[iva] CFP: The 3rd Workshop on Public Space Human-Robot Interaction (PubRob 2016) at RO-MAN 2016

[Mary Ellen Foster]

We cordially invite you to submit and take part in the 3rd Workshop on Public Space Human-Robot Interaction (PubRob 2016). The workshop will be held at RO-MAN 2016 on 27 August 2016 in New York City.

Website: http://pubrob2016.pubrob.org/

Important Dates:
- 1 July 2016, Paper submission deadline 
- 15 July 2016, Paper notification
- 1 August 2016, Camera-ready deadline
- 27 August 2016, Workshop in New York City as part of RO-MAN 2016

Invited Speakers:
- Frauke Zeller, Ryerson University, http://mir1.hitchbot.me/ 
- David Harris Smith, McMaster University, http://csmm.mcmaster.ca/faculty/profile_smith.html
- Bilge Mutlu, University of Wisconsin-Madison, http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~bilge/

The development of robots capable of interacting with humans has made tremendous progress in the last decade, leading to an expectation that in the near future, robots will be increasingly deployed in public spaces, for example as receptionists, shop assistants, waiters, or bartenders. In these scenarios, robots must necessarily deal with situations that require socially appropriate human-robot interactions of a specific nature: interactions that are short and dynamic, and where the robot has to be able to deal with multiple people at once. In order to do so, robots typically require specific skills, including robust video and audio processing, fast reasoning and decision making mechanisms, and natural and safe output path planning algorithms. As a result, research on public space robots is often fundamentally different from other work in social robotics and HRI, which often focuses on long-term robot companions who interact with humans in one-on-one interactions. 

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines, in order to explore this research area from different perspectives. To allow for a full and productive discussion among all participants, the workshop will include an extended afternoon session organised using the Open Space meeting format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology).

Prospective workshop participants will be encouraged to submit a short abstract (max. 2 pages) outlining their work in this area. Abstracts will be reviewed by the programme committee for relevance and accepted abstracts will be presented at the workshop during a lightning talk session. Students will be particularly encouraged to submit position papers and participate in the lightning session as a means of getting feedback on their research from the community. Accepted abstracts will also form the proceedings for the workshop and will be posted on the workshop website.

Formatting instructions and detailed submission instructions are available through the workshop website at http://pubrob2016.pubrob.org/.

Contributions to the workshop are sought in all areas relevant to the overall goal of the workshop, including - but not limited to - the following topics:
- intention recognition 
- activity recognition
- person tracking
- speech recognition in noisy environments
- robust spoken language processing
- audiovisual signal processing
- planning and decision making under uncertainty
- knowledge representation and reasoning
- multimodal fusion
- multimodal interaction management
- cognitive robotics
- natural language generation
- design of service robots / interaction systems in public spaces
- evaluation of robots in real-world contexts

These topics cover a wide range of research communities including multimodal interaction, dialogue systems, human-robot interaction, robotics, automated planning, computer vision, and signal processing. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop topic, relevant contributions from other fields will also be welcome.

-- 
Dr Mary Ellen Foster, Lecturer in Computing Science
http://maryellenfoster.uk/