CALL FOR PAPERS

Child-Robot Interaction @ Interaction Design and Children Conference, 2014

Workshop on Child-Robot Interaction: Social bonding, Learning, and Ethics
http://www.childrobotinteraction.emote-project.eu/

In Cooperation with FP7 EU-project EMOTE

Aarhus, Denmark
17 June, 2014

SCOPE

Children are an especially interesting target group for Human-Robot Interaction research since they are often more willing than adults to interact and engage with robots. Therefore, children are likely to easily form a bond with a robot.  Since research has suggested that when empathy or support is provided (from a human or artificial source) learning is improved, it is a logical step to use robots as teaching aids or companions. However, robots that children bond with and/or learn from are intended to affect individual well-being, and several ethical issues should thus be considered, such as whether robots ought to be made to appear or act humanlike, and whether they should be gendered. Furthermore, parents and teachers are also important stakeholders when it comes to children’s use of robots, either as social or learning companions.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION & FOCUS

Child-Robot Interaction is a half-day workshop integrated in the IDC’2014. The focus of the Workshop comprises three main topics: Bonding, Learning, and Parents’ and Teachers’ perspectives on children’s interactions with robots. Other important topics for the workshop are thus how we can make sure that these robots really increase children’s well-being and how we can take parents’ and teachers’ opinions and attitudes into account when designing and evaluating robots for children.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

• Design and evaluation of robots for children
• How and when children bond to a robot
• Whether children can learn from or with a robot
• Ethical issues related to the design of the robots or the context in which they are used
• Experiences with designing and evaluating robots for such purposes.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission:  April 14, 2014, 23:59 GMT
Authors’ notification:  April 25, 2014
Workshop:  June 17, 2014

Format:  ACM SIGCHI Extended Abstract Format, should not exceed 3 pages.

IMPORTANT

All the participants must register for the Workshop as well as for the Conference.

ORGANISING & PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Wolmet Barendregt, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Ana Paiva, INESC-ID and IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
Arvid Kappas, Jacobs University, Germany
Asimina (Mina) Vasalou, London Knowledge Lab, UK
Carl Health, Interactive Institute Swedish ICT AB, Sweden
Sofia Serholt, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Christina Basedow, Jacobs University, Germany
Patrícia Alves-Oliveira, INESC-ID and IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal