Connectionists: Workshop On Interacting with Robots Through Touch at UC Irvine

[Jeff Krichmar]

Workshop On Interacting with Robots Through Touch at UC Irvine
September 13, 2016
9AM – 6PM
1517 Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway, University of California, Irvine

 Register at: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma/haptics_workshop.html

Robots and autonomous systems are increasingly becoming a part of our everyday life. In particular co-Robots, in which robots have a symbiotic relationship with people, have the potential to increase social well-being and open up new socioeconomic opportunities. For example, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), co-Robotics, and Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) are increasingly being used for entertainment, education, telepresence, rehabilitation and therapy. SARs have the potential to help children with developmental disorders, such as autism or attention deficit disorders. Social robots can act as digital ethnographers by: automatically detecting what robot-generated activities children enjoy most, monitoring development of social structure within the classroom. To date, most of these co-robots focus on eye contact (e.g., shared attention, shared gaze, etc.) and auditory cues (e.g., catch phrases and music), but tend to neglect other sensory systems important for social behavior, such as tactile interaction.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the use of tactile sensing in HRI and SARs. The day will include talks by invited speakers and a poster session. If you are interested in presenting a poster on this topic, send your abstract to: jkrichma at uci.edu

Confirmed Speakers:

Andrea Chiba, University of California, San Diego
Deborah Forster, University of California, San Diego
William Harwin, University of Reading
Guy Hoffman, Cornell University
Jeffrey L. Krichmar, University of California, Irvine
Francis McGlone, Liverpool JM University
David J. Reinkensmeyer, University of California, Irvine
Veronica J. Santos, University of California, Los Angeles
Michael Tolley, University of California, San Diego


Jeff Krichmar
Department of Cognitive Sciences
2328 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
jkrichma at uci.edu
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma