Author Instructions

The conference proceedings for Robotics: Science and Systems will be published as a book by MIT Press. Please note that the deadline for submitting the final version of your paper is June 24, 2005. The submission requires the following steps:
  1. Inform RSS of any changes to authors or title of your paper.
  2. Submit the author agreement form by regular mail.
  3. Revise and format your paper according to the provided template.
  4. Manually equalize the columns on the last page.
  5. Create a PDF file and ensure that all fonts are embedded.
  6. Submit the final version of your paper through the submission site.
Below you will find additional information for each of these steps. Please read these instructions carefully to avoid delaying the publication of the proceedings and be aware of the deadline of June 24, 2005.

  1. Title and Authors: If the title or authors for your paper have changed since you submitted your information in January, please email the updated information as soon as possible to submissions-05«æ»cs·umass·edu using "RSS info change {number}" in the subject line, where {number} is your paper number as it appears in this conference booklet.

  2. Author Agreement Form: One author must complete and sign the author agreement form, which also appears on page 69 of the conference booklet. Please mail the original, signed author agreement form to the following address by June 24, 2005:

              Robotics: Science and Systems c/o Oliver Brock
              Department of Computer Science
              University of Massachusetts Amherst
              140 Governors Drive
              Amherst, MA 01003, USA

  3. Formatting: Please incorporate any feedback and suggestions you may have received at the conference. Please prepare your final submission according to the IEEE Transactions formatting requirements. A corresponding Latex class file can be obtained from the Robotics: Science and Systems Web site. Please do not modify the formatting provided in these files. Any change to font sizes, page dimensions, line spacing, etc. will delay the publication of your paper. Please do not include any additional markings such as "Draft" or "To appear in..." on the pages. Papers will be limited to 8 pages. Robotics: Science and Systems offers no provision for accommodating papers that do not meet these requirements.

  4. Columns on last page: Please manually equalize the heights of the columns on the last page. If you are using Latex, you can do this by inserting a \newpage at the appropriate position (possibly in the .bbl file, if you need to insert a column break in the bibliography) or by manipulating the \textheight variable. You can introduce \vspace{} or \vspace*{} commands for fine tuning. The columns on the last page should be of equal height.

  5. Creating PDF files: Delays in the production of proceedings are usually caused by the submission of PDF files that did not embed all fonts. Please follow these simple instructions to ensure that the PDF file you submit does not have this problem. Document preparation using Latex: Please create a PDF file from your Latex source by using the following commands:

          latex paper.tex
          dvips paper.dvi -o paper.ps -tletter -Ppdf -G0
          ps2pdf paper.ps

    The arguments to the dvips command will ensure that all fonts are embedded in the PDF file produced by ps2pdf. Checking the PDF file: Before you submit your file, please open it in Acrobat Reader. In the menu "File" under "Document Properties" you can find information about "Fonts." Your document should only contain Type-1 fonts. If you followed the instructions above, but your documents contains other types of fonts, they may have been included as part of figures. Please ensure that your submission only contains Type-1 fonts. If you experience difficulties creating PDF files that comply with this requirement, please send email to submissions-05@cs.umass.edu prior to the deadline.

  6. Submission: Please submit your paper as a PDF file by June 24, 2005, 9pm GMT using the link http://robotics-conference.confmaster.net. The PDF file should be created as described above; please verify that it only contains Type-1 fonts. Separately, please update the title and abstract of your paper in the conference submission system. This is important for the online proceedings.
We are looking forward to receiving your final submission!

Please note: We reserve the right not to publish accepted papers should not all information be received by June 24, 2005. We will also exclude papers that violate our formatting guidelines.