[agents] [meeting][news] ASIMOV Workshop at ICSR2022

Wed Nov 16 11:57:16 EST 2022

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*ASIMOV 2022: Adaptive Social Interaction based on user’s Mental mOdels and
behaVior in HRI*

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Dear Colleagues,

We are very pleased to invite you to attend the 2nd edition of *ASIMOV Workshop
on **“Adaptive Social Interaction based on user’s Mental mOdels and
behaVior in HRI”*.

The Workshop will be held the 13th of December in conjunction with the 14th
International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR2022
<https://www.icsr2022.it/>), 13-16 December 2022, Florence (Italy).

Please visit ASIMOV 2022 website
<https://sites.google.com/view/asimov2022/home> at
https://sites.google.com/view/asimov2022/home for detailed information.

If you intend to attend the Workshop, please, take care to register through
the link available on the ICSR2022 <https://www.icsr2022.it/> website and
submit your paper by *November the 30th *via Easychair at this link
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=asimov2022 .

You can find below all relevant information about ASIMOV Workshop.

Please consult our workshop website at
https://sites.google.com/view/asimov2022/home
<https://sites.google.com/view/asimov20212home> for updates and news.

*Hope to see you soon at ASIMOV 2022! *

Best Regards,

ASIMOV's Organizing Committee

---------------------------------
Mariacarla Staffa, University of Naples Parthenope
Antonio Andriella, PAL Robotics
Alessandra Rossi, University of Naples Federico II
Maryam Alimardani, Tilburg University

ASIMOV 2022: Adaptive Social Interaction based on user’s Mental mOdels and
behaVior in HRI
Workshop hosted by the 14th Int. Conf. on Social Robotics
Florence, Italy, December 13-16, 2022
Conference website https://sites.google.com/view/asimov2022/home
Submission link https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=asimov2022Abstract

The ability of understanding and adapting 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. However, even if theory
of mind and mental models are largely investigated in human-computer
interactions, 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, mental model and Theory of
Mind.
SCIENTIFIC CONTEXT

Endowing robots with learning and online adaptation abilities is a key
objective for enabling natural and efficient human-robot interaction,
especially in the areas of assistive, rehabilitation, and educational
robotics. As Isaac Asimov, the famous Russian-American science-fiction
writer, pointed out in one of his novels “The Complete Robot (1982)”, it is
fundamental for humans and robots to adapt to each other in order to have a
successful and efficient interaction. To this extent, one of the critical
challenges in human-robot interaction is to design robots with learning
abilities which would enable them to behave according to the following
three criteria: efficiency, acceptability and security. In order for robots
to fulfil these criteria, it is necessary for the robot and the human to
understand each other’s intentions, beliefs and desires.

The ability to interpret and adapt to users’ behaviour and mental states
could help in solving the mismatch existing between expectations of robots
(often elicited by the robot’s appearance) and their actual capabilities
and, therefore, enhance efficiency. Indeed, a possible mismatch can lead to
ambiguous perceptions and improper interpretation of robot’s actions and
intentions by negatively affecting the interactions. Therefore, designing
human-aware social interaction paradigms allow robots to automatically
detect and correct inaccurate mental states held by users through adaptive
behaviour.

Additionally, recent research evidence that that robots’ acceptability
increases when the robot is able to understand and meet people’s
expectations (i.e., their mental models) during HRI. By giving basic
socio-cognitive skills to robots, they can show contextually appropriate
affective and social signals in an intelligent and readable way. From the
mutual comprehension of mental states, an effective human-robot interaction
can emerge, suspending the disbelief of human partners, allowing trust,
partnership, and acceptability.

Despite the recognized potential and usefulness of social robots for
assistive, educational and entertainment purposes, people are still wary
while interacting with them. In particular, their hesitations are connected
to different aspects of HRI, including ethical and psychological concerns,
and physical and security safety, such as privacy violation, physical
harms, etc.. In this direction, it is essential to take into consideration
the psychological and behavioural response of people who are sharing the
environments with robots, and design social robots’ behaviours that can
proactively plan, manage and execute its goals, and facilitate interaction
at the same time.

In tackling the above-mentioned challenges, this workshop aims to bring
together theories and practices that advance social cognition and user
awareness in HRI to enrich the mutual understanding between humans and the
robots. This is especially desirable for socially assistive robots in the
context of education, entertainment and especially in healthcare, where the
target user groups often include vulnerable people (e.g., elderly people or
children with diseases compromising attentional or emotional responses) and
acceptability of the robots is of paramount importance.
OBJECTIVES

The workshop’s topics will be approached from a multidisciplinary
perspective by inviting speakers with various expertise, including
human-agent interaction, social and assistive robotics, cognitive and
behavioural sciences, artificial intelligence, psychology, neuroscience,
and philosophy of mind. Specific attention will be given to the
state-of-the-art methods in user modelling through evaluation of overt
(e.g. behaviour and speech) and covert information (e.g. cognitive states
and emotional reactions) using tools such as motion capture, eye-tracking,
biosignals, etc.
Target Audience

This workshop is intended as a forum for a broad audience, which spans from
social and assistive robotics, cognitive and behavioural robotics, and
social awareness and explainability in HRI. The workshop should be a place
to exchange opinions, to discuss innovative ideas and to get hints and
suggestions on ongoing research, therefore contributing to tackle
unresolved issues. The proposed topic brings together researchers working
on user behaviour and intention detection, human-robot interaction, social
and assistive robotics, control interfaces, learning, and ethical and
safety issues in human-machine interaction, among others. A large
scientific community is involved in such research fields.
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.
Important dates

   - Deadline for Paper Submission:  *November 30th*, 2022
   - Paper Acceptance Notification:  December 6th, 2022
   - Camera Ready Paper:  December 10th, 2022
   - Main Conference Date:  December 13th–16th, 2022
   - *Workshop Date:  December 13th, 2022 *

Templates and Procedure for Paper Submissions

It is highly recommended to use the Springer LNCS/LNAI style for the
layout. Detailed instructions for paper submission are available on the
conference web site (https://www.icsr2022.it/paper-submission/). LNCS style
templates are available on the Springer LNCS website. Each paper will
receive two reviews. Accepted papers require that at least one of the
authors register to the workshop.

All submitted papers will be reviewed by two reviewers. 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/conferences/?conf=asimov2022>.

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
   - Empathy and Theory of Mind in Robotics
   - Mutual affective understanding
   - Real-time monitoring of behaviour and mental states
   - Detection of non-verbal behavioural cues
   - Online adaptive behaviour
   - Acceptability and personalization
   - Physiological monitoring and biofeedback systems
   - BCI (brain-computer interfaces)-enabled adaptive interaction
   - Short- and Long-term personalisation
   - Human partnership and trust in HRI
   - Security and safety in HRI

CommitteesOrganizing Committee

   - Mariacarla Staffa, University of Naples Parthenope (Italy), email:
   mariacarla.staffa at unipartenope.it
   - Alessandra Rossi, University of Napled Federico II (Italy), email:
   alessandra.rossi at unina.it
   - Antonio Andriella, Pal Robotics, Barcellona (Spain), email:
   antonio.andriella at pal-robotics.com
   - Maryam Alimardani, Tilburg University (The Netherlands), email:
   m.alimardani at tilburguniversity.edu

Invited Speakers

   -

   Giulio Sandini (Italian institute of Technology, Italy)
   -

   Barbara Bruno (Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

Publication

Selected papers will be invited to submit an extended/revised version of
the papers to the Special Issue "Social Robots for the Human Well-Being" on
the mdpi Robotics Journal (
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/robotics/special_issues/SRHWB) (Author
Benefits: Open Access:— free for readers, with article processing charges
(APC) paid by authors or their institutions. High Visibility: indexed
within Scopus, ESCI (Web of Science), dblp, Inspec, and other databases.
Journal Rank: CiteScore - Q1 (Control and Optimization)).

Venue

The Workshop will be hosted by ICSR2022 Conference that will be held
at *Chamber
of Commerce *in Florence, which is located in the city center. It is just
behind Uffizi gallery, and, at a walking distance, where are located the
main attractions of Florence, like Ponte Vecchio, the Cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiore, Piazza della Signoria, Piazzale Michelangelo, and Boboli
garden.

Address: Piazza dei Giudici, 3, 50122 Firenze (FI), Italy
Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to
mariacarla.staffa at uniparthenope.it
-- 

*Mariacarla Staffa, PhDAssistant ProfessorDepartment of Science and
Technologies*
*University of Naples "Parthenope"*
*address: Centro Direzionale, Isola C, 4° Piano, Lato Nord, Stanza 428,
80143, Napoli*

*tel: 081-5476580institutional e-mail: mariacarla.staffa at uniparthenope.it
<mariacarla.staffa at uniparthenope.it>*
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