Call for Participation

We invite all teams and team members from the League of Robot Runners to participate in our 2026 Virtual Expo, which takes place online on November 3, 2026, at 3:30 PM EST (UTC-5).

The expo is a community event where we celebrate and reflect on the recent competition round. It is an opportunity for participants to share their experiences and insights into the challenge problems, to tell the community about their innovative approaches, and to celebrate the performances that helped make the League of Robot Runners such a memorable success!

To participate in the program, teams and team members will submit a technical report on a relevant topic, as described in the Topics of Interest. Following a light review, selected works will be presented to the community in the form of a technical talk. Written reports and video recordings of the talks will be made available for download during and after the expo.

Program Highlights:

The technical program will feature a number of sessions that will be of interest to competition participants and members of the broader MAPF community:

• Keynote speakers from industry and academia.
• Awards ceremony to celebrate distinguished and noteworthy performances.
• Technical talks from competing teams and team members.
• Community meeting to discuss the future direction of the competition.

Topics of Interest:

We invite submissions related to any aspect of the League of Robot Runners. This includes but is not limited to:

• Descriptions of systems, algorithms, and implementations used in the competition.
• Post-competition data analysis, including tools and methodologies.
• Position papers reflecting on the competition setup, goals, or other related issues of interest to the community.

Submissions are non-archival. They can describe recently published work, work that is under submission elsewhere, or encouraging preliminary results from work in progress.

Submissions:

Submissions take the form of a technical report describing a topic of interest and must be in AAAI style (see the AAAI-26 Author Kit). The submission type can be any of the following: a 2-page extended abstract, a 4-page short paper, or an 8-page long paper, plus 1 additional page for references. Certain types of submissions are better suited for certain topics; for example, authors of system descriptions may wish to aim for a longer paper, as this helps future replication and extension studies. Each submission will undergo a light, single-blind review process to ensure an acceptable level of quality.

Submission system: Submit your report through EasyChair.

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: October 9, 2026 October 14, 2026 (AoE) — extended by 5 days.
• Paper notification: October 25, 2026 (AoE)
• Final version: TBA

All deadlines are “anywhere on earth” (UTC-12).

For any questions about this call, please reach out via email to league-of-robot-runners@googlegroups.com.

We look forward to your submissions!