IEEE RO-MAN 06: Themes and Topics

Theme and Topics

Theme: Getting to Know Socially Intelligent Robots

Human-Robot Interaction and Communication is a quickly growing research area at the intersection of research fields such as robotics, engineering, psychology, ethology and cognitive science. Significant initiatives are currently underway funded by public, academic, governmental as well as industrial initiatives, exploring and aiming at advancing this research field and opening up novel and challenging applications. Robots moving out of laboratory and manufacturing environments face hard problems of perception, action and cognition. For robots to be accepted as assistants or companions in people's private homes and everyday environments technological solutions do not suffice: The `human in the loop', as the potential customer and user will decide on the ultimate success of a `home robot' as a product. Application areas that heavily involve human contact are a particularly challenging domain.

Human societies have easily assimilated new technologies, such as mobile phones, but it is less clear in which application areas robots will be accepted. Robots as embodied beings, physical, possibly humanoid or android entities that share our living environments and accompany our lives will have a certain degree of autonomy, initiative, cognitive skills and will communicate and interact with people in ways inspired by human-human contact. Interaction and communication of embodied physical robots with humans is multi-modal, and involves deep issues of social intelligence, communication and interaction that have traditionally been studied primarily in psychology and other areas. The design of a robot's behaviour, appearance, and cognitive and social skills is highly challenging, and requires interdisciplinary collaborations across the traditional boundaries of established disciplines.

IEEE RO-MAN 06 provides a forum for an interdisciplinary exchange for researchers dedicated to advancing knowledge in the field of human-robot interaction and communication. Importantly, RO-MAN has traditionally adopted a broad perspective encompassing research issues of human-machine interaction and communication in networked media as well as virtual and augmented tele-presence environments. Submissions are invited from a variety of research areas that can advance our understanding of human-robot interaction and communication, including areas of engineering and information sciences as well as psychology, social sciences, cognitive science and related areas.

The annual RO-MAN International Workshop series originated in 1992, with the first workshop held at Hosei University in Japan. Since then, different Japanese, European and USA institutions have hosted the workshop. In 2006 IEEE RO-MAN is a symposium and will be hosted in United Kingdom by the Adaptive Systems Research Group at University of Hertfordshire. The event will include tutorials, special organized sessions, and distinguished invited keynote speakers.

Kerstin Dautenhahn (General Chair)

Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

innovative robot designs for HRI research
user-centred design of social robots
novel interfaces and interaction modalities
long-term experience and longitudinal HRI studies
evaluation methods and new methodologies for HRI research
androids
degrees of autonomy and teleoperation
human factors and ergonomics in HRI research
virtual and augmented tele-presence environments
ethical issues in human-robot interaction research
robots in education, therapy and rehabilitation
medical and surgical applications of robots
robot companions and social robots in home environments
assistive robotics for supporting the elderly or people with special needs
applications of social robots in entertainment, service robotics, space travel and~others
anthropomorphic robots and virtual humans
interaction with believable characters
non-verbal cues and expressiveness in interactions: gesture, posture, social spaces and facial expressions
interaction kinesics
monitoring of behaviour and internal states of human subjects
robotic etiquette
social intelligence for robots
social presence for robots and virtual humans
creating relationships with robots and humanoids
personalities for robotic or virtual characters
embodiment, empathy and intersubjectivity in interaction with robotic and virtual characters
motivations and emotions in robots
curiosity, intentionality and initiative in interaction
linguistic communication and dialogue with robots and intelligent interfaces
multimodal interaction and conversational skills
cognitive and sensori-motor development in robots
cognitive skills and mental models for social robots
social learning and skill acquisition via teaching and imitation
programming by demonstration
cooperation and collaboration in human-robot teams
human-robot interaction and collaboration in manufacturing environments
motion planning and navigation in the vicinity of humans
machine learning and adaptation in human-robot interaction
multi-modal situation awareness and spatial cognition
computational architectures for human-robot interaction
detecting and understanding human activity
narrative and story-telling in interaction

Detailed Call for Papers (pdf)