[Amdnl] Deadline extension: HRI 2014 Workshop on HRI: a bridge between Robotics and Neuroscience

[Yukie Nagai]

Apologies for cross-posting

Due to several requests, we have extended the submission deadline to 
January 20th.

==============================================================
Workshop “HRI: a bridge between Robotics and Neuroscience”, at HRI 2014, 
Bielefeld, DE
==============================================================
Workshop: March 3, 2014
Submission deadline: January 20, 2014 (extended)
Notification of acceptance: January 27, 2014
Website: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~kl360/HRI2014W/
==============================================================

INVITED SPEAKERS
---------------

- Prof. Malinda Carpenter, University of St Andrews on research leave at 
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
- Prof. Luciano Fadiga, Italian Institute of Technology
- Prof. Giulio Sandini, Italian Institute of Technology
- Prof. Brian Scassellati, Yale University

A fundamental challenge for robotics is to transfer the human natural 
social skills to the interaction with a robot. At the same time, 
neuroscience and psychology are still investigating the mechanisms 
behind the development of human-human interaction. HRI becomes therefore 
an ideal contact point for these different disciplines, as the robot can 
join these two research streams by serving different roles. From a 
robotics perspective, the study of interaction is used to implement 
cognitive architectures and develop cognitive models, which can then be 
tested in real world environments.

 From a neuroscientific perspective, robots could represent an ideal 
stimulus to establish an interaction with human partners in a controlled 
manner and make it possible studying quantitatively the behavioral and 
neural underpinnings of both cognitive and physical interaction. 
Ideally, the integration of these two approaches could lead to a 
positive loop: the implementation of new cognitive architectures may 
raise new interesting questions for neuroscientists, and the behavioral 
and neuroscientific results of the human-robot interaction studies could 
validate or give new inputs for robotics engineers. However, the 
integration of two different disciplines is always difficult, as often 
even similar goals are masked by difference in language or methodologies 
across fields. The aim of this workshop will be to provide a venue for 
researchers of different disciplines to discuss and present the possible 
point of contacts, to address the issues and highlight the advantages of 
bridging the two disciplines in the context of the study of interaction.

LIST OF TOPICS
-------------

- Human Robot Interaction
- Cognitive Models
- Development of Social Cognition
- Neural bases of Interaction
- Cognitive and Physical Interaction
- Social Signals

FORMAT AND SUBMISSIONS
-----------------------

The workshop will consist of invited keynotes, time for discussions and 
will also feature a poster session.

Prospective participants are invited to submit full papers (8 pages) or 
short papers (2 pages). Submissions will be accepted in PDF format only, 
using the HRI formatting guidelines and including author names. Authors 
should send their papers to hri2014workshop at gmail.com. All submissions 
will be peer-reviewed. Upon available time, selected contributions may 
have the opportunity to be presented in the oral session. The other 
selected contributions will be presented as posters during a dedicated 
session.

Accepted publications will be published on our workshop web page. 
Depending on the overall quality of the contributions, we might consider 
proposing a Special Issue to journal in the near future.

Authors will have the option of opting out from including their reports 
in the website. Information on the opt-out option will be provided along 
with the acceptance notice for the papers.

In addition to the submission  participants have to answer one of the 
following questions:

- Which outcomes should provide neuroscientific research to be useful to 
robotics? And vice versa? Can descriptive results be enough or a 
modelling is necessary for a positive communication to exist?
- How can robotics research contribute to/influence neuroscience and/or 
psychology? Although there are many robotics studies inspired by 
evidences obtained in neuroscience and/or psychology, the impact of 
robotics on neuroscience or psychology is less evident, especially the 
modelling research. What can roboticists do to cause a paradigm shift?
- Where the bridge between robotics and neuroscience is more useful, and 
where is it not (or less)? E.g., very useful for social robotics, less 
useful for algorithm design (or not?)
- How this bridge should be built? At the level of the single individual 
(i.e. a person with multidisciplinary background), at the level of a 
group (i.e., a group of people with different backgrounds), at the level 
of a department (with different labs meeting once in a while) or a mix 
of the previous?

Upon available time, those questions/answers will be used to "drive" a 
final discussion.

IMPORTANT DATES
----------------

Submission deadline: January 20, 2014 (extended)
Notification of acceptance: January 27, 2014
Workshop at HRI 2014: March 3, 2014

ORGANIZERS
-----------

- Alessandra Sciutti, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
- Katrin Solveig Lohan, Heriot-Watt University
- Yukie Nagai, Osaka University


-- 
Yukie Nagai, Ph.D.
Specially Appointed Associate Professor, Osaka University
Visiting Researcher, Bielefeld University
yukie at ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
http://cnr.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/~yukie/