Awards for best papers, ICRA Expo demonstration, and other categories presented at awards luncheon
Atlanta, GA — 05/30/2025 — The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) announced the award-winning papers and presentations from the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). Taking place 19–23 May at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, ICRA drew together the world’s leading engineers and companies for the state of the art in robotic development.
“ICRA is the preeminent conference for robotics,” said Nancy Amato, ICRA Co-Chair, IEEE Fellow, and Siebel School Director at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “The award-winning papers demonstrate some of the most important work in the field.”
Award-winning papers
Chosen by the ICRA Awards Committee and unveiled Thursday, 22 May, at the ICRA Awards Luncheon, this year’s award-winning papers include:
- ICRA 2025 Best Conference Paper Award
Marginalizing and Conditioning Gaussians Onto Linear Approximations of Smooth Manifolds with Applications in Robotics
Zi Cong Guo, James Richard Forbes, and Timothy Barfoot
“For constructing a general approach to compute tight uncertainty estimates for constrained optimization problems in robotics”MAC-VO: Metrics-Aware Covariance for Learning-Based Stereo Visual Odometry
Yuheng Qiu, Yutian Chen, Zihao Zhang, Wenshan Wang, and Sebastian Scherer
“For introducing a metrics-aware uncertainty model that enhances visual odometry robustness and accuracy, with convincing results on challenging benchmarks”
- ICRA 2025 Best Student Paper Award
Deploying Ten Thousand Robots: Scalable Imitation Learning for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding
He Jiang, Yutong Wang, Rishi Veerapaneni, Tanishq Harish Duhan, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti, and Jiaoyang Li
“For advancing learning-based path planning by scaling to huge robot systems, and demonstrating rigor by comparison to prior methods and testing in extensive simulations and robot experiments”ShadowTac: Dense Measurement of Shear and Normal Deformation of a Tactile Membrane from Colored Shadows
Giuseppe Vitrani, Basile Pasquale, and Michael Wiertlewski
“For a new sensing mechanism that unifies normal and lateral deformation tracking by encoding shear motion through colored shadow patterns cast by submillimeter dimples”Point and Go: Intuitive Reference Frame Reallocation in Mode Switching for Assistive Robotics
Allie Wang, Chen Jiang, Michael Przystupa, Justin Valentine, and Martin Jagersand
“For impact outside controlled lab settings, benefiting the lives of people with disabilities”TinySense: A Lighter Weight and More Power-Efficient Avionics System for Flying Insect-Scale Robots
Zhitao Yu, Josh Tran, Claire Li, Aaron Weber, Yash P. Talwekar, and Sawyer Fuller
“For achieving autonomous hover in a sub-gram flying robot by miniaturizing and optimizing onboard sensors and estimators without sacrificing control performance”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper in Automation
Physics-Aware Robotic Palletization with Online Masking Inference
Tianqi Zhang, Zheng Wu, Yuxin Chen, Yixiao Wang, Boyuan Liang, Scott Moura, Masayoshi Tomizuka, Mingyu Ding, and Wei Zhan
“For using reinforcement learning to solve the efficient online planning of stacking boxes in logistic management”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper on Robot Learning
Robo-DM: Data Management For Large Robot Datasets
Kaiyuan Chen, Letian Fu, David Huang, Yanxiang Zhang, Lawrence Yunliang Chen, Huang Huang, Kush Hari, Ashwin Balakrishna, Ted Xiao, Pannag Sanketi, John Kubiatowicz, and Ken Goldberg
“For valuable publicly available data management tools that facilitate efficient storage and access of large-scale multimodal data, which is critical for robot learning”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper on Human-Robot Interaction
Human-Agent Joint Learning for Efficient Robot Manipulation Skill Acquisition
Shengcheng Luo, Quanquan Peng, Jun Lv, Kaiwen Hong, Katherine Driggs-Campbell, Cewu Lu, and Yong-Lu Li
“For enabling shared control of a robot end-effector between human operators and a learned assistive agent to achieve more efficient data collection and learning”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper on Mechanisms and Design
Individual and Collective Behaviors in Soft Robot Worms, Inspired by Living Worm Blobs
Carina Kaeser, Junghan Kwon, Elio Challita, Harry Tuazon, Robert Wood, Saad Bhamla, and Justin Werfel
“For using soft robot worm blobs to elucidate entanglement-mediated coordination, providing a novel testbed for studying emergent behavior in active matter systems”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper in Medical Robotics
In-Vivo Tendon-Driven Rodent Ankle Exoskeleton System for Sensorimotor Rehabilitation
Juwan Han, Seunghyeon Park, and Keehoon Kim
“For creating a simple, low-cost, and effective lower-limb exoskeleton for gait experiments with rats, which could lead to restoration and enhancement of sensorimotor abilities in humans”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper on Multi-Robot Systems
Deploying Ten Thousand Robots: Scalable Imitation Learning for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding
He Jiang, Yutong Wang, Rishi Veerapaneni, Tanishq Harish Duhan, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti, and Jiaoyang Li
“For advancing learning-based path planning by scaling to huge robot systems, and demonstrating rigor by comparison to prior methods and testing in extensive simulations and robot experiments”*also a Best Student Paper recipient
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper on Robot Manipulation and Locomotion
D(R, O) Grasp: A Unified Representation of Robot and Object Interaction for Cross-Embodiment Dexterous Grasping
Zhenyu Wei, Zhixuan Xu, Jingxiang Guo, Yiwen Hou, Chongkai Gao, Zhehao Cai, Jiayu Luo, and Lin Shao
“For contributions to learning-based representations for generalizable dexterous grasping across diverse hands and objects”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper on Robot Perception
MAC-VO: Metrics-Aware Covariance for Learning-Based Stereo Visual Odometry
Yuheng Qiu, Yutian Chen, Zihao Zhang, Wenshan Wang, and Sebastian Scherer
“For introducing a metrics-aware uncertainty model that enhances visual odometry robustness and accuracy, with convincing results on challenging benchmarks”*also a Best Conference Paper recipient
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper in Field and Service Robotics
PolyTouch: A Robust Multi-Modal Tactile Sensor for Contact-Rich Manipulation Using Tactile-Diffusion Policies
Jialiang Zhao, Naveen Kuppuswamy, Siyuan Feng, Benjamin Burchfiel, and Edward Adelson
“For an innovative gripper design for real-world object grasping, which is low-cost, robust, and easy to manufacture”
- ICRA 2025 Best Paper on Planning and Control
No Plan but Everything under Control: Robustly Solving Sequential Tasks with Dynamically Composed Gradient Descent
Vito Mengers, Oliver Brock
“For challenging the planning paradigm by introducing a feedback-driven method that solves sequential tasks through continuous adaptation”
ICRA registrants can access these papers, full conference proceedings, and submitted videos via RAS Events.
ICRA Conference Editorial Board Awards
In addition to the best papers, IEEE RAS recognizes individuals who provided outstanding contributions to the ICRA Conference Editorial Board, which is responsible for reviewing the submissions to the conference. The following are this year’s honorees:
- ICRA 2025 Outstanding Associate Editor
- Pyojin Kim, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea
- Sajid Nisar, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Japan
- Hasan Poonawala, University of Kentucky, USA
- Marco Cognetti, LAAS-CNRS and Université de Toulouse, France
- Anh Nguyen, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
- ICRA 2025 Outstanding Reviewer
- Abdalla Swikir, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, UAE
- Long Zeng, Tsinghua University, China
- Koutras Leonidas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Joao Marcos Correia Marques, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
- Hyungtae Lim, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
“Creating a world-class technical program for ICRA takes a global village,” explained Seth Hutchinson, ICRA Co-Chair, IEEE Fellow, and Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. “Each of these editors and reviewers went above the call of duty, helping to ensure ICRA remains the field’s top robotics research conference year after year.”
Best ICRA Expo Demonstration
In addition to recognizing conference papers, ICRA organizers highlighted the following ICRA Expo presentation with best demonstration honors:
- Kid COSMO: A Humanoid Robot Movie Character (video) – A team from the University of California, Los Angeles, demonstrated COSMO, the humanoid robot developed for Netflix’s film The Electric State, which conveys expressive, character-driven behavior through motion and speech.
Other RAS Awards
In addition, IEEE RAS distributed a number of other important society awards at the event. Details can be found in the online brochure and a complementary announcement.
ICRA 2026 will take place from 1-5 June in Vienna, Austria. For more information as it becomes available, visit 2026.ieee-icra.org.
About ICRA 2025
The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is the world’s foremost event aimed at advancing the field of robotics, drawing 7,000 registrants including the world’s top researchers, experts, leading robotics organizations, and industry professionals. Sponsored by IEEE and the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society, the annual event reveals the latest in robotic technology through keynotes, sessions, demonstrations, competitions, an expo and exhibit, and more, serving as the premier forum shaping the future of robotics and automation.
ICRA 2025 took place 19–23 May at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga., U.S.A., ICRA 2026 will take place 1–5 June in Vienna, Austria. To learn more, visit https://2025.ieee-icra.org/.
About the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (RAS)
The IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (RAS) strives to foster the development and facilitate the exchange of scientific and technological knowledge in robotics and automation that benefits members, the profession, and humanity. Through knowledge sharing via meetings, papers, presentations, publications, discussions, and more, RAS serves as the global organization advancing innovation, education, and fundamental and applied research in robotics and automation. Visit https://www.ieee-ras.org/ for more information.
About IEEE
IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization, and a public charity dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Through its highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and educational activities, IEEE is the trusted voice in a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers, and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power, and consumer electronics. Learn more at https://www.ieee.org.
