ROSCon UK 2025
Call for Proposals

General Content Guidelines:

We invite proposals for talks (10 + 5 minute Q&A), workshops, tutorials and lighting talks to be presented at ROSCon UK.

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline for proposals (presentations, workshops and tutorials): 26 May 2025 23:59 (BST)
• Submission deadline for lighting talks: 10 June 2025 23:59 (BST)
• Acceptance notification for proposals and lightning talks: 10 June 2025 2025

We encourage proposals from presenters of all backgrounds and experience levels.

Registration Awards

We will be offering registration awards to select student contributors. The call for registration awards will launch after the acceptance date. If you are interested in sponsoring our students please check the sponsors section.

All topics related to ROS (1 & 2) are invited. Example topics include:

• New packages / frameworks
• Insights / improvements for existing packages
• Case studies on unique ROS deployments / use cases
• Developments for specific robots, sensors, platforms
• Competitions / collaborations / initiatives
• ROS in commercial / research / teaching environments
• Standards / Interoperability / best practices / development tools

To get an idea of the content and tone of ROSCon, check out the slides and videos from previous years. We cannot offer content that is not proposed! If there is a topic on which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself, please post it for discussion here on Discourse.

Review Criteria

All submissions will be reviewed by the programme committee to evaluate:

• Relevance to the ROS Community - The proposed content should use ROS in a substantial way, but beyond that, the work must also be relevant and compelling to a general ROS audience. Writing a ROS driver for a specific piece of hardware is an excellent contribution to the community, but describing the intricacies of its firmware may not be relevant to this audience. Furthermore, content should be relevant to a global and diverse community.
• Quality of Content/Impact - We encourage proposals to contain big ideas with high impact. Proposals should have a demonstrable quality as opposed to being purely theoretical.
• Quality of Presentation - Articulating your ideas clearly is a key prerequisite for giving a compelling live presentation.
• Originality/Novelty - Content should be original and not something that has already been heard before. Will this be the (n+1)th talk on the same topic at ROSCon XX? Or are you presenting something new?
• Open Source Availability - Because we are an open-source community, proposals for which the underlying code and other content is available under an open source license have a greater chance of being accepted. It is not a hard requirement, but proposals focused on proprietary systems should contribute in some other way to the community. Promises of future release are difficult to evaluate, so having your content released at the time of proposal submission is preferred.

Additional consideration will be given to balancing the programme.

Talk Submission Information

Proposals for 15 minute talks (including 5 minute Q&A) must include:

• Title (maximum 70 characters)
• Presenter(s) (name and affiliation)
• Summary - for public consumption, used in the programme schedule (maximum 100 words)
• Description - outline and goals, for review by the programme committee. Describe the intended audience and what they can expect to learn. Please be sure to include enough information in your proposal for the programme committee to evaluate the above review criteria.
• Audio abstract - All talk proposals must include a (maximum) one minute recording of the presenter describing the content of the talk. It should be a single-take, responding as if a colleague asked what the talk was about. Please use mp3 or a commonly used video format. Used only for review by the Programme Committee (not made public).
• Link - (optional) A single link to a website, e.g. Github or YouTube to be associated with talk in publicity materials.

Submit these files on easychair here!

Submission deadline for presentations is 26 May 2025 23:59 (BST).

Workshop Submission Information

Workshop/tutorial proposals must include:

• Title (maximum 70 characters)
• Presenter(s) (name and affiliation)
• Duration (1.5h, half day (3h) or full day (6h))
• Summary - for public consumption, used in the programme schedule (maximum 100 words)
• Level - beginner, intermediate, expert
• Description - outline the workshop and its goals, for review by the programme committee. Describe the intended audience and what resources (if any) would be required. Please be sure to include enough information in your proposal for the programme committee to evaluate.
• Audio abstract - All talk proposals must include a (maximum) one minute recording of the presenter describing the content of the talk. It should be a single-take, responding as if a colleague asked what the talk was about. Please use mp3 or a commonly used video format. Used only for review by the Programme Committee (not made public).
• Required equipment

Submit these files on easychair here!

Submission deadline for workshops and tutorials is 26 May 2025 23:59 (BST).

Lighting Talk Submission Information

Lightning Talks are a popular fixture at every ROSCon. They are a great way to tell the community what you have been working on.

KEEP👏IT👏SHORT👏: You have exactly two minutes!

We recommend the following format:

• Who you are
• What you are working on
• Your cool thing/idea/project
• Where to find more information (we recommend using a link shortener/QR code)
• Make it fun!
• KEEP IT SHORT

Slides are not required, and there is no specific format for the presentation. However, they must work on the coordinator’s laptop, so common portable formats like PDFs are recommended. Videos are also acceptable, but should be edited to fit the allotted time. Additionally, audio playback cannot be guaranteed. Given the limited time, we would advise against conducting a live demo.

To suggest a lightning talk, just submit your finished presentation material through this short google form.

Submission deadline for lighting talks is 10 June 2025 23:59 (BST).

For any questions about submissions or the programme, contact sabine.hauert@bristol.ac.uk.