Accepted Special Sessions

Accepted

Special Sessions

IMPORTANT DATES

PROPOSALS FOR SPECIAL SESSIONS

FULL PAPERS (FOR PROPOSED SPECIAL SESSIONS)

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JANUARY 10 17, 2022

NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: JANUARY 31, 2022

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MARCH 15 MARCH 25, 2022

NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: MAY 30, 2022

CAMERA-READY DEADLINE: JUNE 15, 2022

Title:

Hand-Object Interaction: from Human Demonstrations to Robot Manipulation

Organisers:

Alessandro Carfì*, Fulvio Mastrogiovanni, Diego Faria, Véronique Perdereau, Timothy Patten, Markus Vincze 

E-mail:

alessandro.carfi@dibris.unige.it 

The proposed special session contributes to the growth of the RO-MAN community by addressing the multi-disciplinary theme of learning and performing dexterous robotic interaction with objects, which is essential for interactive communication between humans and envisioned humanoid robots. For robots to live alongside humans, it is vital to know how to interact with objects as well as to observe, understand and potentially mimic those performed by a human demonstrator. Progressing the research, and hence the development of technology, in this direction will contribute to safer robot actions to enhance the sense of trust in humans. The motivation behind this special session is generated from the InDex project that is founded through the CHIST-ERA scheme involving five European universities: Aston University (UK), TU Wien (Austria), University of Tartu (Estonia), Sorbonne Universitè (France) and University of Genoa (Italy). To study human in-hand dexterous manipulation to learn general skills for robotic hands, numerous observations and concepts extend to hand-object interaction and more general to the interaction between the human, environment and robot. It is therefore of the utmost importance to focus research on how humans use their hands to drive the development of novel robot capabilities to deal with highly sophisticated tasks requiring interaction, collaboration and communication with humans in a socially acceptable and safe manner.

https://theengineroom.dibris.unige.it/index.php/hobi-ro-man-special-session/

Title:

Short- and Long-Term Personalisation in Human-Robot Interaction

Organisers:

Antonio Andriella*, Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie, Bahar Irfan, Alessandro Di Nuovo, Silvia Rossi

E-mail:

aandriella@iri.upc.edu

The ability of robots to deliver tailored, socially mediated interventions is a key enabling technology for developing the new generation of personal robots.  Personalisation has been demonstrated to offer many benefits for short- and long-term interactions in several real-world scenarios, such as eliciting and improving engagement, increasing trust, improving the adherence to the interaction, and finally improving task performance. However, in order to have such technology, we need systems to have specific perceptual and reasoning capabilities that would enable them to adapt to different environments and humans.  This special session aims at bringing together perspectives from a variety of research areas, including companion robots, elderly care, and educational robots, in order to share and discuss approaches and best practices that address the challenges of personalisation in short- and long-term human-robot interaction.

Title:

Theory of Mind for social HRI 

Organisers:

Alessandra Rossi*, Patrick Holthaus, Shruti Chandra

E-mail:

alessandra.rossi@unina.it

The ability of understanding and acknowledging others’ mental states is known as Theory of Mind (ToM). Theory of Mind is a multi-modal system used by people to naturally communicate and understand each other. A growing group of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research focuses on investigating whether people form ToM towards robots, and what level of ToM a robot should have to communicate transparently with the humans in their shared environment in a sociable and accepted way. In this session, we want to probe deeper in the principal lines that can contribute towards this research direction. In particular, we aim to define and explore the needed level of shared mental models between people and robots for effectively planning, navigating, manipulating objects and the environment, and transparently communicating.

Title:

Social Human-Robot Interaction of Human-care Service Robots 

Organisers:

Ho Seok Ahn*, Minsu Jang, Jongsuk Choi, Dong-Wook Lee, Jaehong Kim, Yoonseob Lim

E-mail:

hs.ahn@auckland.ac.nz 

Service robots with social intelligence are starting to be integrated into our everyday lives. The robots are intended to help improve aspects of quality of life as well as improve efficiency. We are organizing an exciting special session at RO-MAN 2022 that is oriented towards sharing the ideas amongst participants with diverse backgrounds ranging from Human-Robot Interaction design, social intelligence, decision making, social psychology and aspects and robotic social skills. The purpose of this special session is to explore how social robots can interact with humans socially and facilitate the integration of social robots into our daily lives. This special session focuses on three social aspects of human-robot interaction: (1) technical implementation of social robots and products, (2) form, function and behavior, and (3) human behavior and expectations as a means to understand the social aspects of interacting with these robots and products. 

Title:

Mental Models of the Human User in Social HRI

Organisers:

Mariacarla Staffa, Maryam Alimardani*, Salvatore Maria Anzalone

E-mail:

M.Alimardani@tilburguniversity.edu 

Mental models are defined as the cognitive processes and representations that an individual engages in when experiencing the external world. Understanding user’s cognitive and affective states is crucial for the design of social robots as they are expected to function autonomously in real- world environments. This special session will bring together theories and practices that advance social cognition and user awareness in HRI to enrich the mutual understanding between humans and the robots. The topic will be approached from a multidisciplinary perspective by inviting speakers with various expertise including but not limited to human-agent interaction, social and assistive robotics, cognitive and behavioral sciences, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.

Title:

Safe Human-robot Cooperation and Collaboration in manufacturing environments 

Organisers:

Mohamad Bdiwi, Marco Faroni, Andrea Orlandini*, Georgios Papadopoulos, Dirk Wollherr

E-mail:

andrea.orlandini@istc.cnr.it

The purpose of this special session is to explore how cooperation and collaboration among humans and robots can work in a safe and acceptable way fostering their integration. The special session will focus on any application area with a specific attention to industrial scenarios, one of the most promising application areas for collaborative robots (or cobots). The contribution should present solution to robustly address current challenges in manufacturing (e.g. to handle fine-grained, customizable, flexible, sophisticated and sensitive tasks, to combine human capabilities with the efficiency and precision of machines, etc.), to realize safe human-robot interaction, collaboration and communication capabilities. This special session will focus on critical challenges for cobots that remain to be addressed in order to enable their effective and sustainable deployment in real-world operational settings, including, among others, the following main aspects: a) Safe interaction, including safety standards and collaborative operating modes, respecting and predicting the human co-worker’s space, b) Intuitive interfaces, including programming approaches, input modes and reality enhancement, and c) Design methods, including task planning and allocation, control laws and sensors. Addressing the latter constitutes a prerequisite for reaching successful Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) schemes, which will in turn provide a promising way to achieve increases in productivity while decreasing production costs, based on the combination of the human ability to judge, react and plan with the repeatability and strength of a robot.

Title:

Nonverbal Communication Skills in Humans and Robots 

Organisers:

Oya Celiktutan, Nguyen Tan Viet Tuyen*, Marine Chamoux, Alexandra Georgescu, Mutlu Cukurova, Pierre Lison, Ho Seok Ahn

E-mail:

tan_viet_tuyen.nguyen@kcl.ac.uk

We are approaching a future where social robots will progressively become widespread in many aspects of our daily lives, including education, healthcare, work, and personal use. All such practical applications require that humans and robots collaborate in human environments, where social interaction is unavoidable. Along with verbal communication, successful social interaction is closely coupled with nonverbal communication. Humans perform nonverbal communication in an instinctive and adaptive way, with no effort. For robots to be successful in our social landscape, they should therefore engage in social interactions in a human-like manner, with increasing levels of autonomy. Understanding human-human interaction is therefore the most natural guide to designing human-robot interaction interfaces that can be usable and understandable by everyone. The key aim of this special session is to bring forth efforts to understand mechanisms underlying human-human nonverbal communication and introduce novel approaches to the design, development, and evaluation of robotic platforms inspired and driven by those mechanisms. This special session will bring together researchers with diverse backgrounds, ranging from social psychology, cognitive science, machine learning, computer vision, and human-robot interaction, to share innovative ideas, findings, and challenges related to nonverbal communication skills in humans and robots. The special session will foster multidisciplinary discussions among academic and industrial researchers towards improving robots’ nonverbal communication skills and enhancing human trust and acceptance of robots.

AUTHORS SHOULD ADHERE TO THE FOLLOWING STEPS FOR SUBMITTING THE PAPER (FOR CAMERA READY SUBMISSION) :