Complex long-horizon and sparse reward robotics tasks are challenging for scaling end-to-end learning methods. By contrast, planning approaches have shown great potential to handle such complex tasks effectively. One of the major criticisms of planning-based approaches has been the lack of availability of accurate world models (aka abstractions) to utilize.
There has been a renewed interest in using learning-based approaches to learn symbolic representations that support planning. However, this research is often fragmented into disjoint sub-communities such as task and motion planning, reinforcement learning (hierarchical, model-based), planning with formal logic, planning with natural language (language models), and neuro-symbolic AI. This workshop aims to create a common forum to share insights, discuss key questions, and chart a path forward via abstraction.
We aim to facilitate this bridge-building in two ways: (1) a diverse selection of papers and invited speakers; and (2) a highly interactive workshop. Concretely, the workshop will highlight approaches that use different learning methods, mainly to learn symbolic and composable representations of world models. Key questions for discussion include:
Following the success of the previous offerings of the workshop at CoRL 2023 and CoRL 2024, we propose a third iteration of the workshop at CoRL 2025. Specifically, the previous iterations of the workshop received a total of 26 and 55 submissions, respectively. These submissions highlighted important characteristics and challenges of learning abstractions while showcasing the abstraction capabilities of pre-trained LLMs and VLMs. This iteration of the workshop would have a stronger emphasis on works that highlight the capabilities of using high-dimensional data and pre-trained models for learning sound and complete abstractions that enable cost-effective and reliable planning.
We solicit papers of the following topics:
We solicit workshop paper submissions relevant to the above call of the following types:
Please format submissions in CoRL or IEEE conference (ICRA or IROS) styles. Submissions do not need to be anonymized. To authors submitting papers rejected from other conferences: please ensure that comments given by the reviewers are addressed prior to submission.
Note: Please feel free to submit work under review or accepted for presentation at other workshops and/or conferences as we will not require copyright transfer.
We are now accepting submissions through our OpenReview portal
Paper Submission Deadline | Aug 12, 2025 (Early) |
Sep 5, 2025 (Late) | |
Author Notification | Aug 27, 2025 |
Camera-ready Version Due | Sept 22, 2025 |
Workshop | Sept 27, 2025 |
We offer two submission deadlines to accommodate different planning needs: an early deadline and a late deadline. The early deadline is intended for authors who may require quicker notification for travel, visa, or funding arrangements. Submissions received by the early deadline will be reviewed promptly, and notifications will be sent within approximately two weeks of submission. Authors who do not require early feedback are welcome to submit by the late deadline.