Connectionists: Call for abstracts - IROS 2021 workshop "Human-like Behavior and Cognition in Robots”

[marwen Belkaid]

*Call for Contributions*

Human-like Behavior and Cognition in Robots

Workshop at IROS 2021 – October 1st, 2021

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/hbcr-workshop-2021


***Workshop objectives***

Building robots capable of behaving in a human-like manner is a 
long-term goal in robotics. It is becoming even more crucial with the 
growing number of applications in which robots are brought closer to 
humans, not only trained experts, but also inexperienced users, 
children, the elderly, or clinical populations.

Current research from different disciplines contributes to this general 
endeavor in various ways:

  *

    by creating robots that mimic specific aspects of human behavior,

  *

    by designing brain-inspired cognitive architectures for robots,

  *

    by implementing embodied neural models driving robots’ behavior,

  *

    by reproducing human motion dynamics on robots,

  *

    by investigating how humans perceive and interact with robots,
    dependent on the degree of the robots’ human-likeness.

This workshop aims to bring together scholars from the areas of research 
that are involved in such endeavor (e.g., robotics, artificial 
intelligence, human-robot interaction, computational modeling of human 
cognition and behavior, psychology, cognitive neuroscience). It is 
conceived as a forum to encourage discussions about recent advances and 
future challenges related to the following questions:

  *

    How to design robots with human-like behavior and cognition?

  *

    What are the best methods for examining human-like behavior and
    cognition?

  *

    What are the best approaches for implementing human-like behavior
    and cognition in robots?

  *

    How to manipulate, control and measure robots’ degree of human-likeness?

  *

    Is autonomy a prerequisite for human-likeness?

  *

    How to best measure human reception of human-likeness of robots?

  *

    What is the link between perceived human-likeness and social
    attunement in human-robot interaction?

  *

    How can such human-like robots inform and enable human-centered
    research?

  *

    How can modeling human-like behavior in robots inform us about human
    cognition?

  *

    In what contexts and applications do we need human-like behavior or
    cognition? And in what contexts it is not necessary?


*Workshop format *

Like the main IROS 2021 conference, the HBCR workshop will be held fully 
online. The event will include the following:

 1.

    Invited and contributed talks: pre-recorded videos with Q&A Slack

 2.

    Panel discussion: 2-hour live session on the IROS 2021 platform

 3.

    Open discussion: 2-hour informal social session on Zoom


*Organizers*

  *

    Marwen Belkaid (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy)

  *

    Giorgio Metta (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy)

  *

    Tony Prescott (Univ. of Sheffield, United Kingdom)

  *

    Agnieszka Wykowska (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy)


*Invited Speakers***

  *

    Aude Billard (École Polytech. Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

  *

    Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)

  *

    Serena Ivaldi (Inria, France)

  *

    Mehdi Khamassi (Sorbonne Université-CNRS, France)

  * Ana Paiva (Univ. de Lisboa, Portugal)
  *

    Tony Prescott (Univ. of Sheffield, United Kingdom)

  *

    Agnieszka Wykowska / Marwen Belkaid (Istituto Italiano di
    Tecnologia, Italy)


*Call for contributions*

We invite participants to submit extended abstracts about their research 
related to the topics of the workshop. We welcome submissions about 
novel results, work in progress, literature review, 
perspectives/opinions. The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum 
for interdisciplinary discussion and a unique opportunity for a fruitful 
and in-depth exchange of ideas between early-career and advanced-career 
researchers.

Submitted abstracts must follow the IROS template 
<https://www.iros2021.org/call-for-papers> (1 page max., approx. 300-600 
words, including references). Submissions should be sent to: 
marwen.belkaid at iit.it <mailto:marwen.belkaid at iit.it>

Among the accepted submissions, 3 best contributions will be awarded 
with the Springer-sponsored award. The award consists of:

 1.

    1-year free access to the International Journal of Social Robotics
    (IJSR), Springer,

 2.

    book prize in the form of a 150 € voucher that the recipient will be
    able to use to receive the book(s) of their choice in the broad
    selection of books from the publisher.

In addition, all authors of accepted contributions will be invited to 
submit an extended version of their abstracts to the Special issue that 
we are organizing in the International Journal of Social Robotics. 
Acceptance of extended abstracts to the workshop is a prerequisite, but 
does not guarantee acceptance for publication in the Special issue.


*Important dates*

  *

    Deadline for abstract submission: 25 June 2021

  *

    Decision notification for abstracts: 15 August 2021

  *

    Workshop: 1 October 2021

  *

    Deadline for Special issue submission: 15 November 2021

  *

    Decision notification for Special issue (tentative): 5 January 2022


-- 
Dr Marwen BELKAID
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Center for Human Technologies
Via Enrico Melen, 83
16152 Genoa, Italy

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