WORKSHOP: The 2015 HRI Pioneers Workshop at the 2015 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

Tufts University, Medford MA

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support a Pioneers Workshop (doctoral consortium) of approximately 18 graduate students and post-docs from diverse research communities (e.g., computer science and engineering, psychology, cognitive science, robotics, human factors, human-computer interaction design, and communications), along with distinguished research faculty. The event will take place on Monday, March 2, 2015, immediately preceding the Tenth International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2015), to be held March 2-5 in Portland, Oregon, and which is jointly sponsored by ACM and IEEE. HRI is a single-track, highly selective annual international conference that seeks to showcase the very best inter- and multi-disciplinary research in human-robot interaction with roots in social psychology, cognitive science, HCI, human factors, artificial intelligence, robotics, organizational behavior, anthropology and many more, and invites broad participation. The theme of HRI 2015 is "Broadening HRI: Enabling Technologies, Designs, Methods, and Knowledge" which seeks contributions from a broad set of perspectives, including technical, design, methodological, behavioral, and theoretical, that advance fundamental and applied knowledge and methods in human-robot interaction, with the goal of enabling human-robot interaction through new technical advances, novel robot designs, new guidelines for design, and advanced methods for understanding and evaluating interaction. More information about the conference is available online at http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2015. The Pioneers Workshop is designed to complement the conference, by providing a forum for students and recent graduates in the field of HRI to share their current research with their peers and a panel of senior researchers in a setting that is less formal and more interactive than the main conference. During the workshop, participants will talk about the important upcoming research themes in the field, encouraging the formation of collaborative relationships across disciplines and geographic boundaries. To these ends, the workshop format will encompass a variety of activities including two keynotes, a distinguished panel session, and breakout sessions. To start the day, all workshop attendees will briefly introduce themselves and their interests. Following the opening keynote, approximately half of the participants will present 3-minute overviews of their work, leading into an interactive poster session. This will enable all participants to share their research and receive feedback from students and senior researchers in an informal setting. The workshop organizers will facilitate the post-presentation discussion and will encourage participants to ask questions of their peers during the interactive break and poster session. After lunch, the remaining workshop participants will give their 3-minute overviews, followed by presentation of their posters during a second interactive poster session. Senior researchers (in addition to those on the panel) will be invited to attend the student presentations and poster sessions in order to provide feedback to participants, and workshop participants will be invited to present their posters during the main poster session of the HRI conference as well. The conversations between the panel and participants will continue over lunch and during dinner. 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 not limited to computer science and engineering, psychology, robotics, human factors and ergonomics, and HCI). 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 years. Participants will also gain leadership and service experience, as the workshop is largely student organized and student led. The PI has expressed his strong commitment to recruiting women and members from under-represented groups. To further ensure diversity the event organizers will consider an applicant's potential to offer a fresh perspective and point of view with respect to HRI, will recruit students who are just beginning their graduate degree programs in addition to students who are further along in their degrees, and will limit the number of participants accepted from a particular institution to at most two (in which case, one of the participants must be female).