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IROS 2026 Convenes in Pittsburgh With Nearly 2,000 Papers and 4,000 Expected Attendees

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The 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, known as IROS, was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, according to Carnegie Mellon University. CMU listed the conference as running from September 27 through October 3, while the University of Michigan's robotics department said the program ran from Sunday workshops on September 27 through Thursday sessions on October 1.

The University of Michigan described IROS as "one of the largest robotics research conferences, serving as an annual forum for researchers to explore the frontiers of intelligent robots and smart machines."

Scale of the meeting

In a September 21 news release, CMU said the conference was expected to attract more than 4,000 participants, with nearly 2,000 research papers presented and 145 organizations exhibiting. Neither university's announcement gave a submission total or an acceptance rate for the 2026 program.

The University of Michigan said its faculty and students were presenting papers and organizing or speaking at workshops on topics including social robot navigation, uncertainty quantification, tensegrity robotics, prosthetics design and AI in autonomous systems.

The host city

Howie Choset, a professor at CMU's Robotics Institute, served as IROS 2026 general chair, according to CMU. "Hosting IROS in Pittsburgh is especially meaningful to me," Choset said in the university's release. CMU said Pittsburgh last hosted IROS in 1995, the same year as the university's "No Hands Across America" autonomous road trip.

"Carnegie Mellon has shaped robotics since its beginnings and continues to push the field forward," said Martial Hebert, dean of CMU's School of Computer Science, in the release.

CMU said its researchers would present 180 papers and that about 300 members of its community registered for the conference, including more than 170 volunteers. The university said it planned tours of the National Robotics Engineering Center, the Robotics Innovation Center and Mill 19, which houses its Manufacturing Futures Institute.

Industry links

The CMU release also pointed to university spinouts based in the city, including Aurora, Skild AI and HEBI Robotics, as part of what it called Pittsburgh's robotics ecosystem. CMU said it founded the Robotics Institute in 1979 and the National Robotics Engineering Center in 1996.

CMU said its researchers also organized workshops covering navigation, manipulation, locomotion and learning.

Sources