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Events

Haru Fest 2024
May
8
to May 10

Haru Fest 2024

  • WITH Harajuku Hall, Tokyo, Japan (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

We are excited to announce the return of everyone’s beloved social robot, Haru, to Tokyo for the second edition of Haru Fest, taking place from May 8-10, 2024. Building on the success of Haru Fest 2022], which drew the participation of over 100 academics, engineers, and writers from across the globe, this year’s event is poised to be even more inclusive and entertaining.

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ICRA 2023 Workshop: Towards a Balanced Cyberphysical Society: A Focus on Group Social Dynamics
May
29
9:00 AM09:00

ICRA 2023 Workshop: Towards a Balanced Cyberphysical Society: A Focus on Group Social Dynamics

The advancement in technology and robot functionalities have brought significant successes in robotics. In recent years, we have witnessed a slew of household robots introduced to the market, be it in the form of an embodied personal assistant or a service robot. The adoption of robots in the home will continue as humans are getting comfortable having them around. Human-robot interaction and social robotics have so far commonly focused on attracting people to interact with robots directly and measuring engagement with the robot as a main aspect of interaction success. But this is not always the case, as robots can also be used as mediators and instigators of interaction among people, rather than replacing them in the interaction. With this in mind, we aim to explore how robots can assist people in interacting more with each other in a society in which robots and humans co-exist.

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Haru Fest 2022: A Gathering of the Tribes!
Oct
29
to Oct 30

Haru Fest 2022: A Gathering of the Tribes!

Haru Fest 2022

Recently Tokyo played host to the inaugural Haru Fest 2022! Attended by over 100 academics, engineers, and writers from around the world, Haru Fest was an opportunity not only to celebrate the social robots of Honda Research Institute Japan’s, but also for the academics and professionals who designed Haru to share their work and discuss the future of social robots.

Haru Fest’s theme was empathy, integration, and diversity, and it focused on issues in empathy, bond and trust with social robots and their integration into society. It took place over 2 days jam-packed with inspiring invited talks, insightful panel sessions, and informative flash talks featuring visionaries from industry and academia.

Last but not least, Haru Fest featured awe-inspiring demonstrations of capabilities from both Honda’s pioneering social robot, ASIMO, and from Haru itself. Attendees left feeling knowledgeable about, connected to, and optimistic about Haru’s social robotics community.

Promo video

HaruFest 2022 Promo video

Photos

Proceedings

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Exploring the Roles of Robots for Embodied Mediation
May
23
8:30 AM08:30

Exploring the Roles of Robots for Embodied Mediation

As technology increasingly permeates our lives and demands more and more attention, it alters the very foundation of how we form and maintain our relationships with others. For example, robots and other embodied agents may attract social attention away from others as they are often particularly compelling to interact with. To envision technology that connects us, and enriches rather than disrupts our social lives, this workshop aims to develop the concept of embodied mediation -- agents and devices that serve as a catalysts for social connection across genders, cultures and age groups. The workshop comprises of two distinct but closely interconnected parts to achieve maximum output and engagement for all participants. An informative part provides participants with relevant knowledge through keynote presentations on state-of-the-art in embodied mediation and interactive presentation from contributors. This is complemented by a creative design thinking part that is facilitated by experts to shape future use case scenarios for embodied meditation and encourage active contribution of all participants.

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Call For Papers - HRI 2020 Workshop on Exploring Creative Content in Social Robotics
Mar
23
9:00 AM09:00

Call For Papers - HRI 2020 Workshop on Exploring Creative Content in Social Robotics

In recent years, social robotics has generated a variety of product concepts and several robots started being sold on the consumer market. Still, questions regarding the long-term adoption and commercial prospects of social robots alongside other IoT and smart technologies linger. This workshop seeks to discuss how to address challenges to the broader consumer-oriented development of social robots by finding meaningful ways to use the rich modalities unique to social robots in creative content creation.

We invite you to submit short papers describing work in progress or containing preliminary results to discuss with the community. Submissions may include but are not limited to the following topics:

·      Robots in Education, Entertainment and Healthcare

·      Art in Human Robot Interaction

·      Designing Expressive Actuation and Contents for Robots

·      Multimedia Contents for Robotics

·      Social Robots in Social Media

·      Game AI in Social Robotics

·      Human-Robot Collaboration

·      Timing and Synchronization of Expressive Contents for Social Robots  

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HRI 2019 Workshop on Expressivity for Sustained Human-Robot Interaction
Mar
11
9:00 AM09:00
Workshops

HRI 2019 Workshop on Expressivity for Sustained Human-Robot Interaction

Expressivity is a core component of human social Interactions. With the use of multiple, non-verbal, modalities to convey or augment the communication of internal states and intentions humans achieve sustained, meaningful and effective social interactions.

With the advent of social robotics, studying expressivity in contexts of artificial agents has become a highly relevant topic, leading to explicit considerations of how robots can leverage these abilities in sustained and repeated social interactions.

This workshop provides a unique and timely forum for scientists, designers and practitioners from diverse disciplines to come together and advance the state of the art in developing expressive robots for long-term interaction.

Research on this is diverse, and covers aspects such as animation, robot design, mechanics, as well as cognitive science, developmental psychology, and cross-cultural studies with robots.

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Consortium Exhibition Booth at IROS
Oct
1
to Oct 5
Booth, Conference

Consortium Exhibition Booth at IROS

  • Palacio Municipal de Congresos de Madrid (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

The 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2018) is the flagship conference in the field of robotics and the biggest international event for researchers, companies and end-users. It will be held in Madrid, Spain, during October 1-5, 2018. The conference venue is the modern Madrid Municipal Conference Centre, conveniently located in the Campo de Las Naciones business area.

( event description text source, © 2018 by IROS 2018 )

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Seville Workshop
Sep
27
to Sep 29
Workshops

Seville Workshop

  • Pablo de Olavide University (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Seville Workshop

First consortium workshop to be held in the sidelines of IROS 2018. In this meeting, the group will discussions about information dissemination, planning, etc.

Location: Sala de Grados, CEI-Cambio, Universidad Pablo de Olavide.

Directions: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Bsg1TS0jrfTgq0Kp0X8jiVwSjNtJDBY9&usp=sharing

How to arrive to UPO

 

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ICRA 2018 Workshop
May
21
8:30 AM08:30

ICRA 2018 Workshop

  • The Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Venue (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

The vision of the personal robot has generally been shaped by human perceptions of robots through media and animation. The movie industry has produced animated robot movies for generation across genres with great successes while the advancement in AI is narrowing the gap between fiction and reality.

To animate, and the related words, animation, animated and animator all derive from the Latin verb, animare, which means ‘to give life to'. In the context of robotics, this involves the design and programming of attributes in order to create the illusion of life. Anthropomorphism, the suspension of disbelief, aesthetics, observation, storytelling, performance, articulation of personality through movement and gesture, and the physiological and psychological nature of character are all aspects of animation that animators deal with on a daily basis.  In the meantime,  researchers have been working relentlessly in the pursuit of bringing human-like capabilities to machines through AI.

In this workshop we would like to explore the principals and practice of animators drawing in from their experience that delivered us robot characters we come to love and adore. Their skills together with the techniques of robotics can contribute immensely in giving ‘the illusion of life’ to personal robots and assist in enhancing human-robot interaction experience.

Click here for more information

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Humanoids 2017
Nov
15
to Nov 17

Humanoids 2017

Creating Meaning With Robot Assistants: The Gap Left by Smart Devices

An Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA) such as a smartphone or that tiny smart device that sits on the table reacting to voice command is a basic form of a shared activity between human and an agent. The very warm reception of IPAs into the household is a clear manifestation of human’s interest in collaborating with a digital companion on a shared activity, even with such limited functionality.

The phenomenal success of IPAs shows potential for robot assistants. After all, people have long desired for robot assistants even when the technology was not ready yet. Robots, with their ability to interact with the physical world, have more capabilities than IPAs, thus they can push further the value of a shared activity. However, when it comes to robot assistants, human expectation sets the bar high. Designing them merely as extension to IPAs requires a well-considered adaptation of their physical appearance, e.g., human-like form factor and their cognitive capabilities not to raise expectations from the user which cannot be met. On the other hand, treating the role of the robot assistant like any specialized service robot with interaction-limited personality (e.g. Roomba) puts it in the same category as our appliances. Robot assistants copying the mobility-limited focus of IPAs would be a waste of the emotional potential provided by their agility. Of equal importance as the objective completion of shared activity, robot assistants should enhance meaningful cooperation. For humans to embrace robot assistants, in a household crowded by smart devices and service robots, robot assistants need to at least meet human expectations.

This multidisciplinary workshop will gather researchers, engineers and designers on the crossroad of finding a niche for robot assistants to be relevant. In particular, we want to discuss the design of robot assistants that deliver more added values or features in its assistive task, cultivating trust and comfort that ultimately increases human appreciation of the robot assistant as both engage in a shared activity. Paper contributions with either experimental or theoretical focus are welcome. Moreover, preliminary results and experiments or applications with compelling use cases in the realm of robot assistants are encouraged.


Click here for more information

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