The 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) is celebrating its 30th anniversary in Vancouver this week. Things kick off this morning, with 18 technical tracks all running at the same time. There are over 1,200 papers being presented this year, meaning that we have a packed schedule over the next three days, trying (as we always do) to attend over a hundred talks plus posters and competitions and keynotes and plenaries and forums and the expo even though it's physically impossible to do everything. We'll happily die trying, though, and if there are specific things you're interested in (check out the conference website to see what's going on), leave a comment or ping us at @BotJunkie and @AutomatonBlog on Twitter and we'll do our absolute best for you. This week (and over the next few weeks as well), you can expect posts featuring the best technical papers from IROS, as well as a special Video Friday full of weird and amazing new robots.

Every six months, an enormous posse of top robotics researchers from around the world converge on some moderately exotic location to impress each other with their latest research. Right now, we're at the 2017 edition of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), which is taking place as you read this in Singapore. As always, we're going to do our best to read every single paper and attend every single technical session, even though there are 11 tracks all happening at the same time along with workshops, forums, and an expo. You can expect to see posts this week about what's most novel and interesting from the conference, but (again, as always) there's way too much cool stuff to cram into just one week: We'll continue to post ICRA-related content for the next few weeks, even as we get back to our regular robotics news. And if you're at ICRA, come say hi! I'll be the harassed-looking dude with a big camera frantically running between sessions.