Three papers were awarded Best Paper under three categories at this year’s conference. The awards were presented to the authors at the closing ceremony of the conference.

“Best Student Paper” Award

Michael Gielniak & Andrea Thomaz for their paper “Spatiotemporal Correspondence as a Metric for Human-like Robot Motion”

“Most Interesting Experimental Finding” Award

Jonathan Mumm & Bilge Mutlu for their paper “Human-Robot Proxemics: Physical and Psychological Distancing in Human-Robot Interaction”

“Most Interesting Interaction” Award

Steve Yohanan & Karon E. MacLean for their paper “Design and Assessment of the Haptic Creature’s Affect Display”

The social event will be a cruise on Lake Geneva, leaving at 6:15pm sharp on Tuesday evening. Please arrive at the boat Lausanne in the port (Ouchy) no later than 6:00pm. Directions on how to reach the port may be found here.

LBR presentations will be conducted during a reception/poster session. Poster presenters should make sure that their poster are ready by the time the poster session starts. Poster setup can begin 30 minutes prior to the start of the poster session. Posters should be no larger than 32″ x 46″ (840 cm x 1180 cm) in size in Portrait or Vertical format to comfortably fit on the easels and poster boards. We will provide pushpins for mounting posters. Please do not use any other material for mounting purposes (e.g., adhesive or tape). Presenters are responsible for taking down their posters at the end of the poster session.

Note: This year there will not be one minute madness sessions, so there is no need to prepare slides.

Embodied Language Learning and Interaction with the Humanoid Robot iCub

Dr. Angelo Cangelosi, University of Plymouth

Recent theoretical and experimental research on action and language processing clearly demonstrates the strict interaction between language and action, and the role of embodiment in cognition. These studies have important implication for the design of communication and linguistic capabilities in cognitive systems and robots, and have led to the new interdisciplinary approach of Cognitive Developmental Robotics. In the European FP7 project “ITALK” we follow this integrated view of action and language learning for the development of cognitive capabilities in the humanoid robot iCub. The robot’s cognitive development is the results of interaction with the physical world (e.g. object manipulation learning) and from cooperation and communication between robots and humans (Cangelosi et al., 2010). During the talk we will psent ongoing results from iCub experiments. These include human-robot interaction experiments with the iCub on the embodiment biases in early word acquisition (“Modi” experiment; Morse et al. 2010), studies on word order cues for lexical development and the sensorimotor bases of action words (Marocco et al 2010), and recent experiments on action and language compositionality. The talk will also introduce the simulation software of the iCub robot, an open source software tool to perform cognitive modeling experiments in simulation (Tikhanoff et al. in pss).

Professor Angelo Cangelosi is the director of the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems of the University of Plymouth. Cangelosi’s main research expertise is on language and cognitive modelling in cognitive systems (e.g. humanoid robot iCub and cognitive agents), on language evolution and grounding in multi-agent systems, and the application of bio-inspired techniques to robot control (e.g. swarm of UAVs). He currently is the coordinator of the Integrating Project “ITALK: Integration and Transfer of Action and Language Knowledge in robots” (2009-2012, italkproject.org), the Marie Curie ITN “RobotDoC: Robotics for Development of Cognition” (2009-2013, robotdoc.org) and the UK EPSRC project “VALUE: Vision, Action, and Language Unified by Embodiment (Cognitive Systems Foresight). Cangelosi has produced more than 150 scientific publications in the field, is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Interaction Studies, has chaired numerous workshops and conferences including General Chair of the forthcoming IEEE ICDL-EpiRob 2011 Conference (Frankfurt, 24-27 August 2011), and is a regular speaker at international conferences and seminars.

References

Cangelosi A., Metta G., Sagerer G., Nolfi S., Nehaniv C.L., Fischer K., Tani J., Belpaeme B., Sandini G., Fadiga L., Wrede B., Rohlfing K., Tuci E., Dautenhahn K., Saunders J., Zeschel A. (2010). Integration of action and language knowledge: A roadmap for developmental robotics. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 2(3), 167-195

Marocco D., Cangelosi A., Fischer K., Belpaeme T. (2010). Grounding action words in the sensorimotor interaction with the world: Experiments with a simulated iCub humanoid robot. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 4:7,

Morse A.F., Belpaeme T., Cangelosi A., Smith L.B. (2010). Thinking with your body: Modelling spatial biases in categorization using a real humanoid robot. Proceedings of 2010 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Portland, pp 1362-1368

Tikhanoff V., Cangelosi A., Metta G. (in pss). Language understanding in humanoid robots: iCub simulation experiments. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development.

Embodied Object Recognition and Metacognition

Dr. Randall C. O’Reilly, University of Colorado

One of the great unsolved questions in our field is how the human brain, and simulations thereof, can achieve the kind of common-sense understanding that is widely believed to be essential for robust intelligence.  Many have argued that embodiment is important for developing common-sense understanding, but exactly how this occurs at a mechanistic level remains unclear.  In the process of building an embodied virtual robot that learns from experience in a virtual environment, my colleagues and I have developed several insights into this process.   At a general level, embodiment provides access to a rich, continuous source of training signals that, in conjunction with the proper neural structures, naturally support the learning of complex sensory-motor abilities, which then provide the foundation for more abstract cognitive abilities.  A specific instance is learning to recognize objects in cluttered scenes, which requires learning what is figure vs. (back)ground. We have demonstrated how visual learning in a 3D environment can provide training signals for learning weaker 2D depth and figure/ground cues. This learning process also requires bidirectional excitatory connectivity and associated interactive attractor dynamics, which we show provide numerous benefits for object recognition more generally.  Finally, the virtual robot can extract graded signals of recognition confidence, and use these to select what it explores in the environment.  These “metacognitive” signals can also be communicated to others so that they can better determine when to trust the robot or not (collaborative work with Christian Lebiere using ACT-R framework).

Bio:  Dr. O’Reilly is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has authored over 50 journal articles and an influential textbook on computational cognitive neuroscience. His work focuses on biologically-based computational models of learning mechanisms in different brain areas, including hippocampus, pfrontal cortex & basal ganglia, and posterior visual cortex. He has received significant funding from NIH, NSF, ONR, and DARPA. He is a primary author of the Emergent neural network simulation environment. O’Reilly completed a postdoctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and was awarded an A.B. degree with highest honors in Psychology from Harvard University.

Gesture, language and cognition

Dr. Sotaro Kita, University of Birmingham

We (humans) produce gestures spontaneously not only when we speak (“co-speech gestures”), but also when we think without speaking (“co-thought” gestures). I will psent studies that shed light on the cognitive architecture for gesture production. I will first review the evidence that co-speech gestures are highly sensitive to what goes on in speech production. For example, gestural repsentation of motion events varies as a function of the linguistic structures used to encode motion events.  Gestures are produced more frequently when it is difficult to organise ideas for linguistic expssion. Despite these pieces of evidence for a tight link between gesture and language, there are indications that gesture production is dissociable from speech production. Furthermore, new evidence shows that there are important parallelisms between co-speech gestures and co-thought gestures, suggesting that these two types of gestures are produced from the same mechanism, which is outside of speech production processes. I will conclude that gestures are produced from a mechanism that is inherently independent from, but highly interactive with, the speech production process. I will propose a cognitive architecture in which gesture production is related to action generation, spatial cognition, and speech production in an intricate way.

Dr. Sotaro Kita received a BA and MA at the University of Tokyo and a PhD at the University of Chicago.  He has worked at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholingusitics and is now a Reader at the University of Birmingham.

We are pleased to announce that there is funding available to partially support travel to HRI2011 for Student Volunteers.  Students receiving support will be expected to volunteer time to help with on-site registration and with general duties, as needed, from 5 March (early on-site registration, tutorials and workshops) to 9 March, 2011.

Being a Student Volunteer is a great way to enter the HRI research community, meet other students in your field, and attend one of most important conferences in HRI. We are looking to include students with diverse backgrounds in HRI and from all parts of the world.  To request funding, please send the following information to Selma Sabanovic (selmas@indiana.edu).

(1) Provide:
1. Your Name;
2. Your Affiliation (name and address of college/university);
3. Your Contact Information (email address and telephone number(s)).

(2) Indicate:
1. Whether you are a part-time or full-time student, and include the name of your faculty advisor with email and telephone contact information;
2. Whether or not you are a (co)author of a paper or a late-breaking report at HRI2011;
3. If you are receiving or requesting funding from the Young Researchers Workshop on 5 March 2011;
4. Please include information about your area of study.

(3) A statement of your requested funding amount and a brief justification of your funding needs (250 words maximum).

Note that you do not have to have an accepted paper/poster at HRI2011 to be considered for financial support, although students with accepted work will be given priority. The deadline for applying for Student Volunteer funds by submitting the requested information is February 1, 2011.

A number of labs on the EPFL campus will be offering tours during the conference (see list below). Attendees are asked to register for the tours by the early registration deadline (Jan 31, 2011) through the main conference registration system.

Chair in Non-invasive Brain-machine Interface (CNBI), lead by Prof. José del R. Millán
http://cnbi.epfl.ch/
Research on the direct use of human brain signals to control devices and interact with our environment.

Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS), lead by Prof. Dario Floreano
http://lis.epfl.ch/
Three interconnected research areas: design and development of autonomous robots, bioinspired artificial intelligence, and theoretical and experimental work with biological systems.

Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA), lead by Prof. Aude Billard
http://lasa.epfl.ch/
Research fields include: Learning and Dynamical Systems, Neural Computation and Modeling, Human-Machine Interaction, Humanoids Robotics, Mechatronics, Design of Therapeutic and Educational Devices.

MOBOTS group within the Laboratoire de Systems Robotiques (LSRO), lead by Dr. Francesco Mondada
http://mobots.epfl.ch/
System design for miniature autonomous mobile robots, based on strong competences in digital electronics and system integration.

Pedagogical Research and Support (CRAFT), hosted by Dr. Frédéric Kaplan
http://craft.epfl.ch
Robotic objects and human-robot ecologies, within the larger goal of contributing to the quality of the training with training actions, counseling, evaluation and faculty development of teachers.

Conference registration is now available at the registration site. Below are information on registration deadlines and rates.

Deadlines

Early Registration, Dec 23, 2010 – Jan 31, 2011
Late Registration, Feb. 1, 2010 – Mar. 5, 2011
On-site Registration, Mar. 6, 2011- Mar. 9, 2011

Rates

Registration fees, to be collected in Swiss Francs (CHF), are as follows:

All workshop and tutorial attendees must also register for the conference. Information on the workshops and tutorials offered at HRI 2011 can be seen here. Below are the registration rates for tutorials and workshops. If you have any questions about the registration, please contact the Registration Chair.

Workshop sessions will take place on Sunday March 6th in Building BC (map). Registration opens at 8:30.

Tutorials

Brain mediated Human-Robot interaction

Jose del R. Millan, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
E-mail: jose.millan {at} epfl.ch

Ricardo Chavarriaga, (Contact Organizer), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
E-mail: ricardo.chavarriaga {at} epfl.ch

The use of brain-generated signals for human-robot interaction has gained increasing attention in the last years. Indeed brain-controlled robots can potentially be employed to substitute motor capabilities (e.g. brain-controlled prosthetics for amputees or patients with spinal cord injuries); to help in the restoration of such functions (e.g. as a tool for stroke rehabilitation) as well as non-clinical applications like telepresence or entertainment. This half-day tutorial gives an introduction to the field of brain-computer interfaces and presents several design principles required to successfully employ them for robot control. [More information]

Location: Building BC, room BC02

Times: Start: 9:00 am
Morning Break: 11:00am-11:30am
End: 1:00 pm

Workshops

Robots with Children: Practices for Human-Robot Symbiosis

Naomi Miyake, University of Tokyo, Japan
E-mail: nmiyake {at} p.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka University, Japan
E-mail : ishiguro {at} sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp

Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire, UK
E-mail: K.Dautenhahn {at} herts.ac.uk

Tatsuya Nomura, (Contact Organizer), Ryukoku University, Japan
E-mail: nomura {at} rins.ryukoku.ac.jp

On considering symbiosis of humans and robots, its benefits and risks should be taken into account for persons in weaker positions of the society, in particular, children. On the other hand, several robotics applications have been developed, including education and welfare for children. In this stage, it is important that more researchers from interdisciplinary research fields, including robotics, computer science, psychology, sociology, and pedagogy, share an opportunity to discuss about the potential of “robots with children”. This half-day workshop aims at providing with the forum where researchers from these interdisciplinary fields discuss about how symbiosis of robots and children should and can be realized, from the perspectives of engineering, psychology, education, and welfare. [More information]

Location: Building BC, room BC02

Times: Start: 2:00pm
Afternoon Break: 4:00pm-4:30pm
End: 6:00 pm

Social Robotic Telepresence

Prof. Silvia Coradeschi, Örebro Univeristy, Sweden
E-mail: silvia.coradeschi {at} oru.se

Dr. Amy Loutfi, (Contact Organizer), Örebro University, Sweden
E-mail: amy.loutfi {at} oru.se

Annica Kristoffersson, Örebro University, Sweden
E-mail: annica.kristoffersson {at} oru.se

Dr. Gabriella Cortellessa, ISTC-CNR, Italy
E-mail: gabriella.cortellessa {at} istc.cnr.it

Prof. Kerstin Severinson Eklundh, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden.
E-mail: kse {at} csc.kth.se

Robotic telepresence, also known as telerobotics is a subfield of telepresence whose aim is to increase presence via embodiment in a robotic platform. In particular, robotic telepresence can be an effective tool to enhance social interaction suited to certain groups of users such as the elderly. The aim of this workshop is to address various aspects important for social robotic telepresence which include but are not limited to, (1) the mechanical design, (2) the user interface design, (3) the interaction between the remotely embodied person and the locally embodied person and (4) the perception of social robotic telepresence systems. Furthermore, we are interested in discovering the added value of spatial presence in the context of social telepresence and comparisons between robotic and and non-robotic systems are of interest. We welcome contributions concerning results reached from the above mentioned areas of interest, user evaluation and methodologies, as well as reports from the deployment of social robotic solutions into real world contexts. [More information]

Location: Building BC, room BC03

Times: Start: 9:00 am
Morning Break: 11:00am-11:30am
Lunch: 1pm-2pm
Afternoon Break: 4pm-4:30pm
End: 6:00 pm

The role of expectations in intuitive human-robot interaction

Prof. Dr. Verena Hafner, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
E-mail: hafner {at} informatik.hu-berlin.de

Dr. rer. nat. Manja Lohse, (Contact Organizer), Bielefeld University, Germany
E-mail: mlohse {at} techfak.uni-bielefeld.de

Prof. Joachim Meyer, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
E-mail: Joachim {at} bgu.ac.il

Prof. Yukie Nagai, Osaka University, Japan
E-mail: yukie {at} ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp

Dr.-Ing. Britta Wrede, Bielefeld University, Germany
E-mail: bwrede {at} techfak.uni-bielefeld.de

Human interaction is highly intuitive: we infer reactions of our opponents mainly from what we have learned in years of experience and often assume that other people have the same knowledge about certain situations, abilities, and expectations as we do. In human- robot interaction (HRI) we cannot take for granted that this is equally true since HRI is asymmetrical. In other words, robots have different abilities, knowledge, and expectations than humans. They need to react appropriately to human expectations and behaviour. With this respect, scientific advances have been made to date for applications in entertainment and service robotics that largely depend on intuitive interaction. However, HRI today is often still unnatural, slow, and unsatisfactory for the human interlocutor. Both the sensorimotor interaction with environment and interlocutor, and the social aspects of the interaction still need to be researched and improved. Therefore, this full-day workshop aims to bring together researchers from different scientific fields to discuss these crosscutting issues and to exchange views on what are the preconditions and principles of intuitive interaction. [More information]

Location: Building BC, room BC01

Times: Start: 9:00 am
Morning Break: 11:00am-11:30am
Lunch: 1pm-2pm
Afternoon Break: 4pm-4:30pm
End: 6:00 pm

HRI Pioneers Workshop 2011

Thomas Kollar, (Contact Organizer), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Astrid Weiss, PhD University of Salzburg, Austria

Jason Monast, University of Denver, USA

Anja Austermann, PhD SOKENDAI, Japan

David Lu, Washington University of Saint Louis, USA

Mitesh Patel, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Elena Gribovskaya, EPFL, Switzerland

Chandan Datta, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Richard Kelley, University of Nevada, USA

Hirotaka Osawa, PhD Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan

Lanny Lin Brigham, Young University, USA

The field of human-robot interaction is new but growing rapidly. While there are now several established researchers in the field, many of the current human-robotic interaction practitioners are students or recently graduated. This workshop, to be held in conjunction with the HRI 2011 conference, aims to bring together this group of researchers to present their current research to an audience of their peers in a setting that is less formal and more interactive than the main HRI conference; to talk about the important issues in their field; and to hear about what their colleagues are doing. Participants are encouraged to actively engage and form relationships with others by discussing fundamental topics in HRI and by engaging in hands-on group activities. [More information]

Location: Building BC, room BC04 * Please note the room change.

Times: Start: 9:00 am
Morning Break: 11:00am-11:30am
Lunch: 1pm-2pm
Afternoon Break: 4pm-4:30pm
End: 6:00 pm

The field of human-robot interaction is new but growing rapidly. While there are now several established researchers in the field, many of the current human-robotic interaction practitioners are students or recently graduated. This workshop, to be held in conjunction with the HRI 2011 conference, aims to bring together this group of researchers to present their current research to an audience of their peers in a setting that is less formal and more interactive than the main HRI conference; to talk about the important issues in their field; and to hear about what their colleagues are doing. Participants are encouraged to actively engage and form relationships with others by discussing fundamental topics in HRI and by engaging in hands-on group activities.

Below are important dates and the list of organizers. Please visit the HRI Pioneers Workshop website for more information.

Important Dates

• 29 December 2010 – Applications due
• 29 January 2011 – Notification of acceptance
• 7 February 2011 – Submission of final manuscript
• 6 March 2011 – HRI 2011 Young Pioneers Workshop
• 7-9 March 2011 – HRI 2011 Conference

Organizers

• Thomas Kollar, (General Chair) — Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
• Astrid Weiss, PhD (Co-Chair) — University of Salzburg, Austria
• Jason Monast (Finance Chair) — University of Denver, USA
• Anja Austermann, PhD (Website Chair) — SOKENDAI, Japan
• David Lu (Proceedings Chair) — Washington University of Saint Louis, USA
• Mitesh Patel (Communication Chair) — University of Technology Sydney, Australia
• Elena Gribovskaya (Local Organisation Chair) — EPFL, Switzerland
• Chandan Datta (Practical Session Chair) — University of Auckland, New Zealand
• Richard Kelley (Program Committee Chair) — University of Nevada, USA
• Hirotaka Osawa, PhD — Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan
• Lanny Lin (Panel Chair) — Brigham Young University, USA