Close-proximity human-robot collaboration (HRC) has the potential to help address pressing societal needs including flexible manufacturing, construction, logistics, and home care. In this workshop, we aim to promote and characterize close-proximity HRC as a new field of research, which we define as an interaction in which the human and the robot are co-located in space and time and continuously share large portions of their operational space. Modern robots lack the necessary capabilities (i.e., sensing, perception, control, and intelligence) to operate in close proximity with people, and there exists a technological barrier that prevents researchers in HRC from advancing the state-of-the-art. We argue that close-proximity HRC is i) an under-explored area of research, ii) key to the emergence of complex, rich, and flexible human-robot collaboration, and iii) an enabling technology for robots to respond to the pressing societal needs (COVID-19 pandemic among others) of modern society.
With this workshop, we aim at identifying the research needs to advance knowledge in the field, and in particular: a) understanding human-human and human-robot collaboration in conditions of task needs and space constraints; b) identifying novel capabilities needed for robots to safely and effectively operate in close proximity with people; c) bringing together the modeling of a) and the technology of b) to tackle HRC problems that revolve around realistic interactions that were not possible before. This workshop (hopefully, the first of many) is both timely and forward-looking in that it will identify current bottlenecks and propose future directions of work.
Perception, control, and planning in close-proximity environments
Sensors for enabling close-proximity interaction
Sensors for human safety
State estimation and sensor fusion for close-proximity HRC
Safety in physical human-robot interaction
Task allocation
Modeling and prediction of human interactions in close proximity environments
Prediction of human movement/actions in close proximity
Coordination Modeling
Team communication, task transparency
Collaborative systems to enable co-located human-robot teaming
Shared software and hardware infrastructures/tools
Evaluation of close-proximity human-robot collaboration
Trust in human-robot teaming when operating in close proximity
Future directions and opportunities
April 15, 2022 - Applications Open
May 27, 2022 June 3, 2022 - Submission Deadline
June 17, 2022 - Notification of acceptance
June 21th, 2022 - Camera-ready deadline
July 1st, 2022 - Close Proximity Human-Robot Collaboration Workshop
What do we aim to accomplish during this workshop?
University of California
Berkeley
Cornell Tech
National University of Singapore
Carnegie Mellon University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Carnegie Mellon University
University of Washington and Amazon
Technical University of Munich