Call for Papers for Special Issue on “Haptics in HRI: Cooperation and Communication” in Journal of Human-Robot Interaction
SCOPE
Coming generations of robots will share physical space with humans, engaging in contact interactions (physical Human Robot Interaction, or pHRI) as they carry out cooperative tasks. This special issue turns a spotlight on the specific roles that crafted haptic interaction (tactile and proproceptive) can play in cooperation and communication between a human and a robotic partner, from the viewpoints of human needs, capabilities and expectations and of engineering implementation. Physical interaction brings specific challenges to many aspects of robot development and evaluation. Relative to non-contact robots, these require demanding hardware technologies that can meet high safety requirements, built-in adaptability to comply with unpredictable human behavior, embodied intelligence with distributed sensing and active perception capabilities, intuitive programmability of nonrepetitive movement that will nevertheless be predictable and unthreatening to the user, and crafting of a physical language of communication. However, recent developments in sensing, actuation, microprocessors and robot control platforms and standards are making many of these issues more manageable. Robots are already showing up in health, automation and home-based assistance, and physical contact is going to be a relevant and often crucial part of these scenarios. The goal of this issue is to compile a snapshot of where we stand technologically as this movement gains traction, and provide a vision for where the touch modality can provide a powerful convergence with HRI applications for the purpose of communication and cooperation. We welcome your submissions.
TOPICS OF INTEREST
Papers will include technology and/or interactive or experimental developments and requirements. It is essential that papers emphasize the relevance of both humans and the haptic modality in the HRI, in the role of enhancing cooperation and communication. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Haptic-mediated human-robot cooperation
- Functional social signaling (e.g. task progression, turntaking, disturbance handling, etc)
- Communication of affect and emotion through haptics
- Interplay of haptic communication with other sensory and display modalities
- Inference of user parameters or state via human contact, e.g. in support of intelligent interaction, and of fusing information from other modalities
- Coordination of, and/or compliance control in, cooperative, shared-force tasks
- Novel interaction Paradigms
- Technological and social approaches for safe pHRI, actual and perceived
- Pioneering applications utilizing physical user interaction in robotics
- Evaluative methodology in support of any of the above.
Papers must contain high-quality original contributions and be prepared in accordance with the Journal of Human Robot Interaction standards. Submitted manuscripts must not have been published or be under review for possible publication. All papers will be reviewed in a single-blind procedure.
IMPORTANT DATES
- November 7, 2013 – Submission deadline (was: Aug 6, 2013)
- January 30, 2014 – Author notification of initial reviews
- February 27, 2014 – Revised submission deadline
- March 27, 2014 – Notification of final reviews
- April 4, 2014 – Final camera-ready submission deadline
- May 22, 2014 – Online publication
GUEST EDITORS
Karon E. MacLean, University of British Columbia, maclean@cs.ubc.ca
Antonio Frisoli, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, a.frisoli@sssup.it
For further information or specific request, please feel free to contact guest editors by e-mail.
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
JHRI is a completely open access (OA) journal, supporting unrestricted access to research information on the Web and open commentary from the community on published papers.
- Submissions will be accepted online: http://humanrobotinteraction.org/journal
- Paper will be reviewed in a single-blind manner. Please include authors’ names and affiliations.