2nd International Workshop on Worker-Robot Relations
2nd International Workshop on Worker-Robot Relations
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Transdisciplinary Conversations with Workers about Sustainable Futures of Work
Transdisciplinary Conversations with Workers about Sustainable Futures of Work
3rd MARCH | 9:00 - 17:00 | Melbourne Standard Time | HRI 2025
ABOUT
ABOUT
In line with the perspective of Industry 5.0, which sees planetary, societal, and workers’ well-being as central to the future of work, the notion of WRRs invites the HRI community to rethink how we do research and integrate knowledgefrom multiple perspectives beyond efficiency and optimization. To realize this value-oriented, participatory research requires the community to embrace transdisciplinary practices, promoting joint learning among academics and practitioners. In last year's workshop, we identified how WRRs pose exciting challenges to disciplinary theories and practices. To this end, the HRI field should work beyond disciplines and include value-driven and plural perspectives through transdisciplinary research done with and for workers.
This year, our workshop aims to involve the HRI community to understand how to co-create and integrate transdisciplinary knowledge and how to deal with the complexities (eg.: systemic, participatory, process & value framework complexities we have used as the workshop themes) when aiming to shape sustainable work futures. The goals include:
building on last year’s successful workshop, including the emergent community around WRRs
focusing on enacting systemic change in real-world work contexts- leveraging relational and systemic thinking for addressing specific barriers and facilitators to such change
exploring specifics of transdisciplinary knowledge integration
practicing what we preach: working with the diversity of various stakeholder perspectives and needs
We specifically focus on discussing questions on knowledge integration with the workers in these TD processes, as they may have the most to lose and gain. What are the practical considerations to making workers an equal partner, together with team leads, management, innovators and academics? See the themes and the call for contributions below.
Main contact: Micah J. Prendergast - j.m.prendergast@tudelft.nl
Read our position in our workshop proposal paper:
PROGRAM
PROGRAM
We plan a full-day workshop, allowing for both online and in-person attendance, building on last year's approach. Speakers representing both academics and practitioners related to WRRs aim to stimulate fruitful interactions and knowledge integration with workers and workshop participants. Together, we will map various transdisciplinary initiatives known to participants along various sources of complexity - and how this affects sustainable futures of work. The workshop organisers will bring the voices of workers and managers around a case study and solicit reflections from the participants' own experience. This conversation is an opportunity to contest and reflect directly on what is needed to shape sustainable work and what needs to change.
We plan a full-day workshop, allowing for both online and in-person attendance, building on last year's approach. Speakers representing both academics and practitioners related to WRRs aim to stimulate fruitful interactions and knowledge integration with workers and workshop participants. Together, we will map various transdisciplinary initiatives known to participants along various sources of complexity - and how this affects sustainable futures of work. The workshop organisers will bring the voices of workers and managers around a case study and solicit reflections from the participants' own experience. This conversation is an opportunity to contest and reflect directly on what is needed to shape sustainable work and what needs to change.
Keynote speakers
Keynote speakers
Faraz Yousuf
Faraz Yousuf
Robotics Application Engineer
Eli Lilly and Company, USA
Call for Papers Brief
Call for Papers Brief
Participants are invited to submit a one-to-four page position paper related to the future of work with robots. In this second WRR workshop, we focus on learning together that is needed to enact sustainable system-level change in work futures, and what the role of the HRI community is in that. Therefore our workshop aims to engage the workshop participants in meaningful conversations with workers, managers and other practitioners. These conversations are needed to understand and contend with various sources of complexity in enacting change:
SYSTEM COMPLEXITY
SYSTEM COMPLEXITY
WRRs consider the worker(s), organisation(s) and robot(s), but these are all situated in a wider and complex ecology of actors, technologies, institutions, and societal challenges.
What is needed to discover, understand and navigate the larger system in which WRRs occur and get shaped?
What is needed to discover, understand and navigate the larger system in which WRRs occur and get shaped?
PROCESS COMPLEXITY
PROCESS COMPLEXITY
Transdisciplinary practices are process-driven, since outcomes are often emergent. In the context of sustainable change in WRRs futures, the process we envision connects fundamental research, innovation, implementation, adoption and impact assessment. Understanding both intended and unintended consequences of HRI innovations typically happens at the end of this process, when it's too late.
How can collective understanding of potential impact influence the innovation and implementation process at the outset? What expertises and experiences need to be included for accumulating actionable knowledge, and what HRI methodologies are helpful?
How can collective understanding of potential impact influence the innovation and implementation process at the outset? What expertises and experiences need to be included for accumulating actionable knowledge, and what HRI methodologies are helpful?
PARTICIPATORY COMPLEXITY
PARTICIPATORY COMPLEXITY
Developing desirable WRRs that challenge traditional power struggles and respond to workers' needs requires participatory practices. Although participatory practices are extensively used in HRI, the inherent issues of inclusivity and justice (including acknowledging power dynamics and different costs of participation , remain under-explored.
Therefore, how can we involve workers and other key stakeholders in the full WRRs transdisciplinary process, as equal partners in knowledge production, decision-making & change?
COMPLEXITY OF VALUE-FRAMEWORKS
COMPLEXITY OF VALUE-FRAMEWORKS
We believe we need to foster a community of practice, centered around shared values of shaping meaningful, just and viable futures of work. Sustainable futures of work will revolve around potentially conflicting values of being economically viable, but also yielding just and meaningful work. Other values that may shape futures of work include: short-term efficiency thinking, organisational competitiveness, shareholder value.
What kind of values are influential, and what kind of engagements with workers and organisational representatives encourages critical dialogue to unfold in the HRI community around real-world values?
Organizers
Organizers
J. Micah Prendergast is an assistant professor in Human-Robot Interaction at TU Delft in the Cognitive Robotics department. His research interests include Bioaware robotics for rehabilitation and HRI in robotic assisted work processes.
Deborah Forster is a cognitive scientist and researcher in the HRI group of the cognitive robotics department at TU Delft. Currently co-leading FRAIM and practicing transdisciplinary research on the potential of worker-robot relations to share the future of work.
Cristina Zaga is an assistant professor at the Human-Centered Design group at the University of Twente. Her research focuses on transdisciplinarity and relational design methods for just future of work and care.
Maria Luce Lupetti is an assistant professor in Interaction and Critical Design at the Department of Architecture and Design at Politecnico di Torino. Her research is concerned with all matters of human entanglement with the artificial world, especially concerning complex technologies such as AI and robotics.
Dave Murray-Rust is an associate professor in Human-Algorithm Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. He explores the messy terrain between people, data, algorithms, and things through making and thinking to build better futures for humans and AI.
Alessandro Ianniello is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft. His research explores the role speculative practices can play in shaping more desirable futures, where humans and technology coexist as agents.
Frank Vetere is a professor of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. Frank's research interests are in human-centered approaches to AI, interactivity in mixed reality and technologies for aging well.
Eva Verhoef is the innovation lead at fieldlab RoboHouse on the TU Delft campus and is co-leading FRAIM. She has a background in strategic product design, entrepreneurship and worked at Victim Support The Netherlands.
Marco Rozendaal is an associate professor of Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft. His research explores Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) through a performative lens, with a focus on the experiential, relational and situated aspects of interaction.
David Abbink is a full professor in Human-Robot Interaction at TU Delft, at the Cognitive Robotics Department at Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering. He leads FRAIM, the Dutch transdisciplinary research and innovation center for shaping the future of physical work, with and for workers. For this he received the highest Dutch scientific distinction in 2024.
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