VLM4RWD
NeurIPS 2026 Workshop
Grounded and Faithful Vision-Language Models for Real-World Deployment.
2nd Workshop on VLM4RWD | NeurIPS 2026 | Dec 11, 2026 | Sydney, Australia
Workshop Overview
Vision-language(-action) models are rapidly evolving from systems that describe the world to agents that must perceive, reason, and act within it. This workshop focuses on the principles, methods, and evaluation needed to build grounded, faithful, and reliable multimodal intelligence for real-world deployment.
Grounded Understanding & Faithful Reasoning
AI systems must reliably connect language, perception, and actions with relevant entities and observations in the environment, ensuring that predictions, reasoning, and decisions remain supported by underlying visual and physical evidence.
Reliable Interaction & Decision-Making
Real-world agents must integrate perception, reasoning, planning, and action in a manner that remains robust under dynamic and uncertain conditions, with decisions grounded in the causal structure of the environment.
Evaluation & Deployment Reliability
Systems deployed in robotics and autonomous environments require principled evaluation, calibrated uncertainty, predictable failure modes, and rigorous assessment across distribution shifts and counterfactual scenarios.
Call for Papers
Overview
We invite high-quality submissions that advance grounded and faithful vision-language and vision-language-action models for real-world deployment.
We welcome research addressing key challenges in visual grounding, faithful reasoning, hallucination mitigation, robustness, embodied intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems, and world models.
Accepted papers will be presented during the workshop poster sessions, and selected submissions will be invited for contributed spotlight talks.
Submission Guidelines
- Formatting: Workshop papers may be up to 8 pages, excluding references and appendices, and should follow the NeurIPS 2026 conference format.
- Review process: Submissions will undergo double-blind review and must be fully anonymized.
- Submission portal: Papers will be submitted through OpenReview.
- Submission types: We welcome full workshop papers, demo papers, extended abstracts, position papers, datasets, benchmarks, and emerging research ideas.
- Previously published work: Relevant published work may be submitted for presentation but will not be eligible for workshop awards.
Important Dates
Paper Submission
Aug 30th, 2026 Sep 05th, 2026
Notification
Sep 29th, 2026
Camera Ready
Oct 31, 2026
Workshop Date
Dec 11, 2026
Schedule
Full-day workshop at NeurIPS 2026, Dec 11th, Sydney, Australia
Note: The schedule is tentative and subject to change.
Opening Remarks
Welcome and introduction to the workshop
Keynote: Dr. Chang Xu
University of Sydney
Title: TBD
Keynote: Dr. Alexander Toshev
Wayve
Title: TBD
Keynote: Dr. Kashyap Chitta
KESAI
Title: TBD
Coffee Break
Keynote: Dr. Igor Gilitschenski
University of Toronto
Title: TBD
Keynote: Dr. Manling Li
Northwestern University
Title: TBD
Oral Session I
Two selected papers — 10 minutes each
Poster Session I + Lunch
Poster presentations and networking
Keynote: Dr. Azalia Mirhoseini
Stanford, Ricursive Intelligence
Title: TBD
Keynote: Dr. Kaylee Burns
Waymo
Title: TBD
Keynote: Dr. Chuchu Fan
MIT
Title: TBD
Keynote: Dr. Kristen Grauman
UT Austin
Title: TBD
Oral Session II
Two selected papers — 10 minutes each
FireChat: Dr. Vijay Badrinarayanan
Wayve
Awards, Closing Remarks & Group Photo
Best paper award and challenges awards
Poster Session II
Poster presentations and networking
Organizing Committee
Contact Us
Questions or feedback? Feel free to reach out. We would love to hear from you.
Reviewer Self-Nomination
Please complete our Reviewer & Area Chair Self-Nomination form.
Workshop Location
NeurIPS 2026
Sydney, Australia
Exact venue details will be announced closer to the event
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the workshop in-person or virtual?
The workshop will be held in-person at NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney, Australia.
Will the workshop proceedings be archival?
No, the workshop proceedings will be non-archival. Authors of accepted papers retain the full copyright of their work and are free to submit extended versions to conferences or journals.
Can I join the program committee?
Yes! If you are interested in serving as a reviewer or Area Chair for VLM4RWD, please complete our Reviewer & Area Chair Self-Nomination form. We welcome researchers with relevant expertise in vision-language models, multimodal AI, robotics, autonomous systems, and related areas.
I am an author of an accepted paper, but Sydney registration is sold out. Will I still be able to register?
Yes. There will be one reserved registration spot for each accepted paper, allowing one author from every accepted paper to register and attend the workshop in Sydney.
I am a workshop speaker, but Sydney registration is sold out. Will I still be able to register?
Yes. Reserved registration spots will also be available for invited workshop speakers once they are added to the official NeurIPS organizer portal.