Call for Submissions to the 4th Workshop on Adaptive Social Interaction  based on user’s Mental mOdels and behaVior in HRI (ASIMOV)

• Website: https://sites.google.com/view/asimov-2024
• Workshop: October 23 2024 
• Location: Odense Denmark. Held in conjunction with the 16th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR-2024)
• Manuscript submission site: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=asimov2024
• Contact for submissions: mariacarla.staffa@uniparthenope.it

AIM AND SCOPE 

The ability to understand and adapt to people’s mental models is a key objective for enabling natural, efficient, and successful human-robot interaction (HRI), in particular in human-centered scenarios where robots are expected to meet people’s social conventions. Theory of mind and mental models are largely investigated in human-computer interactions, however, it is still unclear what level of others’ mental states a robot should be aware of in order to communicate with people in a transparent and socially acceptable way. The ASIMOV workshop will constitute a unique opportunity to gather roboticists and computer scientists to discuss a variety of current and new approaches aiming at endowing social robots with learning abilities, enhancing cognitive and social abilities based on mutual understanding (i.e. shared Theory of Mind).

Despite the promise of social robots in various domains, users often remain cautious about employing them due to ethical, psychological, and safety concerns. Addressing these acceptability challenges requires considering users' psychological and behavioral in the design of social interaction. Therefore, endowing robots with learning and online adaptation abilities is essential for improving human-robot interaction (HRI), especially in assistive, rehabilitation, and educational contexts.  Understanding and adapting to users' mental states can help address mismatches between expectations from the robots and their actual capabilities, thereby enhancing interaction efficiency. Such mismatches can lead to ambiguous perceptions and misinterpretations of robot actions, negatively impacting interactions. Recent research shows that robots' acceptability increases when they can understand and meet people's expectations during HRI. By equipping robots with basic socio-cognitive skills, they can convey contextually appropriate affective and social signals in an intelligent and readable way From the mutual comprehension of mental states, an effective HRI can emerge, suspending the disbelief of human partners, and allowing trust, partnership, and acceptability.  

This workshop aims to unite theories and practices that enhance social cognition and user awareness in HRI, particularly for socially assistive robots in education, entertainment, and healthcare, where user acceptability is critical. Topics will be explored from a multidisciplinary perspective, inviting experts in human-agent interaction, social robotics, cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. Special focus will be given to the state-of-the-art user modeling methods assessing overt (e.g., behavior and speech) and covert information (e.g., cognitive states and emotional reactions) using tools like motion capture, eye-tracking, and biosignals.

We aim to bring together a diverse audience from the fields of social and assistive robotics, cognitive and behavioral robotics, and HRI. The workshop will serve as a platform for exchanging ideas, discussing innovative concepts, and addressing unresolved issues in ongoing research. We encourage the participation of PhD students and young researchers working on user modeling, HRI and control interfaces, machine learning, and ethical aspects of human-machine interaction, among others.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Deadline for Paper Submission:  October 9th, 2024
• Paper Acceptance Notification:  October 16st, 2024
• Camera Ready Paper: October 20th , 2024
• Main Conference Date:  October 23th–26th, 2024
• Workshop Date:  October the 23th, 2024

Submission Guidelines

We welcome prospective participants to submit either full papers (up to 6 pages) or extended abstracts (up to 2 pages). 

Papers can be on research that the authors would like to discuss during the workshop, especially encouraging papers on new ideas or research that the authors plan to conduct.Possible topics of the submissions will cover a wide view of the state of the art. Workshop papers must clearly indicate that they are part of ASIMOV workshop.

All material collected during the Workshop: video, slides, papers, etc. upon approval of the authors, will be made available on the workshop website. 

Selected papers will be invited to submit an extended/revised version of the papers for a special issue in a recognized international journal. We will propose to either the International Journal of Social Robotics or Paladyn Journal of Behavioural Robotics or Journal of Healthcare Engineering or IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics.

It is highly recommended to use the Springer LNCS/LNAI style for the layout. Detailed instructions for paper submission are available on the conference website (https://icsr2024.dk/index.php/papersubmission/). LNCS style templates are available on the Springer LNCS website. 

Submissions do not need to be anonymized for review.

All submitted papers will be reviewed by two reviewers. Accepted papers require that at least one of the authors register to the workshop. The abstracts of the accepted papers will appear on the workshop website.

• Authors will be able to submit a PDF copy through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=asimov2024

List of Topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Mental models in HRI
• Human-aware perception-action loop
• Emotion and intention recognition
• Affective and cognitive sciences for socially interactive robots 
• Empathy and Theory of Mind in Robotics- Mutual affective understanding
• Real-time monitoring of behavior and mental states
• Detection of non-verbal behavioral cues
• Online adaptive behavior
• Multimodality in human-robot interaction
• Acceptability and personalization
• Physiological monitoring and biofeedback systems
• BCI (brain-computer interfaces)-enabled adaptive interaction
• Short- and Long-term personalization
• Human partnership and trust in HRI
• Explainable AI in HRI
• Security and safety in HRI

Committees

Organizing committee

• Mariacarla Staffa - University of Naples Parthenope, Italy

• Maryam Alimardani - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

• Salvatore M. Anzalone - Université Paris 8, France

• Antonio Andriella - Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spain

Invited Speakers

• Raphaëlle Roy  Université de Toulouse, France 

• Brian Scassellati  Yale University, USA

Venue

The conference will be held in Odense, Denmaek. Do please find all relevant info on the main conference website at this link: iscr2024.dk

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to mariacarla.staffa@unipartenope.it