[alife] [IEEE RO-MAN06] First Call for Participation

[Kerstin Dautenhahn]

FIRST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

RO-MAN 06: The 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive 
Communication, 6-8 September 2006, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK

For electronic registration and information about symposium programme, 
accomodation and travel see: http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk/
***30 June 2006: Early Registration Deadline***

Plenary Speakers:
==================

Keynote Speakers:

Prof. Shuji Hashimoto (Waseda University, Japan): "KANSEI Engineering to Open a 
New Epoch of Human-Machine Relationship"

Prof. Illah R Nourbakhsh (Carnegie Mellon University, USA): "A Roadmap for
Technology Literacy and a Vehicle for Getting There: Educational Robotics
and the TeRK Project"

Prof. Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University, UK): "Reconfiguring Human-Robot 
Relations"

Thematic Plenary talks:

Ulf Dahlsten (Director of Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures European 
Commission, Directorate-General Information Society and Media):
"Robotics research at European level"

Prof. Alan Winfield (University of the West of England, Bristol, UK)
"Walking with Robots: a new kind of engagement between robots and people"


Half-day tutorials:
====================

Cognitive Robotics (Lecturers: Kazuhiko Kawamura, Vanderbilt University, USA; 
Will Browne, University of Reading, UK)

Coding Video Data in Human-Robot Social Interaction: Behavior and Reasoning 
(Lecturers: Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Nathan G. Freier, Rachel L. Severson, Cady 
Stanton, University of Washington, USA)

Socio-Emotional Interaction with Virtual Humans (Lecturers: Stacy Marsella and 
Jonathan Gratch, University of Southern California, USA)

Social Interactions with Robot Companions (Lecturers: Britta Wrede, University 
of Bielefeld, Germany; Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire, UK; 
Rachid Alami, LAAS, France)

All conference attendees will receive 30 days free online access to the 
International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems http://www.ars-journal.com/

European Robotics Demonstration event: Including three European Integrated 
Projects: Cogniron, Neurobotics, I-Swarm, part of the European IST "Beyond 
Robotics Proactive" Initiative (http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/fet/ro-sy1.htm)

ROBOT COMPANION DESIGN CONTEST FOR STUDENTS @
RO-MAN 06, Sponsored by: COGNIRON, the IST-FET Integrated Project on "Cognitive 
Robot Companions" (www.cogniron.org). Submit a robot design and you may win a 
prize!

See http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk/
For list of accepted papers and tentative symposium schedule.

Important Dates:
30 June 2006: Early Registration Deadline
15 July 2006: Submission of poster proposals for Robot Design Contest 
(http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk/contest.php)
6-8 September 2006: IEEE RO-MAN 06 Symposium

Registration includes a ticket for the banquet at Hatfield House 
(www.theoldpalace.co.uk)

Topics and Theme:
=================

Human-Robot Interaction and Communication is a quickly growing research area at 
the intersection of research fields such as robotics, engineering, psychology, 
ethology and cognitive science. Significant initiatives are currently underway 
funded by public, academic, governmental as well as industrial initiatives, 
exploring and aiming at advancing this research field and opening up novel and 
challenging applications. Robots moving out of laboratory and manufacturing 
environments face hard problems of perception, action and cognition. For robots 
to be accepted as assistants or companions in people's private homes and 
everyday environments technological solutions do not suffice: The 'human in the 
loop', as the potential customer and user will decide on the ultimate success 
of a 'home robot' as a product. Application areas that heavily involve human 
contact are a particularly challenging domain.

Human societies have easily assimilated new technologies, such as mobile 
phones, but it is less clear in which application areas robots will be 
accepted. Robots as embodied beings, physical, possibly humanoid or android 
entities that share our living environments and accompany our lives will have a 
certain degree of autonomy, initiative, cognitive skills and will communicate 
and interact with people in ways inspired by human-human contact. Interaction 
and communication of embodied physical robots with humans is multi-modal, and 
involves deep issues of social intelligence, communication and interaction that 
have traditionally been studied primarily in psychology and other areas. The 
design of a robot.s behaviour, appearance, and cognitive and social skills is 
highly challenging, and requires interdisciplinary collaborations across the 
traditional boundaries of established disciplines.

IEEE RO-MAN 06 provides a forum for an interdisciplinary exchange for 
researchers dedicated to advancing knowledge in the field of human-robot 
interaction and communication. Importantly, RO-MAN has traditionally adopted a 
broad perspective encompassing research issues of human-machine interaction and 
communication in networked media as well as virtual and augmented tele-presence 
environments. Submissions are invited from a variety of research areas that can 
advance our understanding of human-robot interaction and communication, 
including areas of engineering and information sciences as well as psychology, 
social sciences, cognitive science and related areas.

The annual RO-MAN International Workshop series originated in 1992, with the 
first workshop held at Hosei University in Japan. Since then, different 
Japanese, European and USA institutions have hosted the workshop. In 2006 IEEE 
RO-MAN is a symposium and will be hosted in United Kingdom by the Adaptive 
Systems Research Group at University of Hertfordshire. The event will include 
tutorials, special organized sessions, and distinguished invited keynote 
speakers.

Topics relevant to RO-MAN06:
-innovative robot designs for HRI research
-user-centred design of social robots
-novel interfaces and interaction modalities
-long-term experience and longitudinal HRI studies
-evaluation methods and new methodologies for HRI research
-androids
-degrees of autonomy and teleoperation
-human factors and ergonomics in HRI research
-virtual and augmented tele-presence environments
-ethical issues in human-robot interaction research
-robots in education, therapy and rehabilitation
-medical and surgical applications of robots
-robot companions and social robots in home environments
-assistive robotics for supporting the elderly or people with special needs
-applications of social robots in entertainment, service robotics, space travel 
and others
-anthropomorphic robots and virtual humans
-interaction with believable characters
-non-verbal cues and expressiveness in interactions: gesture, posture,
social spaces and facial expressions
-interaction kinesics
-monitoring of behaviour and internal states of human subjects
-robotic etiquette
-social intelligence for robots
-social presence for robots and virtual humans
-creating relationships with robots and humanoids
-personalities for robotic or virtual characters
-embodiment, empathy and intersubjectivity in interaction with robotic
and virtual characters
-motivations and emotions in robots
-curiosity, intentionality and initiative in interaction
-linguistic communication and dialogue with robots and intelligent interfaces
-multimodal interaction and conversational skills
-cognitive and sensori-motor development in robots
-cognitive skills and mental models for social robots
-social learning and skill acquisition via teaching and imitation
-programming by demonstration
-cooperation and collaboration in human-robot teams
-human-robot interaction and collaboration in manufacturing environments
-motion planning and navigation in the vicinity of humans
-machine learning and adaptation in human-robot interaction
-multi-modal situation awareness and spatial cognition
-computational architectures for human-robot interaction
-detecting and understanding human activity
-narrative and story-telling in interaction


Organizing Committee:

Conference Chair:
Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Programme Chairs:
Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Chrystopher Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Programme Vice Chair:
Ben Robins (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Treasurer:
Bob Guscott (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Student Programme Chair:
Ren te Boekhorst (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Publicity Chairs:
Guido Bugmann (University of Plymouth, UK)
Terry Fong (NASA Ames Research Center, USA)

Local Arrangements Chair:
Bob Guscott (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Publications Chairs:
Lola Caamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
David Lee (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Secretariat:
roman06 at herts.ac.uk

Webmaster:
Sven Magg (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Programme Committee:
Ana Paiva (INESC, Portugal)
Anton Nijholt (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
Aris Alissandrakis (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Aude Billard (EPFL, Switzerland)
Ben J.A. Krse (UvA, The Netherlands)
Ben Robins (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Candy Sidner (MERL, USA)
Catherine Pelachaud (Universit de Paris 8, France)
Cecilia Laschi (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy)
Cristina Conati (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Elisabeth Andr (University of Augsburg, Germany)
Erwin Prassler (B-IT and Fraunhofer Institute, Germany)
Fiorella de Rosis (University of Bari, Italy)
Franois Michaud (University of Sherbrooke, Canada)
Frederic Kaplan (Sony CSL, France)
Gerhard Sagerer (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
Gernot Kronreif (ARCS, Austria)
Giorgio Metta (University of Genova, Italy)
Giulio Sandini (University of Genova, Italy)
Guido Bugmann (University of Plymouth, UK)
Helmut Prendinger (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Henrik I Christensen (KTH, Sweden)
Hideki Kozima (Communications Research Laboratory, Japan)
Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University and ATR, Japan)
Hisato Kobayashi (Hosei University Research Institute, Japan)
Karl F. MacDorman (Indiana University, USA)
Kazuhiko Kawamura (Vanderbilt University, USA)
Kerstin Severinson Eklundh (KTH, Sweden)
Kheng Lee Koay (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Lola Caamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Lynne Hall (University of Sunderland, UK)
Marge Skubic (University of Missouri-Columbia, USA)
Minoru Asada (Osaka University, Japan)
Naoyuki Kubota (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan)
Nilanjan Sarkar (Vanderbilt University, USA)
Oussama Khatib (Stanford University, USA)
Pamela Hinds (Stanford University, USA)
Patrizia Marti (University of Siena, Italy)
Peter Kahn (University of Washington, USA)
Peter Wallis (Sheffield University, UK)
Rachid Alami (LAAS, France)
Reid Simmons (CMU, USA)
Ren te Boekhorst (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Robin R. Murphy (University of South Florida, USA)
Ruth Aylett (Heriot-Watt University,UK)
Sara Kiesler (CMU, USA)
Stacy Marsella (USC-ISI, USA)
Stephen J. Cowley (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Takanori Shibata (AIST, Japan)
Takayuki Kanda (ATR, Japan)
Tatsuya Nomura (Ryukoku University and ATR, Japan)
Terry Fong (NASA Ames Research Center, USA)
Toyoaki Nishida (Kyoto University, Japan)
Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, UK)
Yoshihiro Miyake (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
Z. Zenn Bien (KAIST, Korea)
Zsofi Ruttkay (University of Twente, The Netherlands)

Sponsors:
IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society
IEEE Robotics & Automation Society
The Robotics Society of Japan

In collaboration with:
British HCI Group, International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, Cogniron 
project (www.cogniron.org)

Contact:
Web: http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk
Email: roman06 at herts.ac.uk