[agents] [CfP] - Special Session: HRD-BOND: The What, Why, How of Social Bonding in Human-Robot Dyads - ICSR 2023

[Imran Khan]

Dear colleagues,

please accept my apologies for any cross-posting - please also forward on to relevant colleagues who may be interested.

We welcome you to submit to our special session, HRD-BOND: The What, Why, How of Social Bonding in Human-Robot Dyads, at the International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR) 2023<https://icsr23.qa/> in Doha, Qatar (December 4-7 2023).

Description:
We are heading towards a society where interactions between humans and social robots will no longer be reserved for rare occasions (e.g. in a research laboratory as part of a study, or a one-shot experience in a public space). Rather, it will be a collaborative and assistive co-existence across many domains: including healthcare services, education, public spaces, and assisted transportation, to name a few. The improvements in autonomy, intelligence, and behavioral capabilities of these social agents over time, combined with our ever-increasing (collaborative) interactions with them, and our disposition as a social species brings about the potential for humans to form strong, meaningful relationships with social robots.

In human-human, and even human-animal dyads, social attachments, bonds, or relationships serve powerful regulatory roles on our behaviors, emotions, and even our mental and physical states. Forming social bonds is associated with increased levels of trust and perceived competence of our partners, increased levels of cooperation and collaboration between dyads, as well as providing means for emotional regulation (e.g. reducing anxiety). If these are qualities we are looking to imbue in social robots, and if they are to advance to the next stage as long-term collaborative, assistive social partners, then the phenomenology of our relationships with these artificial agents requires a deeper scholarly focus.

In this first edition of the HRD-BOND Special Session, we aim to provide a focused forum to collate work, ideas, and discourse on theoretical or applied work on this phenomenon. We welcome discussion on, for instance, understanding if, how, and why social bonds can form in human-robot dyads, establishing frameworks and methods to measure and evaluate their quality and functionality, and discourse on the ontology and epistemology of social interaction and bonding between humans and artificial systems, as well as ethical and legal considerations of these relationships with social robots. We also particularly encourage and welcome transdisciplinary approaches (for example work inspired by social psychology, ethology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology, or other related disciplines), applied work related to social bonding in (long-term) human-robot studies, and position papers providing novel perspectives or challenges to existing ideas.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  *   Applied work on social bonding or attachment in long-term human-robot (dyadic) interactions.
  *   (Adaptive) functionality of social bonding or attachments in human-robot scenarios e.g. personalization of robot interactions
  *   Behavioral consequences or expressions of social bonding/attachment dynamics in human-robot dyads (e.g. changes in spatial proximity, frequency of interactions, ‘personality’ changes of robot or human).
  *   Novel (theoretical or applied) frameworks, tools or metrics to evaluating/measuring quantifying dynamics of social bonding or attachment in human-robot dyads.
  *   Discussions on ontology and epistemology of social bonding, attachment or forming of relationships between human-robot dyads.
  *   Contextual (human) factors affecting social attachment dynamics or characteristics in human-robot interaction scenarios, e.g. cultural, social, and gender norms.
  *   Work discussing ethical, moral, and legal considerations and implications of social bonding or attachments with social robots or other (social) autonomous agents.

Please visit Paper Submission - ICSR 23<https://icsr23.qa/paper-submission/> for details on paper submissions.

Submit your paper via the EquinOCS submission portal (EquinOCS (springernature.com)<https://equinocs.springernature.com/service/ICSR2023>) by selecting the title of our special session during the submission process.

Deadlines:
Paper submission: Sept 15 2023
Paper Notifications: Oct 1 2023
Final Camera-Ready Paper Submission: Oct 15 2023
Conference: Dec 4-7 2023

We are looking forward to receiving your submissions and seeing you in Doha!

Regards,
Imy Khan, PhD: University of Gothenburg (imran.khan at ait.gu.se)
Robert Lowe, PhD: University of Gothenburg (robert.lowe at ait.gu.se)
Bahram Salamat Ravandi: University of Gothenburg (bahramsalamat at ait.gu.se)
Alva Markelius: University of Cambridge (ajkm4 at cam.ac.uk)

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Imran (Imy) Khan, Ph.D. (he/him)
Marie-Skłodowska Curie Actions EUTOPIA-SIF Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Applied IT | Division of Cognition & Communication | Forskningsgången 6, 417 56 Göteborg
Imran.khan at ait.gu.se<mailto:Imran.khan at ait.gu.se> | http://imytk.co.uk | http://twitter.com/Imy_TK
My working hours may not be your working hours. Please do not feel obligated to reply outside of your normal schedule.

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