CR2@ICRA2026

Calls for Participation

This workshop is emphasizing in-progress work and how our convictions and perceptions in the field are under constant change. In this spirit, we not calling for *any* invited speakers or presentations of published papers, especially papers that will be on the floor at ICRA. Instead, our calls for participation are below:

Call for abstracts

We strongly emphasize and encourage the submission of late-breaking, speculative, or otherwise unpublished material. In this submission category, please submit an abstract (no more than 4 pages, excluding references) in standard ICRA/IROS template. This submission will undergo a double-blind review process. Accepted abstracts will be presented at one of the two poster sessions during the workshop.

Call for research talks

We have 8-10 slots for solicited talks (10-15 minutes) to be selected from submitted abstracts. The selection process will emphasize new and creative ideas or results that have not previously been published. Work centered around papers being presented at ICRA will not be considered. We particularly encourage submissions from more junior researchers, loosely defined. For your submission to be considered for a talk, please include a 2-3 minute video summary (with speaker audio) along with a brief abstract of the proposed talk. The video summary should serve as a preview of what you would present, though we understand that the details of the talk will evolve between the submission date and the workshop itself.

Submission Portal

All submissions should be made through OpenReview.

Topics of Interest

We welcome submissions related to, but not limited to, the following topics:

Contact Model Representations

• Learned vs. analytical contact models
• Structure-preserving learned models
• Rigid and compliant and differentiable contact models
• GPU-accelerated contact simulation
• Contact reasoning in visual world models
• Analytical and learned models for deformable objects, granular media
• Sim-to-real fidelity and accuracy requirements for control

Algorithms for Contact-Rich Control

• Sampling, differentiable simulation, and non-convex optimization methods
• Key challenges for deployment: scale, friction, and hybrid dynamics
• Evaluation and comparison of approximate solvers
• Convergence properties and contact mode discovery in local solvers
• Zeroth-order and gradient-based optimization for contact
• Sim-to-real policy transfer and adaptation
• Tactile and force feedback in contact-rich control

The State and Future of Contact-Rich Control

• Model-based and learning-based control
• Perception and high-dimensional sensing for contact-rich tasks
• Rigid body and deformable object manipulation
• Tools and infrastructure for contact-rich robotics
• Benchmarks and evaluation metrics for contact-rich control