alt.HRI

Call For Papers – alt.HRI

alt.HRI logo12th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2017)

https://humanrobotinteraction.org/2017/

March 6-9, 2017, Vienna, Austria

Within the 12th Annual ACM/IEEE HRI Conference, alt.HRI is a venue for radical, unconventional, thought-provoking and rigorous submissions that have high potential for impact. One of the goals of alt.HRI is to explore the future of what HRI could be, including controversial aspects.

To guide this exploration, we look forward to submissions which follow this year’s alt.HRI theme: The Less Positive Side of HRI: beyond human acceptance, statistical significance and algorithmic performance lie deeper questions of positive and negative downstream impacts, and the transformational impacts that HRI work can have on society. Given possible detrimental effects, what new methodologies or techniques can be proposed to encourage awareness and more positive results? We encourage researchers to consider the bigger picture of their work. Not just “can we do this?” but “should we?”

alt.HRI sees itself as an avant-garde track targeting the boundaries of mainstream human-robot interaction submissions. As such, submissions will be rigorously peer-reviewed, in a double-blind fashion, by a dedicated alt.HRI program committee that will be announced on the HRI website.

Specifically, alt.HRI has the following two acceptance criteria:

  1. is there potential for relevance, controversy, or thought-provoking discussion, even if the work seems unusual, unlikely, or unorthodox?
  2. is the work rigorous, well researched, well argued, well written, fully detailed and, if appropriate, well implemented?

While not a strict requirement, the authors are encouraged to relate their work to this year’s theme (“The Less Positive Side of HRI”), whatever their conclusions. We especially welcome submissions grounded in real robot system(s) (be it ethnographic, experimental or algorithmic evaluations).

Accepted papers will be orally presented in the main program and will be archived in the ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore Digital Library along with the main conference papers. Up to eight anonymized and camera-ready pages (excluding references are allowed).

Submission must use the ACM templates (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template) and can be submitted online on the PCS platform (https://precisionconference.com/~sigchi).

Sample Topics (not an exhaustive list)

  1. Reflective and grounded analysis of the positive and negative impacts of previous HRI work.
  2. Quantified trade-offs between algorithmic performance and social impact, e.g., a healthcare robot that injects someone with medication versus giving reminders.
  3. Comparison between survey results about acceptance of childcare robots and contrasting ethnographic observations of such robots in use.
  4. Service robots that help people use the bathroom with different level of anthropomorphism.
  5. Observations of how robots are accepted by workers in a manufacturing environment, including if it appears that these robots may cost them their jobs down the line.
  6. New methods and evaluation criteria for evaluating long-term social impact in robotics.

Important Dates

  • 5 December 2016: Submission deadline
  • 23 December 2016: Notification of Acceptance
  • 4 January 2017: Final camera-ready versions due

alt.HRI 2017 chairs

  • Heather Knight, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
  • Séverin Lemaignan, Plymouth University, UK

alt.HRI Jury

  • Angelica Lim
  • Iolanda Leite
  • Mary Willams
  • Ana Paiva
  • Bill Smart
  • Kate Darling
  • Hirotaka Osawa
  • Seiichiro Katsura