Robotics workshops

Autonomous laboratories must connect software to physical instruments while retaining meaningful scientific input from researchers. This interdisciplinary workshop examines how humans and automated systems can share experimental tasks, with particular attention to fragmented instrument interfaces, sample handling and integration failures. Participants compare robotic orchestration, interoperability, human–robot interaction and reproducibility in physically executed experiments. Examples span microscopy, thin-film polymers, nanoparticle synthesis, antimicrobial discovery, batteries and fuels. The emphasis is on operational workflows and lessons from unsuccessful integrations, rather than autonomous hypothesis generation or data analysis alone. Invited talks, laboratory tours and discussion sessions run from 11 to 13 November 2026. The published outline opens check-in at 09:00 and talks at 11:00 on 11 November; talks resume at 09:00 on both subsequent days. The closing session is scheduled for 14:15–15:00 on 13 November, followed by informal discussion. Times are local CET (Europe/Berlin). Detailed session assignments will follow. Attendance is free with advance registration; the event language is English.

This half-day workshop debates when explicit predictive models improve robot learning and when end-to-end policies or hybrid systems are preferable. Six debate motions examine generalization, counterfactual reasoning, data efficiency, evaluation, deployment costs and the limits of current benchmarks. Invited talks, contributed spotlights and posters connect theory to empirical comparisons, including negative results. Confirmed speakers include Chelsea Finn, Yunzhu Li, Georgia Chalvatzaki and Vincent Sitzmann. Paper submissions closed on 12 October; camera-ready papers are due on 6 November and optional revisions on 9 December, all at 23:59 Pacific time.

CIFMA connects researchers studying cognition across psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, education, robotics and computer science. The workshop explores attention, memory, reasoning, language, learning and human interaction with physical and computational environments. It brings formal modelling and analysis methods into dialogue with cognitive science, with applications in cognitive robotics, biomedical signals and imaging, neural interfaces, human–computer interaction and intelligent educational systems. The meeting is co-located with SEFM 2026 in Malta. Abstract and paper submission deadlines have passed.