Connectionists: Call for Submissions to the 8th Workshop on Behavior Adaptation, Interaction and Learning for Assistive Robotics (BAILAR) at RO-MAN 2024

Fri Apr 12 05:21:27 EDT 2024

Call for Submissions to the 8th Workshop on Behavior Adaptation, Interaction
and Learning for Assistive Robotics (BAILAR) at RO-MAN 2024

*	Website: https://sites.google.com/view/bailar2024/home
*	Workshop: August 26 2024 (TBC)
*	Location: Pasadena, California (USA) as part of the 33rd
International Conference on Robots & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN
2024) 
*	Manuscript submission site:
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=bailar2024
*	Contact for submissions: mariacarla.staffa at uniparthenope.it
<mailto:mariacarla.staffa at uniparthenope.it>  

THEME 

Originating from its historical roots, the focal points of the BAILAR
Workshop revolve around Behavior Adaptation, Interaction, and Learning for
Assistive Robotics. Over the years, this workshop has delved into various
topics aimed at understanding and adapting robot behavior to suit assistive
scenarios. Particularly, emphasis has been placed on topics pertaining to
Mutual affective understanding and Theory of Mind (ToM) between humans and
robots.

Mutual affective understanding serves as a cornerstone for achieving
successful, acceptable, and intelligent social human-robot interaction
(HRI). This entails embracing novel paradigms in robotic control systems.
These paradigms not only enable robots to interpret human observable
behaviors and internal/emotional states to anticipate and adapt to
subsequent reactions but also aid humans in interpreting and anticipating
the robot's state, intentions, and future actions through legible behavior
designed around the emotional dimension of communication. It is crucial to
equip robots with the capability to comprehend how human partners perceive
the world and the robot itself, thus enabling better understanding and
generation of behaviors comprehensible to humans.

Furthermore, robots should possess the ability to display affective and
social responses in a clear manner for humans, thereby facilitating
acceptability and efficient human-machine communication, especially in the
realm of Socially and Assistive Robotics (SAR), where interactions often
involve disabled or vulnerable individuals. Additionally, robots can
alleviate the workload and physical contact of healthcare specialists,
particularly benefiting situations where elderly or vulnerable individuals
are susceptible to infection. Ensuring positive feelings and acceptance
while providing necessary assistance underscores the significance of
intelligent and empathic socially assistive robots.

In this context, it is imperative to consider the impact of verbal and
non-verbal emotional social cues of the robot on the user's affective state
during interaction. While robots can provide assistance to individuals with
disabilities, their actions must be tailored to individual needs and
expectations to prevent triggering negative emotions, such as stress or
discomfort, which could be counterproductive. Robots could leverage
affect-sensing capabilities to learn and adapt their behavior to better suit
individuals and enhance learnability and acceptability through inclusive
interaction.

The upcoming edition of the BAILAR Workshop aims to explore the mutual
understanding of affective/emotional states between robots and humans,
alongside learning and user adaptation within HRI. Methodologies and
technologies for detecting and adapting to users' mental states, emotions,
and dispositions during HRI will be presented and discussed. Experimental
protocols and results may shed light on potential effects of gender, age,
personality, and pathology on robot perception from an emotional and
affective standpoint, alongside ethical considerations regarding the
acquisition and utilization of personal data within assistive applications.

IMPORTANT DATES

*	Deadline for Paper Submission:  May 20th, 2024
*	Paper Acceptance Notification:  June 12th, 2024
*	Camera Ready Paper:  July 21st, 2024
*	Main Conference Date:  August 26th-310th, 2024
*	Workshop Date:  August the 26th, 2024 (TBC)

Submission Guidelines

We welcome prospective participants to submit either extended abstracts (up
to 4 pages) or full papers (up to 6 pages). Papers can be on research that
the authors would like to discuss during the workshop, especially
encouraging papers on new ideas or research that the authors plan to
conduct.

Selected papers will be invited to submit an extended/revised version of the
papers for a special issue in a recognized international journal.

We strongly encourage workshop participants to present during paper
presentation demos and videos showing their experiments and achievements.
All material collected during the Workshop, such as video, slides, papers,
etc., will be made available on the workshop website upon approval of the
authors.

The manuscripts should conform to the RO-MAN 2024 guidelines:
https://www.ro-man2024.org <http://ro-man2023.org/> 

*	Word template: http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php

*	LaTeX template: http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php

Submissions do not need to be anonymized for review.

All submitted papers will be reviewed by two reviewers. Accepted papers
require that at least one of the authors register to the workshop. The
abstracts of the accepted papers will appear on the workshop website.

*	Authors will be able to submit a PDF copy through EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=bailar202
<https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=bailar2023> 4

List of Topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

*	Online adaptive behavior
*	Acceptability and personalization in HRI
*	User and behavior modeling for adaptation
*	Emotion and intention recognition
*	Multimodal interfaces for emotion recognition
*	Affective and emotional robots
*	Empathy in robotics
*	Mutual affective communication
*	Affective computing in SAR
*	Internal state monitoring
*	Detection of verbal and non-verbal behavioral cues
*	Lifelong (or continual) learning and adaptation methods in HRI
*	Short-term personalization in HRI
*	Incremental and online learning in HRI
*	Robot behavior explainability and legibility
*	Theory of Mind in Robotics
*	Understandable Communication
*	Ethical Aspects of Affective HRI communication and personalization
in SAR
*	Evaluation metrics for adaptive robot behavior   

Committees

Organizing committee

*	Mariacarla Staffa (Coordinator) - University of Naples Parthenope
(Italy)
*	Alessandra Sciutti - IIT (Italy)
*	Silvia Rossi - University of Naples "Federico II" (Italy)

Invited Speakers

*	Prof. Iolanda Leite (Confirmed - online)
*	Prof. Laurel Riek (Confirmed - in presence)

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to
mariacarla.staffa at uniparthenope.it
<mailto:mariacarla.staffa at uniparthenope.it> 

----------------------------------------

Alessandra Sciutti (PhD)

Researcher Tenure Track - P.I. CONTACT Unit

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - Via Enrico Melen 83, Building B 16152
Genova, Italy

email:  <mailto:alessandra.sciutti at iit.it> alessandra.sciutti at iit.it 

website:  <https://www.iit.it/people/alessandra-sciutti>
https://www.iit.it/people/alessandra-sciutti

ERC website:  <https://www.whisperproject.eu/>
https://www.whisperproject.eu/ 

An intro on my research (Video, Eng):  <https://youtu.be/LCkOjR_cvxI>
https://youtu.be/LCkOjR_cvxI  

TEDx talk (Italian):  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=e0eMayWU_lc>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=e0eMayWU_lc 

Our book on Modeling Human Motion:
<https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030467319>
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030467319 

twitter: @alefreedot

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