ROSCon China 2024 will be held in Shenzhen, China on November 2nd to 3rd, 2024. It is the venue for ROS developers of all levels, beginner to expert, to spend an extrordinary two days learning from and networking with the ROS community.

For this, we’re calling for your contributions! The core of the conference is (and always has been) content from the community, and this year, we’re looking for proposals for three different types of content:

• Talks: The standard presentation format is the talk, with the presenter(s) talking live about a specific topic, with a brief question period at the end, fitting into a 10, 20 or 30 minute time slot.
• Workshops: We will offer workshops on Day 2, parallel to the report. The goal of the workshops is to provide space for participatory/interactive experiences between the presenter(s) and the attendees and the chance to go more in depth into a subject than a regular talk could allow.

We are also planning panels, keynote speakers and of course, lightning talks. The conference program will be a combination of single-track and double-track sessions.

Please note that, ROSCon China 2024 will be fully in-person, and remote presentations will not be considered.

General Content Guidelines:

All topics related to ROS (1 & 2) are invited. Example topics include:

• New packages / frameworks
• Insights / improvements for existing packages
• Case studies on unique ROS deployments / use cases
• Developments for specific robots, sensors, platforms
• Competitions / collaborations / initiatives
• ROS in commercial / research / teaching environments
• Standards / best practices / development tools

To get an idea of the content and tone of ROSCon China 2024, check out the slides and videos from previous ROSCon. We cannot offer content that is not proposed! If there is a topic on which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself, please post it for discussion on ROS Discourse.

Review Criteria

All submissions will be reviewed by the program committee to evaluate:

• Relevance to the ROS Community - The proposed content should use ROS in a substantial way, but beyond that, the work must also be relevant and compelling to a general ROS audience. Writing a ROS driver for a specific piece of hardware is an excellent contribution to the community, but describing the intricacies of its firmware may not be relevant to this audience. Furthermore, content should be relevant to a global and diverse community.
• Quality of Content/Impact - We encourage proposals to contain big ideas with high impact. Proposals should have a demonstrable quality as opposed to being purely theoretical.
• Quality of Presentation - Articulating your ideas clearly and grammatically is a key prerequisite for giving a compelling live presentation.
• Originality/Novelty - Content should be original and not something that has already been heard before. Will this be the 41st talk on a particular topic at ROSCon? Or are you presenting something new?
• Open Source Availability - Because we are an open-source community, proposals for which the underlying code and other content is available under an open source license have a greater chance of being accepted. It is not a hard requirement, but proposals focused on proprietary systems should contribute in some other way to the community. Promises of future release are difficult to evaluate, so having your content released at the time of proposal submission is preferred.

Additional consideration will be given to balancing the subject matter and duration of presentation.

We encourage proposals from presenters of all backgrounds and experience levels.

Workshop Submission Information

Workshop proposals must include:

• Title (maximum 70 characters)
• Presenter(s) (name, contact information)
• Summary - for public consumption, used in the program schedule (maximum 100 words)
• Description - outline the workshop and its goals, for review by the program committee.

Describe the intended audience and what resources (if any) would be required. Please be sure to include enough information in your proposal for the program committee to evaluate the above review criteria.

Submit these files on this website. Talk proposals must be submitted by August 1st, 2024. The program will be announced September 6th, 2024.

If you have any questions/comments/firmware patches, please contact the executive committee.

Talk Submission Information

Talk proposals must include

• Title (maximum 70 characters)
• Presenter(s) (name and affiliation)
• Desired talk length (10, 20 or 30 minute time slot.)
• Summary - for public consumption, used in the program schedule (maximum 100 words)
• Description - outline and goals, for review by the program committee. Describe the intended audience and what they can expect to learn. Please be sure to include enough information in your proposal for the program committee to evaluate the above review criteria.
• Audio abstract - All talk proposals must include a (maximum) one minute recording of the presenter describing the content of the talk. It should be a single-take, responding as if a colleague asked what the talk was about. Please use either the mp3 or ogg file format. Used only for review by the Program Committee (not made public).
• Key URL handles - Optionally include a single link handles to be associated with talk in publicity materials.

Submit these files on this website. Talk proposals must be submitted by August 1st, 2024. The program will be announced September 6th, 2024.

If you have any questions/comments/firmware patches, please contact the executive committee.

Lightning Talks

If you are interested in giving a lightning talk here’s an overview of how it will work.

On the first morning through the morning break we will provide a form for submitting your name and talk title for a lottery. Before lunch the lightning talk selection will be announced and the presenters should bring any slides they want to present to a volunteer at the registration desk during lunch. Slides are not required, and there’s no particular format. Though it must work on the coordinators laptop so common portable formats such as pdfs are recommended. Videos are also OK but should be edited to fit inside the time limit and should not rely on the audio from the video. Given the time constraint, we would recommend against trying to do a live demo.

Lightning Talk Process

Each year we’ve had lightning talks we’ve ended up with more talks than we have had time to present. We’ve followed various techniques to try to be fair distributing them including a first come first served policy and drawing straws. These are all stressful and a hassle for attendees to hurry to be in the right place.

This year we’re going to follow the following procedure:

• The committee will post a link to a web form to sign up on-site at the beginning of the first day’s remarks.
• It will also be posted at the registration desk.
• Submissions will be allowed until the end of the first Coffee Break.
• The Organizing Committee will review the submissions and then both days talks will be selected at random and announced at the beginning of lunch on the first day.
• If you are selected you will be contacted by the committee and will have until the end of lunch the first day to bring your slides to the volunteer(s) at the registration desk.
• During the lightning talk session your slides will be preloaded and please be ready to talk in order.