Field Robotics is dedicated to the rapid dissemination of important research results in Field Robotics. Articles published in Field Robotics must meet the highest quality standards, as measured by originality and significance of the contribution to our understanding of how to devise, create, analyze and operate robots in their intended application domain.
Manuscripts submitted to Field Robotics should describe work that has both practical and theoretical significance. Authors must clearly articulate claims, and support them by empirical evidence from relevant experiments. Results that are limited to simulation will not be sufficient, experimental validation in field or appropriate analogs is necessary.
Manuscripts describing robotic systems should clearly describe the principles underlying them in addition to the design and performance. Manuscripts addressing theoretical results should also discuss their practical utility. Authors must clearly acknowledge the contributions of prior and related work. Manuscripts should advance the current state of understanding and make clear why the advance matters. Authors are encouraged to report on what was learned in doing the work, rather than merely on what was done. In addition to regular articles, Field Robotics publishes research notes, survey articles, field reports and systems articles. Regular articles emphasize both novelty and field experimentation. Research notes are brief monographs that extend or evaluate previous articles. Survey articles are tutorials or literature reviews that contribute an analysis or perspective that advances our understanding of the subject matter. Field Reports are descriptions of novel systems that have been in operation over an extended duration. They describe interesting and new implementations of known methods and discuss their performance in the field, or present innovative field robots and analyze their performance. Generally, Field Reports emphasize experimentation and experimental results rather than a rigorous analysis of underlying principles. Systems articles emphasize design of complex systems, including processes to test such designs and analysis of performance results.
Submissions must be original. The research described cannot have previously been published or pending publication in another journal, and submissions cannot be under review in any other forum. Field Robotics will publish work that has previously been reported in conferences or workshops. If the work has appeared in a conference, the submission must substantively extend the conference publication.
Articles may be accompanied by online appendices containing data, demonstrations, instructions for obtaining source code, or the source code itself. We strongly encourage authors to include such appendices along with their papers. If an online appendix contains source code, we will require you to sign a release form prior to publication freeing us from liability.
