NWRS began in 2022 to bring together robotics labs in the Pacific Northwest, with previous editions held at the University of Washington and Oregon State University. This free, all-day event brings together students, postdocs, industry researchers, and faculty working in robotics in the greater Northwest area. This year, we will have a full day of talks, posters and networking in the downtown Vancouver campus of Simon Fraser University. It will be the first time the symposium is hosted in Canada.
Venue
Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3Simon Fraser University (Vancouver Campus)
The Symposium will take place at Simon Fraser University's Vancouver campus at the Harbour Centre.
Accommodation
The closest and most convenient hotel for the venue is the Coast Harbour Vancouver Hotel. Other nearby options include theDelta Hotels by Marriott Vancouver Downtown Suites or The Holiday Inn & Suites Vancouver Downtown.
Please reach out to event organizers to request booking code for reservation at a discounted rate (subject to availability).
Transportation
The downtown Vancouver campus of Simon Fraser University is very accessible using public transportation. The campus is a 5 minute walk from the Waterfront Station, which is the terminus station of the Canada Line and Expo Line.
Current schedules, route maps and fares for bus, SkyTrain, SeaBus and West Coast Express services are available through TransLink.
While there is not dedicated parking at the Simon Fraser University Vancouver campus, a list of nearby parking lots is available on Parkopedia.
Schedule
| 8:30 – 9:20 | Breakfast and check-in |
| 9:20 – 9:30 | Welcome and Introduction Organizing Committee |
| 9:30 – 10:30 | Talk Session 1 Chair: Roozbeh Razavi |
| 10:30 – 10:40 | Break |
| 10:40 – 11:30 | Talk Session 2 Chair: Hanyang Hu |
| 11:30 – 12:30 |
Keynote Talk Dr. Greg Dudek, McGill University |
| 12:30 – 1:20 | Lunch |
| 1:20 – 2:20 | Poster Session |
| 2:20 – 3:35 | Talk Session 3 Chair: Paige Tuttösí |
| 3:35 – 3:45 | Break |
| 3:45– 4:55 | Talk Session 4 Chair: Morteza Badali |
| 4:55 – 5:00 |
Closing Remarks Organizing Committee |
Talk session 1 (5 talks)
| "Large-Scale Multi-Robot Coverage Path Planning on Grids with Path
Deconfliction" Jingtao Tang, Zining Mao, Hang Ma |
T-RO (to appear) 2025 |
| "Integrating Planning and Control using the Path Feasibility
Governor" Shu (Serena) Zhang, James Y.Z. Liu, Dominic Liao-McPherson |
|
| "FRMD: Fast Robot Motion Diffusion with Consistency-Distilled Movement
Primitives for Smooth Action Generation" Xirui Shi, Jun Jin |
|
| "Neural Network-Based Control for Achieving Desired Plant Canopy Light with
Minimal Inputs" Valeria Solano, Mehrdad Moallem |
|
| "Robust Partitioned Visual Servoing for Aerial Manipulation Utilizing
Controllable-space Image Planning and Adaptive Image
Representation" Mohammad Soltanshah, Abolfazl Eskandarpour, Mehran Mehrandezh, Kamal Gupta |
IROS 2024 |
Talk session 2 (4 talks)
| "Ethical considerations in the use of social robots for supporting mental health
and wellbeing in older adults in long-term care" Lilian Hung, Yong Zhao, Hadil Alfares, Parsa Shafiekhani |
Frontiers Robotics and AI 2025 |
| "From raw data to safety: Reducing conservatism by set
expansion" Mohammad Bajelani, Klaske van Heusden |
L4DC 2024 |
| "Reverse Count-based Exploration using Successor Features" Arya Ebrahimi, Jun Jin |
|
| "Safe Learning in the Real World via Adaptive Shielding with Hamilton-Jacobi
Reachability" Michael Lu, Jashanraj Singh Gosain, Luna Sang, Mo Chen |
L4DC 2025 |
Talk session 3 (6 talks)
| "EmojiVoice: Towards long-term controllable expressivity in robot
speech" Paige Tuttösí, Shivam Mehta, Zachary Syvenky, Bermet Burkanova, Gustav Eje Henter, and Angelica Lim |
RO-MAN 2025, Demo at HRI 2025 |
| "Toward a Framework for Intuitive Robot-to-Human Object Handover Using Human
Hand Pre-Grasp Gestures" Morteza Badali, Kamal Gupta, Mehran Mehrandezh, Angelica Lim |
|
| ""It’s always happy to see me”: Exploring LOVOT robots as companions for older
adults" Lillian Hung, Joey Wong, Karen Lok Yi Wong, Kelvin Cheng-Kian Tan, and Vivian Wei-Qun Lou |
Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering 2025 |
| "On human-robot interaction games" Sam Burden |
|
| "Transferring Human Daily Activity Skills to Surgical Robots via Deep Successor
Features" Yi Hu |
|
| "React to This! How Humans Challenge Interactive Agents using Nonverbal
Behaviors" Chuxuan Zhang, Bermet Burkanova, Lawrence H. Kim, Lauren Yip, Ugo Cupcic, Stephane Lallee, and Angelica Lim |
IROS 2024 |
Talk session 4 (6 talks)
Poster session (17 posters)
Call for Participation (closed)
Registration to present or attend has now been closed.
The third North West Robotics Symposium will follow the format of the inaugural event, providing a venue to share recent work, network, and catch up with old friends from the Pacific Northwest robotics community. Students, postdocs, industry researchers, and faculty are all encouraged to participate.
The symposium is a free, all-day event featuring invited short talks, posters, and social events. The early deadline for registration to present a talk is May 9th, 2025. If space remains in the schedule, we will continue to accept registrations until a week before the event, or until we run out of space.
Partners
We would like to thank the following partners for supporting Northwest Robotics Symposium 2025.
Platinum
Gold
Silver
Organizers
- Angelica Lim, Simon Fraser University
- Mo Chen, Simon Fraser University
- Hang Ma, Simon Fraser University
- Paige Tuttösí, Simon Fraser University
- Michael Lu, Simon Fraser University
- Jingtao Tang, Simon Fraser University
- Morteza Badali, Simon Fraser University
- Minh Bui, Simon Fraser University
This event would not be possible without the efforts of Nataliia Golovachova and Deborah Acheampong from the SFU School of Computing Science team.
Contact the organizers at cs_communications@sfu.ca.