Is Robotics Underinvesting in Its Own Foundations?

About the Forum

Robot control has long been a foundational pillar of robotics. Yet its visibility as a distinct discipline is fading. Our TC Spotlight article in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine shows that control has not shrunk, it has scattered: 13 of 20 RA-L subject areas now contain control keywords, and control-focused sessions at major conferences have given way to broader topic areas. A control paper today often ends up in a learning or application session, in front of an audience that came for something else.

The consequences are visible. Researchers, especially early-career ones, feel isolated and worry that their work is perceived as peripheral or outdated. Beyond academia, the trend affects how funding agencies prioritize foundational versus applied research, how the robotics workforce is trained, and ultimately how reliable, safe, and trustworthy future robotic systems will be. Control research also requires comparatively few material investments, making it one of the most accessible entry points into robotics for groups with limited resources; a decline in its visibility therefore has implications for the inclusivity and global accessibility of the field.

This forum treats these trends as policy and community challenges rather than technical problems. It brings together senior researchers, industry leaders, and RAS leadership to examine three questions:

Key Questions:

Is robotics underinvesting in its theoretical and control-theoretic foundations, and what evidence supports this claim?
How do current funding structures, conference organization, and publication incentives shape the research landscape for robot control?
What concrete actions can the community take to sustain foundational robot control research, particularly for early-career researchers and groups with limited resources?

The forum closes a three-event initiative of the TC in 2026. The ECC 2026 workshop (Reykjavik, July 7) and the IFAC World Congress workshop (Busan, August) collected the open scientific challenges in robot control. The IROS forum turns to the community itself and asks how to rebuild a shared home for the people working on them. It will conclude with actionable recommendations for conference organizers, funding agencies, and the RAS community, to be published as a position paper.

Program

2:30–2:40

Opening

Block 1Robot Control Today and Tomorrow

2:40–2:50

Sehoon Oh — DGIST, South Korea

2:50–3:00

Bruno Vilhena Adorno — The University of Manchester, UK

3:00–3:10

Sylvia Herbert — University of California San Diego, USA tbc

3:10–3:20

Michael Lutter — Boston Dynamics, USA tbc

3:20–3:30

Sven Parusel — Franka Robotics, Germany

3:30–3:40

Nicholas Paine — Apptronik, USA tbc

3:40–3:55

Coffee break

Block 2Rebuilding a Home for Robot Control

3:55–4:05

Marcelo Ang — Chair, IEEE RAS Robotics Foundation Cluster

4:05–4:15

Hugo Rodrigue — IEEE RAS Vice President of Technical Activities

4:15–4:55

Panel discussion with all speakers: structural changes, visibility for early-career researchers, and global accessibility

ClosingRecommendations & next steps

4:55–5:00

Summary, actionable recommendations, and announcement of the planned position paper

Perspective talks are 10-minute personal views, not technical presentations. Each speaker closes with concrete steps for the next few years; all speakers join the closing panel.

Speakers

What We Ask of Speakers

Academic speakers: how the fragmentation and declining visibility of control affect their research area, their students, and where the field is heading, including whether foundational control work has become harder to fund.
Industry speakers: what industry needs from robot control today, whether academia is producing it, and what the gap looks like in practice, in hiring, in problems solved in-house, and in research that is missing.
RAS leadership: the view from Society leadership for the researchers in the room: does RAS see the dispersion of control as a problem, does it still consider foundational disciplines essential in a period of rapid growth in learning-based work, and what does it expect a community like ours to do.