A Workshop proposal for the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-­‐MAN 2016) New York, USA, August 26-­‐31, 2016. Title The 1st International Workshop on Affective Computing for Social Robotics (ACSR) URL: https://acsr2016.wordpress.com Format A half-­‐day, approximately 4-­‐hours workshop with break for coffee and lunch. 1 Keynote speaker (Social Robotics/Affective Computing) 4 oral presentation, 4 poster presentations. Acceptance rate: 30%; oral presentations: 20%. Main organiser [Robotics] Jaeryoung Lee, PhD Department of Robotic Science and Technology, Chubu University, Japan 167B, Cybernetics Lab II, Advanced Research Center, 1200 Matsumoto-­‐cho, Kasugai, Aichi 487-­‐8501, JAPAN +81-­‐568-­‐51-­‐7440 jaeryounglee@isc.chubu.ac.jp Co-­‐organisers [Affective Computing] Ognjen Rudovic, PhD Intelligent Behaviour Understanding Group, Imperial College London, UK. orudovic@imperial.ac.uk [Social Psychology] Hiroko Kamide, PhD Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, Japan kamide@riec.tohoku.ac.jp Statement of objectives – intended audience Social Robots are expected to act as mediators to elicit more active communication and provide life support for humans. Social robots have found a number of applications in many aspects of our daily life, including, but not limited to, elderly care, therapeutic and educational purposes (e.g. therapy for children with autism), entertainment and so on. As the critical role for robots here is to interact with and assist humans in their every-­‐day activities, the goal is to endow them with ‘social intelligence’. This, in turn, would allow them to simulate the human-­‐human interaction and communication by being more engaging and sensitive to our affective states (such as emotional states). Considering a wide variety of users, the robots should be capable of deciding what kind of services they provide. The accurate and autonomous evaluation is needed through the technology (without human operator intervention), especially if the users who are children or people with special needs. For this “user-­‐centred” human-­‐
robot interaction, this requires that the social robots can learn the user’s emotional states and be able to respond to it accordingly. Advances in the affective computing field have recently allowed us to measure humans’ affective states such as emotions, empathy and engagement from different modalities. These include audio (verbal and non-­‐verbal vocalizations), visual (body posture and facial expressions) and physiological (heart rate and electrodermal activity) signals. While advanced modelling techniques based on computer vision and machine learning have been proposed so far to analyse human behaviour using these modalities, a little attention has been paid to analysis of affect from naturalistic behaviours as expressed in human-­‐robot interactions (HRI). The main aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers working in Social Robotics and Affective Computing, and exploit jointly the most recent advances in these two fields. The workshop is oriented towards sharing the ideas of participants with diverse background ranging from robotics, machine learning, computer vision and social psychology. The goal is to facilitate the integration of social robotics and affective computing as an emerging field. In particular, the goal of the workshop is to identify new challenges in designing and learning of social robots that are affect-­‐
sensitive. To this end, a number of topics are to be addressed: • The design of social robots, including studies showing the influence of the robots design on the social interactions with humans. • The modelling of human affect from data recorded during HRI. • The fusion of different modalities (audio, visual and physiological) for estimation of humans’ affective states during HRI. • Applications of social robots to elderly care, entertainment, but also assistive tools for individuals with autism and/or other neurodevelopmental conditions. In addition to these, other contributions addressing the social dimension of HRI are highly encouraged. The intended audience are researchers working in the multidisciplinary area of HRI, including social robotics, affective computing, and behavioural experts from psychology and social sciences. The participants should submit full papers (up to 6 pages). The papers will undergo a peer-­‐review process and will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. The accepted papers will be invited for an oral presentation or a poster presentation at the Workshop. Submission Full papers (up to 6 pages) using the IEEE conference templates Important Dates 22 May: Paper submission deadline 19 June: Notification of acceptance 17 July: Final papers due 27 or 31 August: Workshop Program Committee Members (TBC) Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire Takayuki Kanda, ATR Bram Vandenborght, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Claire Huijnen, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences Yoshio Matsumoto, AIST Astrid Weiss, Vienna University of Technology Angelo Cangelosi, University of Plymouth Yuichiro Yoshikawa, Osaka University List of speakers • 1:30 -­‐ 2:15 Keynote speaker for Affect-­‐based Social Robotics Prof. Maja Mataric (social robotics & affective computing) TBC • 2:15 -­‐ 2:40 Accepted Paper 1 • 2:40 -­‐ 3:20 Accepted Paper 2 • 3:20 – 3:50 Coffee break • 3:50 -­‐ 4:10 Accepted Paper 3 • 4:10 -­‐ 4:30 Accepted Paper 4 • 4:30 -­‐ 5:30 Poster session (3-­‐4 posters) Invited Keynote Speaker: Prof. Maja Mataric Maja Matarić is a Professor and Chan Soon-­‐Shiong chair in Computer Science Department, Neuroscience Program, and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC), co-­‐director of the USC Robotics Research Lab and Vice Dean for Research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the IEEE and AAAI, and recipient of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM), the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Innovation, Okawa Foundation Award, NSF Career Award, the MIT TR35 Innovation Award, and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award. She served as the elected president of the USC faculty and the Academic Senate. Prof. Matarić is the author of a popular introductory robotics textbook, "The Robotics Primer" (MIT Press 2007), an associate editor of three major journals and has published extensively. She serves or has recently served on a number of advisory boards, including the National Science Foundation Computing and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE) Division Advisory Committee, and the Willow Garage and Evolution Robotics Scientific Advisory Boards. List of topics • Affective and cognitive sciences • Affective computing • Machine learning and computer vision, and their adaptation in human-­‐robot interaction • Non-­‐verbal cues and expressiveness in interactions: gesture, posture, social spaces and facial expressions • Human augmentation, rehabilitation, and medical robots • Robot applications in education, entertainment, and therapy • Social robots that can adapt to different users • Socially assistive robots