SeMaNa: Semantic-Aware Mapping and Navigation


Towards Cognitive and Adaptive Robots


IROS 2026 Workshop

Workshop Program Schedule

TENTATIVE

Time Type Presenter Talk
08.50 - 09:00 Opening Federico Rollo workshop presentation
09:00 - 09:30 Speakers Session 1 Margarita Chli Towards Semantic Spatial Awareness: Scaling Hierarchical Representations with Foundation Model
09:30 - 10:00 Luca Carlone Task-Aware World Models for robotics
10:00 - 10:30 1st Poster Session Semantic mapping and world representations
10:30 - 11:00 Morning Coffee Break Poster session continues during coffee break
11:00 - 11:30 Speakers Session 2 Bernadette Bucher Building visual representations with foundation models for mobile manipulation
11:30 - 12:00 Dhruv Shah Lessons from Scaling up Multimodal Navigation Policies
12:00 - 12:30 1st panel TBD Explicit World Models vs. Large Behavior Models
12:30 - 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 - 14:00 Speakers Session 3 Lu Gan Semantic Mapping and Navigation in Unknown, Unstructured Environments
14:00 - 14:30 Kostas Alexis Semantics-aware Predictive Inspection Path Planning
14:30 - 15:00 Sebastian Scherer Pushing the horizon: how to scale semantic mapping and navigation beyond indoor environments
15:00 - 15:30 2nd panel TBD The Reality Check: Scaling Semantics to the Wild
15:30 - 16:00 Afternoon Coffee Break Poster session starts during coffee break
16:00 - 16:30 2nd poster session Semantic-aware navigation and exploration
16:30 - 17:00 Final remarks & Awards Recap of the day and awards