IEEE Transactions on Robotics

IEEE Transactions on Robotics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The journal disseminates research in robotics and automation to communities associated with institutes, laboratories, universities, corporations, and national agencies. It serves readers affiliated with organizations such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and the California Institute of Technology.

History

The journal was founded amid growth in robotics research at institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Tokyo, reflecting developments at organizations such as Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Early contributors included researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, ETH Zurich, Delft University of Technology, Imperial College London, and the University of Cambridge. Milestones in the journal's past coincide with events and programs at the National Science Foundation, DARPA Grand Challenges, and initiatives by the European Commission and Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Editorial leadership has included scholars connected to Princeton University, Columbia University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Seoul National University, and the University of Toronto. The journal documented advances related to landmark projects at Bell Labs, IBM Research, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Amazon Robotics, and Boston Dynamics.

Scope and Topics

The journal covers robotic systems studied at laboratories like MIT CSAIL, CMU Robotics Institute, Stanford AI Lab, and UC Berkeley's BEAR Lab, and in industry groups at Honda Research Institute, Toyota Research Institute, Samsung Research, and Bosch Research. Topics include kinematics and dynamics developed at ETH Zurich and Georgia Institute of Technology, motion planning associated with INRIA and Johns Hopkins University, control theory linked to Caltech and Columbia University, and perception methods rooted in work at Facebook AI Research, DeepMind, and OpenAI. Papers often build on algorithms from researchers at NYU, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, and University of Oxford, and experimental platforms such as ABB, KUKA, FANUC, iRobot, and SoftBank Robotics. Applications reported include autonomous vehicles tested by Toyota, Waymo, Tesla, and General Motors, aerial systems from DJI and AeroVironment, medical robots from Intuitive Surgical and Medtronic, and humanoid platforms like Honda ASIMO and Boston Dynamics' Atlas. The journal intersects with conferences and events including ICRA, IROS, RSS, NeurIPS, CVPR, and ECCV, and with awards from IEEE, ACM, Royal Society, and the Turing Award community.

Editorial Board and Peer Review

The editorial board comprises editors and associate editors drawn from universities such as Stanford, MIT, CMU, UC Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, Imperial College London, University of Tokyo, ETH Zurich, and Tsinghua, and from research centers like IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Google Research, and Facebook AI Research. Peer review follows standards practiced by journals affiliated with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Royal Society, applying processes comparable to those at Nature, Science, Proceedings of the IEEE, and PNAS. Reviewers are often investigators from research groups at Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, National University of Singapore, KAIST, and the University of Sydney. Special issues have been guest-edited by scholars associated with institutions including University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, McGill University, University College London, and the University of Melbourne.

Publication and Access

The journal is published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in partnership with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and its production involves departments and libraries such as those at the Library of Congress, British Library, and national libraries of France and Germany. Institutional subscriptions are common at universities like Oxford, Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, King's College London, and the Sorbonne. Digital access is managed alongside platforms used by publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and IEEE Xplore, and aligns with archiving policies followed by CLOCKSS, Portico, and the arXiv community. Authors hail from institutions including Peking University, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Indian Institute of Science, and the Indian Institutes of Technology, as well as corporations like Siemens, Philips, Nokia, Ericsson, and Honeywell.

Impact and Reception

The journal's articles are cited across works from research centers at Bell Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Influential papers have shaped practices at companies such as NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, ARM, and Qualcomm, and influenced projects at Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Rolls-Royce. Reception among scholarly communities is reflected in citations in proceedings of ICRA, IROS, RSS, and journals including IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Journal of Field Robotics, Autonomous Robots, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, and The International Journal of Robotics Research. Recognition has been noted by awards and honors given by IEEE, ACM, the Royal Academy, and national science academies in the United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, and Australia.

Category:Robotics journals