AI-HRI

Introduction

This symposium will bring together and strengthen the community of researchers working on the AI challenges inherent to Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

Humans and human environments bring with them inherent uncertainty in dynamics, structure, and interaction. HRI aims to develop robots that are intelligent, autonomous, and capable of interacting with, modeling, and learning from humans. These goals are at the core of AI.

The field of HRI is a broad community encompassing robotics, AI, HCI, psychology and social science. In this meeting we aim to specifically bring together the subset of this community that are focused on the AI problems of HRI. Currently this type of HRI work is seen across such a variety of venues (HRI, RSS, ICRA, IROS, Ro-Man, RoboCup, and more), that we lack a cohesive core community. Building this community is the central purpose of this symposium.

Important dates

Submission: July 16, 2014. Submit your extended abstract via email as a pdf to ai-hri-symposium-submissions@googlegroups.com. The abstracts should be 2 pages in length, but OK for references to spill onto a 3rd page.

Notifications: August 15, 2014.

Camera-ready version of Accepted Submissions: By September 10, 2014. These versions of the extended abstracts will be collected into a technical report for the symposium attendees.

The symposium will be held Nov 13-15, 2014 in Arlington, VA, USA.

Keynote talks “How is HRI an AI problem?”: We will have keynotes giving eight different perspectives about how AI research is going to bring us closer to the reality of humans interacting with robots on everyday tasks.

Breakout groups + panel discussions: these discussions will be focused on (1) defining a road map of grand challenges for this research area, and (2) what is the core venue for this community.

Poster session: This session will highlight state-of-the-art work and approaches to AI-HRI.

Team building: Given the diverse set of venues that this type of research is presented, it is very rare that members of the AI-HRI community get together in the same room. As such, a large part of this effort is to bring together a community of researchers, strengthen old connections and build new ones. Ample time will be provided for networking and informal discussions.

Invited Keynote Speakers

Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics)

Brian Scassellati  (Yale University)

Michael Goodrich (Brigham Young University)

Benjamin Kuipers (University of Michigan)

Maja J. Mataric (University of Southern California)

Manuela Veloso  (Carnegie Mellon University)

Schedule

November 13

9:00-9:10 Welcome, introductions
9:10-9:55 Lightning Research Talks
9:55-10:30 Invited talk: Manuela Veloso
10:40-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-11:55 Lightning Research Talks
11:55-12:30 Invited talk: Brian Scassellati
12:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-2:55 Lightning Research Talks
2:55-3:30 Invited talk: Maja Mataric
3:30-4:00 Coffee break
4:00-5:30 Breakout session and discussion
6:00-7:00 Fall Symposium Reception

November 14

9:00 - 9:55 Lightning Research Talks
9:55 - 10:30 Invited talk: Rodney Brooks
10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 - 11:45 Funding panel
11:45 - 12:20 Invited talk: Michael Goodrich
12:20 - 2:00 Lunch
2:00 - 2:35 Panel discussion: Jacob Crandall, Julie Shah, Shlomo Zilberstein and Julie Adams
2:35 - 3:30 Break out session and discussion
3:30 - 4:00 Coffee Break
4:00 - 4:35 Invited talk: Benjamin Kuipers
4:45 - 5:30 Break out session and discussion
5:30 Wrap up
6:00 - 7:00 AAAI Fall Symposia Plenary Session

November 15

9:00-12:00 (optional) Working group meeting to draft roadmap for the field of AI-HRI

The schedule of Lightning Research Talks is available here.

Organizing Committee

Andrea L. Thomaz  (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Sonia Chernova  (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

Kris Hauser  (Indiana University)