars and lay the groundwork for crewed missions and sustained human presence, increasing levels of autonomy become essential. Far from Earth and constrained by communication delays, robotic systems must perceive th... [Expand]
• Coffee break
  3:00 - 3:30 PM PT
• S03 - One-Shot Interplanetary Exploration With Software-Defined Robotic Systems
  3:30 - 5:00 PM PT

  

  Hiro Ono
  NASA JPL

  

  Kevin Hubbard
  Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)

  As we look beyond Mars toward the outer Solar System, the traditional model of incremental mission development becomes infeasible. This session will explore emerging concepts for adaptive, autonomous robotic systems capable of operating in unknown an... [Expand]

Day 2 - July 29

• S04 - Enabling Technology for Lunar Resources
  10:30 AM - 12:00 PM PT
  Room TBD

  

  TBD
  

  Humans cannot build a spacefaring future alone, one camera or wrench or at a time in hostile environments far from Earth. We need robotic automation to detect, assess and extract resources, and to build structures and execute processes at economic sc... [Expand]
• Lunch break
  12:00 - 1:00 PM PT
• Spotlight talks
  1:00 - 1:30 PM PT
• S05 - Embodied AI: Toward General-Purpose Robots
  1:30 - 3:00 PM PT

  

  Animesh Garg
  Georgia Tech, NVIDIA

  This session examines recent progress at the intersection of AI and robotics, covering advances in Vision-Language-Action Models, Large-Scale Embodied Agents, Dexterous Manipulation, Reinforcement Learning and Sim-to-Real Transfer. These developments... [Expand]
• Coffee break
  3:00 - 3:30 PM PT
• S06 - High-Fidelity Simulation and Digital Twins for Space Robotics
  3:30 - 5:00 PM PT

  

  Lutz Richter
  SoftServe

  

  Antoine Richard
  NVIDIA

  

  Dan Negrut
  University of Wisconsin Madison

  High-fidelity simulation is playing an increasingly critical role in the development, testing, and validation of autonomous robotic systems for space exploration. This session will focus on the state of the art in simulation tools and digital twin fr... [Expand]

We invite submissions on research and development at the intersection of robotics, autonomy, and space applications. Contributions should highlight innovative methods, systems, and technologies for exploration, in-space services, or science operations beyond Earth.

Relevant topics:

• Autonomous navigation and mobility for planetary and orbital environments, including terrain-relative localization, path planning, and novel locomotion systems (e.g., rovers, drones, subsurface robots).
• Manipulation in space and planetary environments, including dexterous handling, microgravity operations, and contact dynamics in ISAM or EVA contexts.
• In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) and In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) enabled by robotic autonomy.
• AI agents for perception, decision-making, task planning, and multi-robot coordination in space environments.
• Foundation models and multimodal learning (vision-language-action) for general-purpose space robotic systems.
• Photogrammetry, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), and other volumetric representation techniques for environment modeling and scene understanding, particularly under challenging illumination conditions.
• Human-robot teaming strategies for crewed and uncrewed missions, including shared autonomy, intent recognition, and adaptive interfaces.
• Sim-to-real transfer, domain adaptation, and policy generalization for space-deployed systems.
• High-fidelity simulation and digital twins for development, integration, testing, and mission rehearsal.
• Long-duration autonomy and adaptive learning in unstructured, dynamic, or high-latency environments.
• Autonomous surface operations, including science-driven exploration, sample collection, and real-time decision-making under resource constraints.
• Spacecraft swarms and distributed robotic systems, including satellite formation flying, multi-agent planning, and inter-agent communication.
• Space logistics, infrastructure deployment, and robotic construction, supporting scalable off-world operations.
• System integration, testing, and field validation of space robotic platforms in analog or operational environments.
• Mission concepts, technology demonstrations, and commercial initiatives accelerating the adoption of space robotics.
• Trust, verification, and validation frameworks to ensure robust, explainable, and resilient autonomous behavior.

• Full papers can be up to 10 pages, not including references. Paper templates are available here:IEEE Templates.
• Submissions must be made through theEasyChair portal. Please select the "Space Robotics Workshop" track.
• Authors may choose between two submission options:
  • Archival Track (IEEE Proceedings): Papers will be included in the official IEEE conference proceedings (indexed in IEEE Xplore).
  • Non-Archival Track: For authors who wish to present without publication, preserving eligibility for future archival venues.
• Papers selected for IEEE publication must be presented in person to comply with IEEE's "Podium and Publish" policy.
• Authors who opt out of IEEE publication may still present at the workshop and are encouraged to contribute to discussions and community-building.
• All submissions will be peer reviewed for quality and relevance.
• At least one author of each accepted paper must register for IEEE SMC-IT/SCC with an in-person registration and attend the workshop.
• All accepted papers will be presented as posters during the workshop. A select number of top submissions will be invited for spotlight presentations, based on reviewer feedback and program needs.
• Selected papers may be invited to appear in a special issue of a journal. More details will be shared later.

The 2nd Space Robotics Workshop is a volunteer led effort by researchers and practitioners in the field of robotics, autonomy, and AI from multiple organizations. We are grateful to be supported by a Scientific Committee composed of leading experts across academia, industry, and government, who help ensure the quality, relevance, and impact of the program.

Ignacio G. López-Francos
NASA Ames

Alex Sowell
NASA JSC

Brian Coltin
NASA Ames

Kuldeep Rambhai
Redwire

Maggie Wang
Stanford University

Marcel Kaufmann
NASA JPL

Ricard Marsal I Castan
University of Luxembourg

Rob Royce
NASA JPL

Roshan Kalghatgi
NASA Ames

Alison Lowndes
NVIDIA

Animesh Garg
Georgia Tech, NVIDIA, Apptronik

Edward Balaban
NASA ARC

Giuseppe Cataldo
NASA GSFC

Hiro Ono
NASA JPL

Jean-Pierre de la Croix
NASA JPL

Jennifer Blank
Blue Marble Space Institute of Science

Jennifer Heldmann
NASA ARC

Jonathan Knowles
Former Autodesk, Apple, Adobe

Jonathan Stock
NASA ARC

Katherine Scott
Intrinsic, Open Robotics

Keerthana Gopalakrishnan
Google DeepMind

Kentaro Uno
Tohoku University

Luis Merino
Universidad Pablo de Olavide

Luis Sentis
University of Texas at Austin, Apptronik

Pyojin Kim
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST)

Roberto Lampariello
DLR (German Aerospace Center)

Rodrigo Ventura
Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon

Trey Smith
NASA ARC

The Space Robotics 2025 Workshop is sponsored by the following organizations: