Call for contributions
New Friends 2015
The 1st international conference on social robots in therapy and education
22-23 October 2015 – Almere, The Netherlands
The application of social robots in therapy and education is an emerging field as these ‘new friends’ become more sophisticated, available and affordable. In recent years there has been an enormous increase of projects in which they are used successfully for groups with special needs, like people with dementia, hospitalized children and children with autism. This increases the demand for expertise from a wide range of disciplines, like psychology, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, AI, robotics and education to meet the technical opportunities with the development of therapeutic and educational practice.
To make this happen, the international and multidisciplinary conference New Friends 2015 brings together researchers, professionals, students from different disciplines of health, social welfare and education and developers in the fields of AI social robotics, ICT and business.
The event features keynotes, oral and poster presentations, product and business demonstrations, competitions and practice oriented workshops, covering:
- practitioners’ perspective of end users’ needs,
- good examples of trials, practice and intervention guidelines, interdisciplinary collaboration,
- technical innovations in robotics,
- related therapeutic or educational developments,
- theoretical studies and empirical research, including related HRI issues,
- related legal, ethical, philosophical and social issues.
The conference is located in the city of Almere, The Netherlands: a new city in ‘reclaimed land’, just outside of Amsterdam. A perfect location, with everything you need in walking distance, Schiphol airport at 30 minutes and Amsterdam Central Station at about 20 minutes.
We invite researchers, practitioners and students from different fields to contribute to this conference with:
- EXTENDED ABSTRACTS, sized two pages. Authors of accepted abstracts will present their work in oral or poster sessions. Moreover, they will be invited to submit FULL PAPERS to be considered for publishing in a special issue of the International Journal of Social Robotics.
- VIDEO’S, two to five minutes length, accompanied by an abstract of one page.
- WORKSHOP PROPOSALS, for one to three hour workshops, aimed at professionals or students and researchers in applied research in this field.
- DEMONSTRATIONS, proposed in a one page abstract.
The conference will also feature competitions. More information on this will be available soon on the conference website.
All submissions will be reviewed using a single-blind review process: authors declare their names and affiliations in the manuscript for the reviewers to see, but reviewers do not know each other’s identities, nor do the authors receive information about who has reviewed their manuscript.
For more details, including templates and submission guidelines, please visit www. newfriends2015.org
IMPORTANT DATES:
- Proposals for workshops: May 20, 2015
- Notification of acceptance for workshops: June1, 2015
- Abstract and video submission: June 1, 2015
- Notification of acceptance for video’s: June 15, 2015
- Notification of acceptance for abstracts: June 18, 2015
- Final submission: September 1, 2015