Best Paper Award for excellent research at the intersection of computer vision and robotics: AIT researcher Sarah Schneider received the Best Paper Award together with her colleagues at the 6th International Conference on Robotics, Computer Vision and Intelligent Systems (ROBOVIS), which took place in Marbella, Spain, from March 2 to 4, 2026.
Robots that can explain their perception
The award was presented for the paper “Generating Human-Understandable Descriptions of Novel Objects for Verbal Interactions with Edge-Based Robots”, authored by Sarah Schneider, Evan Krause, Marlow Fawn, Doris Antensteiner, Csaba Beleznai, Daniel Soukup, and Matthias Scheutz.
The work addresses a key challenge in modern robotics: How can mobile robots not only recognize unknown objects in open, dynamic environments, but also communicate their perception in a way that is understandable to humans? The approach presented in the paper generates structured, comprehensible verbal descriptions from visual information, thereby supporting human-robot interaction even under limited computational and communication resources. In this way, the research makes an important contribution to transparent, interpretable, and practical robotics.
Women in Robotics and Computer Vision
The award recognizes not only the scientific quality of the work, but also its high relevance for future collaboration between humans and intelligent machines. Especially in mobile robotics, it is becoming increasingly important that systems can communicate their perception and decisions clearly, efficiently, and in a trustworthy manner.
This success is particularly encouraging in terms of the visibility of women in research: Sarah Schneider is the second female PhD student at the AIT Center for Vision, Automation & Control — and her Best Paper Award is a strong sign of the important role women play in robotics and computer vision. Diversity in research teams strengthens scientific excellence, opens up new perspectives, and creates role models for future generations of female researchers in a technologically defining field.
With the Best Paper Award at ROBOVIS 2026, Sarah Schneider has therefore not only achieved an important personal milestone, but also sent a strong signal for innovative, understandable, and inclusive robotics research.
Congratulations on this well-deserved success.