Rss workflow

RSS Workflow

Project-manage an RSS submission against its real calendar. Anchor every date to the current edition's pages; the 2026 dates below are a verified historical snapshot (source map rows 1-3, checked 2026-07-08), not a promise about 2027.

Where the cycle stands right now (as of 2026-07-08)

• RSS 2026 (22nd edition, Sydney: UTS + ICC) runs July 13-17, 2026 — conference week starts in days. The submission funnel (abstract Jan 23 → paper Jan 30 → supplement Feb 6 → invited rebuttal Apr 3 → decisions Apr 27, all AoE) is closed.
• Accepted authors are in final-presentation mode: talk, poster, travel, and artifact release (rss-camera-ready, rss-artifact-evaluation).
• Everyone else is planning RSS 2027, whose site, dates, and deadlines were unposted at check time (待核实). The recent pattern — late-January deadline, July conference — is a planning hypothesis only.

The robotics year, seen from RSS

RSS shares its authors with three siblings, so choosing RSS is also choosing a slot in an annual rotation. Approximate recent geometry (verify each venue's live pages):

Venue	Typical deadline	Typical event	What slipping past RSS costs
RSS	late January	July	Next comparable single-track slot is a full year away
IROS	~March	~October	Natural catch for a paper 6 weeks short of RSS-ready
CoRL	~June	~November	Right jury if the learning story dominates
ICRA	~September	~May/June	Broadest program; absorbs systems breadth

The practical use: a project that misses the January bar honestly should aim at IROS or CoRL rather than submit thin — RSS's selectivity makes weak submissions expensive in reviewer goodwill.

Backward plan to a late-January deadline

Weeks out	Milestone for a claim-plus-hardware paper
12+	Scientific claim fixed in one sentence; evidence plan sized to it
10	Hardware trial campaign running; failure attribution logged from day one
6	Ablations that isolate the mechanism complete
4	Full draft; supplement storyboard; internal red-team read
2	Anonymity sweep of PDF and media; OpenReview metadata entered
1	Abstract registered; buffer for robot downtime already spent
0	Paper in; supplement due one week later — do not design it that week, only pack it

The one-week paper→supplement gap (2026: Jan 30 → Feb 6) is packing time, not filming time; footage shot after the deadline cannot support claims already frozen in the PDF.

Conference-week execution (the stage that is live right now)

For teams presenting at the current edition, the final week has its own checklist:

• Confirm the talk slot, format, and timing against the official program page; a single-track schedule has no parallel-session slack for overruns.
• Load footage locally; conference-venue networks are not a playback plan.
• Push the public artifact release live before the talk — the single-track audience is the largest referral event the repository will ever get (rss-artifact-evaluation).
• Prepare the poster to carry the evidence detail (trial counts, failure distribution) that the talk compresses away.
• Assign one author to note every hallway objection; those are free previews of the journal-extension reviews.

RSS 2027 monitoring plan

Nothing about 2027 was posted at check time. Watch these, in this order, starting early autumn 2026:

1. https://roboticsconference.org/ — the banner rebinds to the new edition.
2. The RSS Foundation calendar page (roboticsfoundation.org).
3. The OpenReview venue namespace for a RSS/2027 group appearing.
4. The CFP page for the new deadline cascade and any format change — the 8-page ceiling and the two-stage rebuttal are both cycle policies, not fixtures.

Stage-specific traps

• February-March silence: first reviews are not public-scheduled; do not plan team availability assuming a known release date (待核实 each cycle).
• The rebuttal is conditional: only papers above a first-round threshold are invited to respond. Plan an April window in calendars without assuming it will be used (rss-author-response).
• April 27 → July is short: visa lead times for the host country can exceed the decision-to-conference gap; start paperwork at submission time for likely-accept projects.
• No standing editors: the Program Chair and Area Chairs rotate per edition (2026 PC chair: Matei Ciocarlie, Columbia — verified 2026-07-08); never carry a name or a policy across cycles.

Ownership map for a multi-person campaign

Robotics submissions fail at handoffs; name owners early:

Workstream	Single owner for
Claim custody	The one-sentence claim; vetoes scope drift in any section
Trial campaign	Protocol document, ledger integrity, daily campaign log
Media	Footage banking from every session; the supplement cut
Anonymity	The sweep across PDF, video, archive, and OpenReview fields
Deadline mechanics	AoE conversions, form fields, upload confirmations

Footage banking deserves emphasis: clips must be captured during the campaign, because the supplement freezes one week after the paper and reshoots after the paper deadline cannot support frozen claims.

Output format

[Cycle position] planning 2027 / drafting / submitted / rebuttal window / accepted / conference week
[Next hard date] <date + source URL, or 待核实>
[Critical path] <three tasks gating the next stage>
[Fallback venue] IROS / CoRL / ICRA + trigger condition
[Calendar risks] <robot downtime / visa / footage / rebuttal availability>