Workshop for Student Introduction to Human Robot Interaction

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support a workshop of approximately 30 graduate students and recent graduates from master's and doctoral programs in diverse communities (including computer science, engineering, psychology, cognitive science, and communications), along with distinguished research faculty. The event will take place on Tuesday, March 10, 2009, immediately preceding the Fourth Annual Human Robot Interaction Conference (HRI 2009) to be held March 11-13, 2009, in San Diego, which is sponsored by ACM and cosponsored by IEEE. The theme of HRI 2009 is ?Interacting Naturally with Robots,? which highlights the critical need to develop human-like communications capabilities as robots become more common in everyday settings (including the home, office, museums, and shopping environments), and begin to collaborate with humans to accomplish complex tasks. This workshop is designed to complement the conference, by providing a forum for students and recent graduates in the field of HRI to present their current research before peers and a panel of senior researchers in a setting that is less formal and more interactive than the main conference, and by providing all participants with opportunities to talk about the important trends and issues in the field with a view to encouraging the formation of collaborative relationships across disciplines and geographic boundaries. To these ends, the workshop will include sessions in a variety of formats. Participants will hear 15-minute presentations on their current research from 9 of the students, with time allotted for questions and discussion after each talk. A morning breakout session will divide the participants into 2-4 groups to discuss a focused question on common research themes posed by the organizers, while an afternoon breakout session will involve a small group project in which participants must work together to address some facet of HRI in a given domain/application. Following a keynote address from a distinguished researcher in the field, a group presentation session will provide each breakout group with the opportunity to present a summary to the entire workshop. Broader Impacts: This workshop will afford a unique opportunity for the best of the next generation of researchers in human-robot interaction to be exposed to and discuss current and relevant topics as they are being studied in several different research communities (including but nor limited to computer science and engineering, psychology, robotics, human factors and ergonomics, and human-computer interaction). This is important for the field, because it has been recognized that transformative advances in research in this fledgling area can only come through the melding of cross-disciplinary knowledge and multinational perspectives. Participants will be encouraged to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development, to form collaborative relationships, and to generate new research questions to be addressed during the coming year. Workshop organizers will act aggressively to recruit young researchers from minority and underrepresented groups in order to assure diversity of the participants across a variety of dimensions, so that the students' horizons are broadened to the future benefit of the field.