Call for Papers:

1st workshop on BEAR: Benefits of pErsonalization and behAvioral adaptation in assistive Robots
At the 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2025)
Eindhoven, The Netherlands [and online]

BEAR Workshop:
August 28 (tentative)
https://bear-workshop.github.io/website/

RO-MAN 2025:
August 25-29, 2025
https://www.ro-man2025.org/

Deadline for submissions: May 30, 2025

We are delighted to invite you to submit your papers to the 1st workshop on BEAR: Benefits of pErsonalization and behAvioral adaptation in assistive Robots), which will be held at the 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2025), in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in August 2025.

With rapid technological advancements and pressing societal challenges—such as demographic shifts, a shortage of medical professionals, and increasing care demands—our future is undeniably heading toward a hybrid reality where humans and social robots coexist and collaborate across diverse domains. Particularly in healthcare and assistive contexts, social robots are being adopted to support vulnerable populations including older adults, individuals with chronic illnesses, and children with developmental disabilities. These robotic systems promise to augment human capabilities, enhance efficiency, and improve quality of life by offering personalised, continuous, and adaptive assistance tailored to individual needs, habits, and preferences.

However, the realisation of meaningful and effective human-robot interaction (HRI) requires a nuanced understanding of human behaviour, cultural dynamics, and context-sensitive requirements. Personalisation emerges as a crucial strategy in this pursuit, enabling robots to adapt socially and cognitively to the people they assist. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics—particularly the integration of Large Language Models and cognitive architectures—are facilitating the design of socially intelligent robots capable of emotional communication, mutual affective understanding, and shared mental models that foster trust and long-term collaboration.

Yet, these benefits come with considerable risks. Personalisation may undermine user autonomy by fostering overdependence, diminishing self-sufficiency, or reducing opportunities for personal growth. It risks narrowing users’ worldviews through over-customisation that limits exposure to new ideas, behaviours, or possibilities. Furthermore, as personalisation systems increasingly rely on user data, ethical concerns around privacy, transparency, and trust become paramount. Misaligned or biased personalisation mechanisms could exclude or disadvantage certain groups, threatening inclusivity and equity in human-robot interactions. To realise the potential of a hybrid human-robot future, it is essential to strike a balance that optimises personalisation without compromising user autonomy, diversity, and privacy. Personalisation must respect user agency, encourage exploration beyond comfort zones, and foster equitable and inclusive interactions while safeguarding ethical principles. This requires carefully considering how personalisation is implemented and ensuring its benefits are maximised while potential risks are mitigated.

CONTRIBUTING WORKSHOPS

This workshop is the result of blending together three workshops that tackled personalisation from various perspectives: Weighing the benefits of Autonomous Robot persoNalisation (WARN), sociAL roboTs for peRsonalized, continUous and adaptIve aSsisTance (ALTRUIST) and Behavior Adaptation and Learning for Assistive Robotics (BAILAR). The BEAR workshop aims to critically examine these intersecting dimensions—technical, ethical, and social—by bringing together experts across disciplines. Through Oxford-style debates, interactive brainstorming sessions, and three keynote speakers, participants will explore key questions around the impact of personalisation on user experience and acceptance, the challenges of designing socially intelligent robots, the role of AI in fostering Theory of Mind and empathy in robots, and the long-term implications of deploying such technologies in healthcare and assistive settings. Ultimately, the goal is to advance a multidisciplinary conversation that aligns with the broader interests of the HRI community and contributes to the development of equitable, trustworthy, and effective personalised human-robot interactions.

LIST OF TOPICS

The workshop includes the topics:

• Personalisation in short and long-term HRI;
• User modelling in HRI;
• Robot’s personality;
• Context and situation awareness for robots;
• Engagement evaluation and re-engagement strategies;
• Personalised dialogue with robots;
• Personalised non-verbal behaviour with robots;
• Adaptive human-aware task planning;
• Theory of Mind for adaptive interaction;
• Machine Learning for robotic personalisation;
• Lifelong (continual) learning for adaptation;
• Adaptation in multimodal interaction;
• Affective and emotion-adapted HRI;
• Persuasion in HRI;
• Culture-aware robots;
• Evaluation metrics for adaptive robotic behaviour;
• Ethical implications of personalisation;
• Robot customisation and teaching.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We welcome prospective participants to submit extended abstracts, short, long papers that will be included in the CEUR-WS proceedings of the workshop. Papers must be submitted as PDF and formatted as follows:

• Extended abstracts: up to 4 pages formatted as LNCS one-column paper (no bibliographic references are expected)
• Short papers: minimum 5 max 9 pages (references included) formatted as LNCS one-column paper
• Long papers: minimum 10 pages formatted as LNCS one-column paper

Submitted papers should comply with CEURART style. We have prepared Latex and MS Word templates files for the BEAR Workshop that can be downloaded from this link. Please refer to the official instructions on the CEUR-WS webpage for further details.

Contributions can be submitted through the EasyChair platform.

Accepted contributions will be invited to submit an extended version of their paper to a Special Issue in an international journal.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Paper submission deadline: MAY 30th 2025 (23:59 AOE)
• Notification of Acceptance: July 15th, 2025
• Camera-ready submission deadline: August 1st, 2025

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (MAIN ORGANIZERS)

• Antonio Andriella, Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, aandriella@iri.upc.edu
• Francesca Fracasso, National Research Council of Italy, francesca.fracasso@istc.cnr.it
• Luca Raggioli, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, luca.raggioli@unina.it