EqRoW advances the conversation on equitable robotics for wellbeing by bringing together technical, design, and social-science perspectives to address how robots can be designed, deployed, and evaluated to serve marginalized and vulnerable communities (e.g., children, elderly, neurodivergent, disabled, and LGBTQ+ people). We foreground equity as a practical design and evaluation goal—moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches toward methods that recognise diverse needs, mitigate bias and harm, and promote accessibility, privacy, and dignity across contexts such as schools, homes, workplaces, and care settings. 

We invite authors to submit their contributions as 3-4 page (plus additional pages for references and appendices) papers, highlighting their experimental results, technical reports, and case studies focused on Equitable Robotics for Wellbeing. We also invite researchers to submit position articles as 1-2 page extended abstracts (posters). These accepted poster submissions will be presented as lightning talks during the dedicated poster session at the workshop. All submissions will be peer-reviewed for their novelty, relevance, contribution to the field, and technical soundness.

The workshop welcomes contributions from following themes (but not limited to):

Ethical, Social, and Justice Perspectives:

• Ethical considerations of robotics for wellbeing

• Justice-centred approaches to engineering and design

• Fairness, bias detection, and mitigation in HRI

• User-centred explainability and transparency

Designing for Marginalised and Vulnerable Communities:

• Robotics for wellbeing in elderly care

• Robotics for wellbeing in childhood and education

• Inclusive robotics for LGBTQ+ communities

• Assistive and advocacy-focused robotics for disabled users

• Robotics for neurodivergent populations

Methods and Approaches:

• Ethical user-centred design paradigms

• Participatory and co-design methodologies

• Interdisciplinary approaches to equitable robotics

• Impact evaluation in real-world contexts

• Policy and sustainability aspects of robotics for wellbeing

Submission Guidelines

Submissions may present work-in-progress research, position papers, and summaries of already published research that are relevant to the above themes. Since our aim is to discuss and learn from one another, this allows topics that you think should be discussed in a interdisciplinary group. 

All papers must be in the IEEE ACM Conference format, the same as the main track at the HRI conference. All papers for the workshop must be submitted in PDF format and conform to ACM Proceedings specifications. Please note that we are following the general ACM SIG format (“sigconf”, double column format), not the SIGCHI format. Templates are available at this link (US letter).

Submit your paper here!

Abstracts will not be anonymous but will be anonymously reviewed by at least two organisers, ensuring no conflict of interest. Authors of accepted papers will present at the workshop, either online or face-to-face. We will post the camera-ready versions of all accepted extended abstracts on the website as archival workshop proceedings.  Please note that the workshop papers will not be on the main conference proceedings.