Call for Papers

Child-Robot Interaction: Present and Future Relationships
A Workshop at the 12th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2020)
November 14-16, 2020
Online
Workshop: https://sites.google.com/view/child-robot-interaction/
ICSR: https://sites.psu.edu/icsr2020/

KEY DATES:

Submission Deadline: October 16, 2020 (11:59 pm Anywhere on Earth)
Acceptance Notification: October 23, 2020
Camera-ready Deadline: October 30, 2020

ABSTRACT:

Robots will become more pervasive in society, playing different roles from tutors to physical therapy assistants to playmates, to name a few. The relationship between children and robots starts before the actual interaction. Researchers are faced with the question of when to involve children in this process. Children are cognitively immature, and their perspectives on robots are different from adults. How are children’s perceptions, expectations, and perspectives influencing the field, and how is CRI impacting children’s cognitive development? This half-day workshop aims to bring researchers, practitioners, and pioneers from relevant disciplines to this platform to have in-depth discussions on various aspects of CRI, such as potentials, challenges, and related opportunities to keep children in the loop. In addition, what do experts in the field think about CRI’s future, the impact of growing up with robots, and the effects of this interaction in design and development. This workshop’s primary objective is to establish an interdisciplinary debate and have philosophical discussions about the present and future relationship between children and robots.

The workshop will bring forward and discuss:

• Children’s perceptions and expectations: How do children’s perceptions, perspectives, and involvement affect the design and development of robots?
• Relationship between children and robots: What children expect when robots are integrated into their lives? How do children envision their relationship with robots in the future?
• Impact on children: What are the impacts of robots on children’s cognitive development?
• Ethical concerns: What are the present and future ethical concerns that emerge in CRI?
• Encourage collaborations between the participants beyond the duration of the workshop.
• Disseminate the results from the discussions on a workshop report and editing a special issue.

TOPICS OF INTEREST:

• Experiments involving children and robots
• Challenges of safe child-robot interaction
• Robot designs for child-robot interactions
• Children’s involvement in design and development.
• Children’s perception of the Robot (measuring, evaluating, and interpreting)
• Children’s taking the robot’s perspective (Spatial, Affective, and Cognitive)
• Future relationships with robots
• Children’s expectations for future interactions
• The impact of a robot on children’s cognitive development
• Ethical Concerns

PUBLICATIONS:

All accepted papers will be published on the workshop website during the ICSR 2020 conference.

In addition, authors of selected contributions may be invited to submit full-length papers to be included after independent peer-review in a special issue.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

• Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn, Social And Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory, University of Waterloo
• Professor Takayuki Kanda, Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratory, Kyoto University

SUBMISSIONS:

Please use this EasyChair link for submission:
https://easychair.org/account/signin?l=rlGD0eQNv8KxbtLprH8ZVN#

More information regarding submissions can be found at:
https://sites.google.com/view/child-robot-interaction/submissions?authuser=0

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

• Dr. Shruti Chandra – Social And Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory, University of Waterloo
• Dr. Marta Couto – GAIPS Lab, Instituto Superior Técnico
• Elmira Yadollahi – CHILI & GAIPS Lab, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne & Instituto Superior Técnico

CONTACT:

All questions about submissions should be emailed to the workshop organizers at (child.robot.future@gmail.com)