The challenge (not) to go wild! Challenges and best practices to study HRI in natural interaction settings

News:

Elizabeth Broadbent, Takayuki Kanda & Jelle Saldien confirmed as invited speakers

DEADLINE EXTENDED until 19th of January

Abstract

Robots are more and more leaving our labs and entering natural interaction settings, such as homes, care facilities, factories, kindergartens, museums, and many more. In the HRI research community, we are aware of all the challenges involved in studying autonomously behaving agents “in the wild”. In order “not to go wild” we want to discuss best practices as well as pitfalls in studying robots in natural interaction settings. Specifically, we want to focus on challenges in the development of systems for everyday usage in peoples’ homes and on challenges in evaluating these systems in the wild, especially with regard to long-term interaction. We want to discuss and explore common and new methodological approaches to study HRI outside the lab, and collect recommendations for fellow researchers. In tandem, we want to reflect our visions for the “new era of socially capable robots” and how we as robot developers and researchers imagine them to integrate into the fabrics of our everyday life.

Format

This is a one-day workshop with invited talks, a poster session, and a moderated break-out session. The workshop starts after an introduction to the overall topic with two 30 min invited talks (one from an industry one from a research perspective). Next, a “lightning round” will follow in which participants are asked to talk for 2 min about the major challenges they have faced in their field work so far. After a coffee break an interactive poster session will be done in which participants should especially point out what did not work instead of focusing on success stories. After the lunch break, the workshop organizers will start with a summary of the challenges and pit falls as an introduction to a break-out session, which will be in two groups: challenges in development and challenges in evaluation. In this session participates should elaborate on ways how to harness the identified challenges and develop recommendations for fellow researchers and developers. After the afternoon coffee break the workshop will close with the results presentation of the break-out session and a moderated reflection on the visions for the “new era of socially capable robots” and how they might integrate into the fabrics of our everyday life.

Schedule (tentative)

09:00 - 09:10 Introduction by Workshop Organizers
09:10 - 10:10 Invited Talks: Challenges in evaluation by Takajuki Kanda & Elizabeth Broadbent
10:10 - 10:30 Lightning Round: Presentation of participants and their major challenges
10:30 - 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 - 12:00 Interactive Poster Session
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch
13:00 - 13:30 Invited Talks: Challenges in development by Jelle Saldien
13:30 - 14:00 Summarized challenges of the submitted papers by the workshop organizers, session grouping, start break out groups
14:00 - 15:00 Break-out sessions in two different groups (challenges development, challenges evaluation)
15:00 - 15:30 Coffee Break
15:30 - 16:30 Presentation of break-out session results & group discussion (What did we learn, what are the next questions to follow)
16:30 - 17:00 Wrap-up