Author Instructions

Paper formatting:

• Please prepare your final submission according to the IEEE Transactions formatting requirements. A corresponding LateX template is available for download.
• Do not modify the formatting provided in this template. Any change to font sizes, page dimensions, line spacing, etc. may delay the publication of your paper. Please do not include any additional markings such as Draft or To appear in... on the pages. Make sure your paper does not contain page numbers.
• Submissions must be limited to eight pages. Robotics: Science and Systems offers no provision for accommodating papers that do not meet these requirements.
• Submit a PDF-format paper. We do not accept papers submitted after the deadline no matter what the reason is, so please check on your ability to convert to PDF early. Delays in the production of proceedings are usually caused by PDF file submissions that do not embed all fonts. Please follow the below instructions to ensure that your PDF document will not suffer from this problem.
• When preparing your document in LateX, make sure to create the PDF file from your LateX source by use of these commands:

    latex paper.tex
    dvips paper.dvi -o paper.ps -t letter -Ppdf -G0
    ps2pdf paper.ps 
  

  The arguments provided to dvips will ensure that all fonts are embedded in the PDF file produced by ps2pdf.
• Before submitting your PDF file, please open it in Acrobat Reader. In the File menu under Document Properties, you will find information on the fonts used by your document. The PDF file should only contain Type-1 fonts. If you correctly followed the instructions above but your document contains other types of fonts, then these may have been included as part of your figures. Again, please ensure that your submission contains only Type-1 fonts.

Navigating CMT Conference Management Service to submit the paper.

• Browse to https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/RSS2009/
• Sign up as a new user.
• When logging in as a first time, you must enter "My Conflict Domains" before you can do anything else. This allows us to assign papers to appropriate reviewers.
• Click on "Create a new Paper Submission"
• Enter title, abstract, and authors. Select one primary subject area and multiple secondary subject areas as they fit.
• Upload your paper in PDF up to 15 MB.
• Answer if your first author is a student.
• Click on Submit.
• You have until the deadline to modify all fields.

Review process:

• Each paper submission will be thoroughly reviewed by approximately four program committee members.
• Reviews will not be double-blind.
• A rebuttal period will allow authors opportunity to respond to the reviews.

Special Journal Issues:

After the conference, special RSS 2009 issues of International Journal of Robotics Research and Autonomous Robots will be produced, each containing expanded versions of a selection of the best papers from the conference.

Best Paper Awards:

Springer has sponsored an award of $2500 for the Springer Best Student Paper.

iRobot has sponsored an award of $2500 for the iRobot Best Paper and a special gift from iRobot for each author (limit of 5).

Policy on Multiple Submissions:

RSS will not accept any paper which, at the time of submission, is under review for publication in a book, journal, proceedings, or other archival medium, nor will it accept papers that have been published or accepted for publication in any archival medium. Authors are also expected not to submit their papers elsewhere during the RSS reviewing period. These restrictions apply only to journals and conferences, not to workshops and similar specialized presentations with a limited audience and without archival proceedings. Authors are required to indicate any such potential conflict in a footnote on the first page of the submission.

Contributing Author's Letter of Agreement

MIT Press requires that paper authors complete and submit this Contributing Author's Letter of Agreement.