Robo-Identity: Exploring Artificial Identity and Emotion via Speech Interactions

Sapporo, Japan, March 6, 2022 (Virtual Event)

Co-located with the 2022 International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2022)

Following the success of the first edition of Robo-Identity, the second edition will provide an opportunity to expand the discussion about artificial identity. This year, we are focusing on emotions that are expressed through speech and voice. Synthetic voice of robots can resemble and is becoming indistinguishable from expressive human voice. This can be an opportunity and a constraint in expressing emotional speech that can (falsely) convey a human-like identity that can mislead people, leading to ethical issues. How should we envision an agent’s artificial identity? In what ways should we have robots that maintain a machine-like stance, e.g., through robotic speech, or should emotional expressions that are increasingly human-like be seen as design opportunities? These are not mutually exclusive concerns. As this discussion needs to be conducted in a multidisciplinary manner, we welcome perspectives on challenges and opportunities from fields of ethics, design, and engineering. For this year’s edition, the special theme will be “speech, emotion and artificial identity”.

Authors are invited to submit their papers as Extended Abstracts with short bios (2 to 3 pages). Papers can be of exploratory or philosophical nature, as well as reflective writing on authors' past works that relates to identity and emotion.

Format (Covid-19)

As for HRI 2022, the workshop will take place online. More information will be communicated approaching the event.