ICRA 2025 Awards and Finalists
We would like to congratulate all of the finalists and winners.
Quick Links
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Robot Learning
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Field and Service Robotics
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Human-Robot Interaction
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Mechanisms and Design
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Planning and Control
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Robot Perception
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Robot Manipulation and Locomotion
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Automation
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Medical Robotics
- IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Multi-Robot Systems
- IEEE ICRA Best Student Paper Award
- IEEE ICRA Best Conference Paper Award
- ICRA 2025 Outstanding Associate Editor Award
- ICRA 2025 Outstanding Reviewer Award
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Robot Learning
Award Winner:
*Robo-DM: Data Management for Large Robot Datasets
Authors: Kaiyuan Chen, Letian Fu, David Huang, Yanxiang Zhang, Yunliang Lawrence Chen, Huang Huang, Kush Hari, Ashwin Balakrishna, Ted Xiao, Pannag Sanketi, John Kubiatowicz, 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
Other Finalists:
Achieving Human Level Competitive Robot Table Tennis
Authors: David D’Ambrosio, Saminda Wishwajith Abeyruwan, Laura Graesser, Atil Iscen, Heni Ben Amor, Alex Bewley, Barney J. Reed, Krista Reymann, Leila Takayama, Yuval Tassa, Krysztof Choromanski, Erwin Coumans, Deepali Jain, Navdeep Jaitly, Natasha Jaques, Satoshi Kataoka, Yuheng Kuang, Nevena Lazic, Reza, Mahjourian, Sherry Moore, Kenneth Oslund, Anish Shankar, Vikas Sindhwani, Vincent Vanhoucke, Grace Vesom, Peng Xu, Pannag Sanketi
*No Plan but Everything under Control: Robustly Solving Sequential Tasks with Dynamically Composed Gradient Descent
Authors: Vito Mengers, Oliver Brock
Awards Committee: Matthew Walter (Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, USA), Tetsuya Ogata (Waseda University, Japan), Jens Kober (TU Delft, Netherlands)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Field and Service Robotics
Award Winner:
*PolyTouch: A Robust Multi-Modal Tactile Sensor for Contact-Rich Manipulation Using Tactile-Diffusion Policies
Authors: Jialiang Zhao, Naveen Kuppuswamy, Siyuan Feng, Benjamin Burchfiel, Edward Adelson
For an innovative gripper design for real-world object grasping, which is low-cost, robust, and easy to manufacture.
Other Finalists:
A New Stereo Fisheye Event Camera for Fast Drone Detection and Tracking
Authors: Daniel Rodrigues Da Costa, Maxime Robic, Pascal Vasseur, Fabio Morbidi
*Learning-Based Adaptive Navigation for Scalar Field Mapping and Feature Tracking
Authors: Jose Fuentes, Paulo Padrao, Abdullah Al Redwan Newaz, Leonardo Bobadilla
Awards Committee: Peter Corke (Queensland University of Technology, Australia), Venkat Krovi (Clemson University, USA), Brendan Englot (Stevens Institute of Technology, USA), Genya Ishigami (Keio University, Japan)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Human-Robot Interaction
Award Winner:
*Human-Agent Joint Learning for Efficient Robot Manipulation Skill Acquisition
Authors: Shengchent Luo, Quanuan Peng, Jun Lv, Kaiwen Hong, Katherin Driggs-Campbell, Cewu Lu, 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
Other Finalists:
*To Ask or Not to Ask: Human-In-The-Loop Contextual Bandits with Applications in Robot-Assisted Feeding
Authors: Rohan Banerjee, Rajat Kumar Jenamani, Sidharth Vasudev, Amal Nanavati, Katherine Dimitropoulou, Sarah Dean, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee
*Point and Go: Intuitive Reference Frame Reallocation in Mode Switching for Assistive Robotics
Authors: Allie Wang, Chen Jiang, Michael Przystupa, Justin Valentine, Martin Jagersand
Awards Committee: Sonia Chernova (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), Chad Jenkins (University of Michigan, USA), Paolo Rocco (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Takayuki Kanda (Kyoto University, Japan)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Mechanisms and Design
Award Winner:
*Individual and Collective Behaviors in Soft Robot Worms Inspired by Living Worm Blobs
Authors: Carina Kaeser, Junghan Kwon, Elio Challita, Harry Tuazon, Robert Wood, Saad Bhamla, 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
Other Finalists:
*Informed Repurposing of Quadruped Legs for New Tasks
Authors: Fuchen Chen, Daniel Aukes
*Intelligent Self-Healing Artificial Muscle: Mechanisms for Damage Detection and Autonomous
Authors: Ethan Krings, Patrick Mcmanigal, Eric Markvicka
Awards Committee: Mark R. Cutkosky (Stanford University, USA), Kenjiro Tadakuma (Osaka University, Japan), John Wen (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA), Pauline Pounds (University of Queensland, Australia), Cynthia Sung (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Planning and Control
Award Winner:
*No Plan but Everything under Control: Robustly Solving Sequential Tasks with Dynamically Composed Gradient Descent
Authors: Vito Mengers, Oliver Brock
For challenging the planning paradigm by introducing a feedback-driven method that solves sequential tasks through continuous adaptation.
Other Finalists:
*SELP: Generating Safe and Efficient Task Plans for Robot Agents with Large Language Models
Authors: Yi Wu, Zikang Xiong, Yiran Hu, Shreyash Sridhar Iyengar, Nan Jiang, Aniket Bera, Lin Tan, Suresh Jagannathan
*Marginalizing and Conditioning Gaussians Onto Linear Approximations of Smooth Manifolds with Applications in Robotics
Authors: Zi Cong Guo, James Richard Forbes, Timothy Barfoot
Awards Committee: Ram Vasudevan (University of Michigan, USA), Lydia Tapia (University of New Mexico, USA), Guillaume Sartoretti (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Robot Perception
Award Winner:
*MAC-VO: Metrics-Aware Covariance for Learning-Based Stereo Visual Odometry
Authors: Yuheng Qiu, Yutian Chen, Zihao Zhang, Wenshan Wang, Sebastian Scherer
For a novel approach to robust visual odometry with learned metric aware uncertainty model that is validated with convincing demonstrations
Other Finalists:
*Ground-Optimized 4D Radar-Inertial Odometry Via Continuous Velocity Integration Using Gaussian Process
Authors: Wooseong Yang, Hyesu Jang, Ayoung Kim
*UAD: Unsupervised Affordance Distillation for Generalization in Robotic Manipulation
Authors: Yihe Tang, Wenlong Huang, Yingke Wang, Chengshu Li, Roy Yuan, Ruohan Zhang, Jiajun Wu, Li Fei-Fei
Awards Committee: Wolfram Burgard (University of Technology Nuremberg, Germany), Margarita Chli (ETH Zurich, Switzerland and University of Cyprus), Jana Kosecka (George Mason University, USA), Cyrill Stachniss (University of Bonn, Germany)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Robot Manipulation and Locomotion
Award Winner:
*D(R, O) Grasp: A Unified Representation of Robot and Object Interaction for Cross-Embodiment Dexterous Grasping
Authors: Zhenyu Wei, Zhixuan Xu, Jingxiang Guo, Yiwen Hou, Chongkai Gao, Zhehao Cai, Jiayu Luo, Lin Shao
For contributions to learning-based representations for generalizable dexterous grasping across diverse hands and objects.
Other Finalists:
*Full-Order Sampling-Based MPC for Torque-Level Locomotion Control Via Diffusion-Style Annealing
Authors: Haoru Xue, Chaoyi Pan, Zeji Yi, Guannan Qu, Guanya Shi
*TrofyBot: A Transformable Rolling and Flying Robot with High Energy Efficiency
Authors: Mingwei Lai, Yugian Ye, Hanyu Wu, Chice Xuan, Ruibin Zhang, Qiuyu Ren, Chao Xu, Fei Gao, Yanjun Cao
Awards Committee: Kris Hauser (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA), Yu Sun, (University of South Florida, USA), Kensuke Harada (Osaka University, USA)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Automation
Award Winner:
*Physics-Aware Robotic Palletization with Online Masking Inference
Authors: Tiangi Zhang, Zheng Wu, Yuxin Chen, Yixiao Wang, Boyuan Liang, Scott Moura, Masayoshi Tomizuka, Mingyu Ding, Wei Zhan
For using reinforcement learning to solve the efficient online planning of stacking boxes in logistic management
Other Finalists:
*In-Plane Manipulation of Soft Micro-Fiber with Ultrasonic Transducer Array and Microscope
Authors: Jieyun Zou, Siyuan An, Mingyue Wang, Jiaqi Li, Yalin Shi, You-Fu Li, Song Liu
*A Complete and Bounded-Suboptimal Algorithm for a Moving Target Traveling Salesman Problem with Obstacles in 3D
Authors: Anoop Bhat, Geordan Gutow, Bhaskhar Vundurthy, Zhonggiang, Sivakumar Rathinam, Howie Choset
Awards Committee: Maria Pia Fanti (Politecnico Di Bari, Italy), Michael Wang (Great Bay University, China), Fabio Bonsignoro (University of Zagreb, Croatia)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Medical Robotics
Award Winner:
*In-Vivo Tendon-Driven Rodent Ankle Exoskeleton System for Sensorimotor Rehabilitation
Author: Juwan Han, Seunghyeon Park, Keehon 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
Other Finalists:
*Image-Based Compliance Control for Robotic Steering of a Ferromagnetic Guidewire
Authors: An Hu, Chen Sun, Adam Dmytriw, Nan Xiao, Yu Sun
*AutoPeel: Adhesion-Aware Safe Peeling Trajectory Optimization for Robotic Wound Care
Authors: Xiao Liang, Youcheng Zhang, Fei Liu, Florian Richter, Michael C. Yip
Awards Committee: Pietro Valdastri (University of Leeds, UK), Amy Kyungwon Han (Seoul National University, Korea), Jake Abbott (University of Utah, USA)
IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Multi-Robot Systems
Award Winner:
*Deploying Ten Thousand Robots: Scalable Imitation Learning for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding
Authors: He Jiang, Yutong Wang, Rishi Veerapaneni, Tanishq Harish Duhan, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti, 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
Other Finalists:
Distributed Multi-Robot Source Seeking in Unknown Environments with Unknown Number of Sources
Authors: Lingpeng Chen, Siva Kailas, Srujan Deolasee, Wenhao Luo, Katia Sycara, Woojun Kim
*Multi-Nonholonomic Robot Object Transportation with Obstacle Crossing Using a Deformable Sheet
Authors: Weijian Zhang, Charlie Street, Masoumeh Mansouri
Awards Committee: Gaurav Sukhatme (University of Southern California, USA), Sabine Hauert (University of Bristol, UK), Alyssa Pierson (Boston University, USA), Mac Schwager (Stanford University, USA), Heiko Hamann (University of Konstanz, Germany)
IEEE ICRA Best Student Paper Award
Award Winners:
*Deploying Ten Thousand Robots: Scalable Imitation Learning for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding
Authors: He Jiang, Yutong Wang, Rishi Veerapaneni, Tanishq Harish Duhan, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti, 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
Authors: 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
Authors: 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
Authors: 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.
Awards Committee: Mark Yim (University of Pennsylvania, USA), Arianna Menciassi (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy), Hanna Kurniawati (Australian National University, Australia), Allison Okamura (Stanford University, USA)
IEEE ICRA Best Conference Paper Award
Award Winners:
*Marginalizing and Conditioning Gaussians Onto Linear Approximations of Smooth Manifolds with Applications in Robotics
Authors: 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
Authors: Yuheng Qiu, Yutian Chen, Zihao Zhang, Wenshan Wang, and Sebastian Scherer
For a novel approach to robust visual odometry with learned metric aware uncertainty model that is validated with convincing demonstrations.
Awards Committee: Mark Yim (University of Pennsylvania, USA), Arianna Menciassi (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy), Hanna Kurniawati (Australian National University, Australia), Allison Okamura (Stanford University, USA)
In addition to the papers listed above, the following papers were also finalists for the IEEE ICRA Best Conference Paper Award and, where indicated by a *, the Best Student Paper Award:
*MiniVLN: Efficient Vision-And-Language Navigation by Progressive Knowledge Distillation
Authors: Junyou Zhu, Yanyuan Qiao, Siqi Zhang, Xingjian He, Qi Wu, Jing Liu
*RoboCrowd: Scaling Robot Data Collection through Crowdsourcing
Authors: Suvir Mirchandani, David D. Yuan, Kaylee Burns, Md Sazzad Islam, Zihao Zhao, Chelsea Finn, Dorsa Sadigh
How Sound-Based Robot Communication Impacts Perceptions of Robotic Failure
Authors: Jai’La Lee Crider, Rhian Preston, Naomi T. Fitter
*Obstacle-Avoidant Leader Following with a Quadruped Robot
Authors: Carmen Scheidemann, Lennart Werner, Victor Reijgwart, Andrei Cramariuc, Joris Chomarat, Jia-Ruei Chiu, Roland Siegwart, Marco Hutter
*Dynamic Tube MPC: Learning Error Dynamics with Massively Parallel Simulation for Robust Safety in Practice
Authors: William Compton, Noel Csomay-Shanklin, Cole Johnson, Aaron Ames
*Bat-VUFN: Bat-Inspired Visual-And-Ultrasound Fusion Network for Robust Perception in Adverse Conditions
Authors: Gyeongrok Lim, Jeong-ui Hong, Min Hyeon Bae
*TinySense: A Lighter Weight and More Power-Efficient Avionics System for Flying Insect-Scale Robots
Authors: Zhitao Yu, Josh Tran, Claire Li, Aaron Weber, Yash P. Talwekar, Sawyer Fuller
*TSCLIP: Robust CLIP Fine-Tuning for Worldwide Cross-Regional Traffic Sign Recognition
Authors: Guoyang Zhao, Fulong Ma, Weiging Qi, Chenguang Zhang, Yuxuan Liu, Ming Liu, Jun Ma
*Geometric Design and Gait Co-Optimization for Soft Continuum Robots Swimming at Low and High Reynolds Numbers
Authors: Yanhao Yang, Ross Hatton
*ShadowTac: Dense Measurement of Shear and Normal Deformation of a Tactile Membrane from Colored Shadows
Authors: Giuseppe Vitrani, Basile Pasquale, Michael Wiertlewski
*Occlusion-aware 6D Pose Estimation with Depth-guided Graph Encoding and Cross-semantic Fusion for Robotic Grasping
Authors: Jingyang Liu, Zhenyu Lu, Lu Chen, Jing Yang, Chenguang Yang
*Stable Tracking of Eye Gaze Direction During Ophthalmic Surgery
Authors: Tinghe Hong, Shenlin Cai, Boyang Li, Kai Huang
*Configuration-Adaptive Visual Relative Localization for Spherical Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robots
Authors: Yuming Liu, Qiu Zheng, Yuxiao Tu, Yuan Gao, Guanqi Liang, Tin Lun Lam
*Realm: Real-Time Line-Of-Sight Maintenance in Multi-Robot Navigation with Unknown Obstacles
Authors: Ruofei Bai, Shenghai Yuan, Kun Li, Hongliang Guo, Wei-Yun Yau, Lihua Xie
With the following awards, IEEE RAS recognizes individuals who provided outstanding contributions to the Conference Editorial Board, which is responsible for reviewing the submissions to ICRA; Presented by Christian Ott, ICRA 2025 Conference Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief
ICRA 2025 Awards Outstanding Associate Editor
Award Winners:
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 Awards Outstanding Reviewer Award
Award Winners:
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
