The 3rd Workshop on Public Space Human-Robot Interaction (PubRob 2016)

Held as part of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2016)
New York City, USA
27 August 2016 

Workshop overview

The development of robots capable of interacting with humans has made tremendous progress in the last decade, leading to an expectation that in the near future, robots will be increasingly deployed in public spaces, for example as receptionists, shop assistants, waiters, or bartenders. In these scenarios, robots must necessarily deal with situations that require socially appropriate human-robot interactions of a specific nature: interactions that are short and dynamic, and where the robot has to be able to deal with multiple people at once. In order to do so, robots typically require specific skills, including robust video and audio processing, fast reasoning and decision making mechanisms, and natural and safe output path planning algorithms. As a result, research on public space robots is often fundamentally different from other work in social robotics and HRI that focuses on long-term, robot companions who interact with humans in one-on-one interactions.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines, in order to explore this research area from different perspectives. To allow for a full and productive discussion among all participants, the workshop will include an extended session organised using the Open Space meeting format.

This workshop is the fourth in a series of meetings (and the third workshop) organised around the theme of public space human-robot interaction.

Invited speakers

Frauke Zeller, School of Professional Communication, Ryerson University, Canada
David Harris Smith, Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia, McMaster University, Canada
Bilge Mutlu, Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Papers and slides

Organisers

Manuel Giuliani, University of Salzburg, Austria
Mary Ellen Foster, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Ron Petrick, Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom