OCRAIM @ ICRA 2025

OCRAIM @ ICRA June 5, 2026

Bridging Innovation and Reality: Multi-modal Robotic Solutions for Asset Inspection in Challenging Environments

This workshop brings together robotic research advancements with industry-driven demands, addressing the gap between challenges in the real-world inspection and asset management applications and cutting-edge research in multi-modal robotic technologies designed to address them. Building on the success of our inaugural ICRA 2025 workshop, Open Challenges in Robotics for Asset Inspection and Management, this second installment continues the conversation on how to transition advanced robotics from research into reliable industrial deployments, which still faces multitudes of challenges.

Our first workshop highlighted the current state of the art in robotic inspection, maintenance, and lifecycle asset management, while identifying barriers that prevent these technologies from reaching operational readiness.

In this follow‑up workshop, we extend these findings to explore how robots across different modalities can operate effectively in complex, unstructured, and safety‑critical environments. We have invited leading experts from academia and industry to share insights into application‑driven challenges as well as the latest advancements in robotic systems capable of addressing them.

Important Dates:

Paper Submission Deadline: 4 April 2026, 11:59PM (AoE)
Notification to Authors: 4 May 2026
Camera-Ready Deadline: 8 May 2026, 11:59PM (AoE)
Workshop Date: 5 June 2026, Vienna, Austria.

Submissions will be accepted through CMT.

Invited Speakers:

Ian Manchester, University of Sydney

Martin Saska, Czech Technical University

Margarita Chli, ETH Zurich

Chao XU, Zhejiang University

Jaime Valls Miro, AZTI Foundation / University of Technology Sydney

Ayoung Kim, Seoul National University

Lashika Medagoda, Abyss Solutions

Suchet Bargoti, Skydio

Junfeng WU, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Maani Ghaffari, University of Michigan

Stefan Williams, University of Sydney

David Wisth, NavLive

Proposed Schedule:

Time	Topic	Speaker	Affiliation
09:00 – 09:10	Welcome and Introduction	Ian Manchester	University of Sydney
09:10 – 09:30	Indoor and outdoor inspection of industrial infrastructure by fully autonomous flying robots (UAVs)	Martin Saska	Czech Technical University in Prague
09:30 – 09:50	Perception for aerial inspection	Margarita Chli	ETH Zurich/University of Cyprus
09:50 – 10:10	Diving into the forest with robotic systems	Chao Xu	Zhejiang University
10:10 – 10:30	Mapping the Condition of Critical Pipeline Infrastructure with NDT Robotic Crawlers	Jaime Valls Miro	AZTI Foundation / University of Technology Sydney
10:30 – 10:45	Contributed papers lightning talks – morning session
10:45 – 11:00	Coffee Break and Poster/Demo Session
11:00 – 11:20	From Construction Sites to Underwater Structures: Multi-Sensor Approaches for Structural Inspections	Ayoung Kim	Seoul National University
11:20 – 11:40	Underwater Perception for Offshore Inspection	Junfeng Wu	Chinese University of Hong Kong
11:40 – 12:00	Computational Symmetry and Learning for Robotics	Maani Ghaffari	University of Michigan
12:00 – 12:20	Towards ship scanning in a day: robotics for above water, undersea and interior survey of marine assets	Stefan Williams	University of Sydney
12:20 – 13:10	Lunch
13:10 – 13:40	Hilti x Trimble SLAM Challenge 2026 Award Ceremony	Torben Gräber	HILTI
13:40 – 14:00	TBD	TBD	Nexxis
14:00 – 14:20	From Moonshots to Reality: Legged Robots for Autonomous Asset Inspection	Christian Gehring	ANYbotics
14:20 – 14:40	From research to product: Asset management using handheld scanners	David Wisth	NavLive
14:40 – 15:00	Aerial imaging and Inspection	Suchet Bargoti	Skydio
15:00 – 15:55	Contributed papers lightning talks – afternoon session
15:55 – 16:10	Coffee Break and Poster/Demo Session
16:10 – 16:50	Panel discussion
16:50 – 17:00	Closing remarks

Intended Call for Papers:

We will invite submissions related to asset maintenance, inspection and monitoring on the topics of:

Robotic Platforms
Multimodal and novel sensing
Intelligent path planning and navigation
Data collection techniques
AI-driven predictive maintenance
Human-robot collaboration
Edge computing and low-latency AI models
Autonomous Multi-Robot Systems
Robotics for Confined Space and Hazardous Environments
Cybersecurity and Data Integrity
Integration of robotic inspection data into digital twins
Enhanced Data Representation and Visualization
High-quality datasets and benchmarks

Submission Guidelines:

The workshop accepts contributions based on the following criteria:

The submission should be between 4-6 pages long (excluding references). The paper should follow the IEEE RAS template
Late breaking results as well as links to supplementary material, multimedia, and datasets are encouraged
We welcome prospective, conceptual, and industrial application focused papers as well.
Submissions will be accepted through CMT.
The review process is single-blind
Accepted papers will be posted on the workshop website. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their contributions during the workshop’s lightning talk presentation session followed by a poster session.
The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.