Giacinto Barresi, Professor of Robotics (Human-Robot Systems) at UWE Bristol, United Kingdom (giacinto.barresi@uwe.ac.uk)
Filippo Cavallo, Professor of Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics at the University of Florence (filippo.cavallo@unifi.it)
John-John Cabibihan, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Qatar University (john.cabibihan@qu.edu.qa)
– Social Human-Agent Interaction (HAI) for Health and Well-Being
– Social Robotics, AI, and Avatars for Health and Well-Being
– Physical and Digital (Phygital) Agents for Health and Well-Being
– Social HAI for Rehabilitation and Therapy
– Social HAI for Assistance and Monitoring
– Social HAI for Medical Tasks
– Social HAI in Telemedicine and Telerehabilitation
– Ethical and Societal Issues in Social HAI for Health and Well-Being
– Human-Centric Design of Social Intelligent Systems for Health and Well-Being
– Technology Transfer of Social Intelligent Systems for Health and Well-Being
This special session explores how social human-agent interaction can enhance health-related applications through effective sensing, interpretation, and adaptation to human needs. We will look for contributions proposing diverse interaction paradigms like phygital (physical-digital) environments that blend virtual and embodied agents and items for rehabilitation. This special session will focus on healthcare and well-being applications emphasizing the seamless interaction between humans (clinicians, patients) and artificial agents (robots and digital avatars, controlled by humans or AIs). The invited speakers will explore how intelligent agents can sense, interpret, and adapt to human needs, enabling more effective assistance, engaging rehabilitation and stimulation, and support in clinical and home-care environments. The session will focus on the following key themes.
– Human-Centered Interaction. Investigating how social agents can enhance healthcare through engaging and intuitive interactions with users.
– Adaptive and Responsive AI Systems. Exploring techniques for robots and AIs to detect and interpret human intentions, enabling precision assistance and treatment.
– Phygital (Physical-Digital) Solutions. Examining the integration of virtual and embodied agents to enhance rehabilitation, therapy, also through telehealth applications.
Healthcare Application Areas. Addressing real-world scenarios in assistance, rehabilitation, prosthetics, surgery, and long-term care through social systems.
Thomas Sievers, University of Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23562 Lübeck (t.sievers@uni-luebeck.de) (main organiser)
Nele Russwinkel, University of Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23562 Lübeck,
(nele.russwinkel@uni-luebeck.de) (co-organiser)
– Cognitive architectures for human-machine interaction
– Cognitive models for human-machine interaction
– Cognitive models for human-machine collaboration
– Cognitive modeling & knowledge representation for robots
– Generative AI for situation awareness and situated human-machine interaction
– Situation sensing, perception, comprehension, and prediction in human-machine interaction
– Theory of mind in human-machine interaction
– Mental models & mental states
– Belief updating
– Systems, platforms and tools for cognition for human-machine interaction
– Technical implementations
If humans and machines are to work together as partners, they must have the same basic understanding of a task and the current situation. The use of mental models and beliefs of humans could be used as the basis for the actions of a social robot. Different methods and integration of methods can be used as a kind of control instance for its sensors and, for example, the utterances generated via an LLM. Cognitive principles can help to make the robot’s behavior more understandable, comprehensible and reliable for humans. Integrating such cognitive aspects could improve human-robot interaction and increase trust, acceptance and mutual. understanding.
Relevant questions on this topic include:
– In what way are cognitive principles relevant for human-robot interaction?
– What possibilities are there for learning individual preferences and behaviors of the human interaction partner?
– In what way does belief formation and updating support better and more fluent interaction?
– What technical possibilities are there to increase trust, acceptance and mutual understanding and what opportunities do they offer?
Ilaria Alfieri, IULM University, via Carlo Bo n°1/2 – 20143, Milan, Italy (ilaria.alfieri@studenti.iulm.it)
Antonio Fleres, IULM University, via Carlo Bo n°1/2 – 20143, Milan, Italy (rebecca.mannocci@studenti.iulm.it)
Rebecca Mannocci, IULM University, via Carlo Bo n°1/2 – 20143, Milan, Italy (rebecca.mannocci@studenti.iulm.it)
Luisa Damiano, IULM University, via Carlo Bo n°1/2 – 20143, Milan, Italy (luisa.damiano@iulm.it)
– Social robotics for sustainability and wellbeing
– Social robotics for sustainable healthcare
– Human-robot interaction for sustainability
– Design for sustainable/ecological robots
– Domestic robotic ecologies
– Social robots in urban environments and public spaces
– Imaginaries of social robots and their impact on social sustainability (cultural narratives, science-fiction representation)
– Educational social robot for sustainability purposes
– Social robotics for sustainable development goals
– Environmental impact of robotic embodiment(s)
– Embodiment design in sustainable social robotics
– Ethics of sustainable social robotics
This Special Session aims to attract contributions on social robotics through the lens of sustainability, promoting transdisciplinary discussions on social robotics for enhancing social and environmental sustainability. The objective of this Special Session is to combine scientific and technical aspects of social robotics with philosophical and ethical perspectives on ecological and social responsibility. We think that intertwining theoretical reflections, empirical studies and technological advances, the different scientific communities related to social robotics can outline new paradigms for the generative coexistence of humans and social robots.
In this perspective, social robots are considered both instruments of innovation, capable of supporting social and environmental sustainability, and objects of innovation, whose very development must be rethought in a sustainable way. Our goal is to bring these two dimensions in dialogue, fostering a connection between technological advancement and critical reflection on sustainability.
Marco Matarese, University of Naples Parthenope, Via Ferdinando Acton 38, 80133 Naples, Italy, Italian Institute of Technology, Via Morego 30, 16124 Genoa, Italy (marco.matarese@iit.it )
Omar Eldardeer, Italian Institute of Technology, Via Morego 30, 16124 Genoa, Italy (omar.eldardeer@iit.it)
Igor Farkaš, Comenius University Bratislava, Šafárikovo námestie 6, 814 99 Bratislava (farkas@fmph.uniba.sk)
Alessandra Sciutti, Italian Institute of Technology, Via Morego 30, 16124 Genoa, Italy (alessandra.sciutti@iit.it)
– Generation of explanations for social robots
– Justification for robots’ recommendations in collaborative settings
– Explanation design for HRI
– Explainability and transparency in human-robot collaboration
– Design principles for robots’ explainability
– Cognitive architecture for explainable robotics
– Application and empirical studies with explainable robots
– Explainability evaluation metrics
– LLM-based explanations
Social robots are meant to interact with humans, and the human-robot interaction (HRI)community is dedicating its effort to making such interactions smoother and more natural from the robotic side. While these issues present several technical challenges, socio-psychological factors cannot be ignored and are increasingly integrated into the technological advancements in social robotics.
In this landscape, the explainability problem is not an exception; on the contrary, given the promise of the co-existence of social robots in people’s everyday lives in the future, the challenge of producing explanations for social robots’ behavior represents one of the most actual and urgent topics to address.
The Special Session on “Explanations in Social Human-Robot Interaction” aims to attract contributions from experts in the field of HRI and sociology/psychology with the objective of addressing the explainability problem from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint and allow social robots to naturally and exhaustively explain their actions and recommendations to their human partners.
Ester Fuoco, IULM University / ISPF CNR, Naples, Italy (ester.fuoco@iulm.it)
Piotr Mirowski, Google DeepMind (Piotr.mirowski@computer.org)
– Theatre as an interactive and affective training ground for robots
– Robot actors: identity construction and performative agency
– Co-creation and mutual learning between humans and machines
– Social robotics and performative storytelling
– Aesthetics, embodiment, and proxemics in HRI
– Robot theatre as STEM education for children
This special session begins with the hypothesis that art-particularly performative art-is not merely a tool to facilitate human-robot interaction (HRI), but a language through which robots can be trained, developed, and understood. At the same time, social robots in performative contexts serve as agents of reciprocal education, revealing the emotional, cognitive, and relational dynamics that underlie our coexistence with machines. This session seeks to explore how art and performance can serve as environments for the implementation, testing, and cultural development of social robots, and how their presence on stage may reshape conventional boundaries between education, affect, technology, and interaction. We welcome theoretical, design-based, and practice-led contributions that investigate these dimensions through case studies, performative installations, and interdisciplinary approaches to HRI.
