FM-MRS @ IROS 2026
Foundation Models in Multi-Robot Systems
Overview
Foundation models, including large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs), are rapidly transforming robotics by enabling semantic reasoning, language-guided planning, and richer perception capabilities. This workshop focuses on foundation models in multi-robot systems, exploring how large-scale pretrained models can support coordination, decision making, and mission specification across robot teams operating in complex environments.
The workshop highlights emerging directions such as LLM- and VLM-driven multi-robot coordination, heterogeneous robot collaboration, language-specified missions, decentralized reasoning architectures, and reliability mechanisms including constraint checking and conformal prediction. Compared with recent workshops that primarily focus on LLM-enabled robotics, this workshop emphasizes team-level autonomy and system-level scalability, examining how foundation models can facilitate coordination, communication, and planning across multiple robots.
The workshop will bring together researchers from multi-robot systems, robot learning, planning, and large-scale AI models, as well as industry practitioners developing and deploying robotic fleets. Through invited talks, lightning presentations, and interactive discussions, the workshop aims to identify key challenges, share emerging methodologies, and outline future research directions at the intersection of foundation models and multi-robot autonomy.
Invited Speakers
Program Schedule
| Time | Session | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30 – 8:35 | Opening Remarks | Workshop overview and introduction |
| 8:35 – 9:00 | Invited Talk 1 | Nicholas Roy (MIT) — Foundation Models and Symbol Grounding for Multirobot Systems |
| 9:00 – 9:25 | Invited Talk 2 | Chuchu Fan (MIT) — LLMs and VLMs Can Solve Real-World Planning Rigorously with Formal Reasoning Tools |
| 9:25 – 9:50 | Invited Talk 3 | TBD |
| 9:50 – 10:15 | Invited Talk 4 | TBD |
| 10:15 – 10:30 | Contributed Spotlight Talks | Lightning presentations from accepted submissions |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Coffee Break | Poster presentations and networking |
| 11:00 – 11:25 | Invited Talk 5 | Ameya Agaskar (Amazon Robotics) — DEEPFLEET: Multi-Agent Foundation Models for Mobile Robots |
| 11:25 – 11:50 | Invited Talk 6 | TBD |
| 11:50 – 12:25 | Panel Discussion | Open Q&A and discussion on future directions |
| 12:25 – 12:30 | Closing Remarks |
Call for Papers
We invite submissions of extended abstracts (2–4 pages) on topics including but not limited to:
- LLM- and VLM-driven multi-robot coordination and planning
- Language-specified missions for heterogeneous robot teams
- Foundation-model-based decentralized reasoning and multi-robot communication
- Reliability and safety of foundation models in robot teams: constraint checking, formal verification, and conformal prediction
- Foundation models for multi-agent decision making and task allocation
- Real-world deployment of foundation-model-enabled robot fleets
Submission details coming soon. Accepted papers will be presented as spotlight talks and/or posters.
Organizers
Contact
For inquiries, please contact Lifeng Zhou at Drexel University.