user’s Mental mOdels and behaVior in HRI
Final workshop of the TRI-TECH project
TRust in Technology: How to Assess and Improve RoboT-User Interaction
in Elderly Care Integrating EtHical, Technical and Social Variables
The 17th International Conference on Social Robotics, 10-12 September 2025, Naples (IT)
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ASIMOV - Adaptive Social Interaction based on user’s Mental mOdels and behaVior in HRI -
will be held in conjunction with the 17th International Conference on Social Robotics
September 10-12, 2025 - Naples (IT)
The ability to understand and adapt to people’s mental models is a key objective for enabling natural, efficient, and successful human-robot interaction (HRI), in particular in human-centered scenarios where robots are expected to meet people’s social conventions. Theory of mind and mental models are largely investigated in human-computer interactions, however, it is still unclear what level of others’ mental states a robot should be aware of in order to communicate with people in a transparent and socially acceptable way. The ASIMOV workshop will constitute a unique opportunity to gather roboticists, psychologists, and philosophers and computer scientists to discuss a variety of current and new approaches aiming at endowing social robots with learning abilities, enhancing cognitive and social abilities based on mutual understanding.
The ASIMOV Workshop investigates how social robots can engage in meaningful, ethically aware, and cognitively grounded interactions with humans, particularly in sensitive contexts such as education, healthcare, and assistive scenarios. Despite the promise of social robots in such domains, users often remain cautious about employing them due to ethical, psychological, and safety concerns as well as a lack of trust in such technologies. Addressing these acceptability challenges requires considering not only individual psychological and behavioral factors, but also emergent group dynamics in the design of social interactions, integrating insights from ethics, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology. Central to this exploration is the question of how robots can be designed and behave to respect and respond to human values, expectations, and vulnerabilities. To achieve natural and effective human-robot interaction (HRI), robots must be endowed with learning and real-time adaptation abilities to perceive and interpret users’ mental states, navigate group dynamics in teamwork scenarios, while explicitly taking into account social and ethical rules. Beyond functional alignment, we seek to understand how socio-cognitive architectures, adaptive behaviors, and affective signals can support morally appropriate engagement—avoiding manipulation, misunderstanding, or dehumanization. This requires not only technical innovation, but also a reflective framework that integrates perspectives from ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of mind. Recent research shows that these capabilities are essential to bridge the gap between user expectations and the robot’s actual behavior, enhancing mutual understanding, engagement, and interaction efficiency. Robots' acceptability increases when they can understand and meet people'sexpectations during HRI. By equipping robots with moral, social and cognitive skills, which may be integrated through AI supports, they can convey contextually appropriate affective and social signals in an intelligent and readable way. From the mutual comprehension of mental states, an effective HRI can emerge, allowing human partners to suspend disbelief and fostering trust, partnership, and acceptability.
The ASIMOV Workshop brings together interdisciplinary experts in robotics, AI, cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy to explore the design of socially assistive robots that are cognitively competent in modeling both individual mental states and complex group dynamics, while being ethically informed and norm-aware. Focusing on sensitive domains such as education, healthcare, and assistive technologies, the workshop emphasizes integrating socio-cognitive architectures with normative frameworks to ensure robots respect human values, autonomy, and dignity. Key topics include individual and multi-user interaction modeling, moral agency, and mechanisms for real-time ethical adaptation, all aimed at fostering trustworthy, human-centered human-robot interaction grounded in moral psychology and philosophy of mind.
We aim to bring together a diverse audience from the fields of social and assistive robotics, cognitive and behavioral robotics, and HRI. The workshop will serve as a platform for exchanging ideas, discussing innovative concepts, and addressing unresolved issues in ongoing research. We encourage the participation of PhD students and young researchers working on user modeling, HRI and control interfaces, machine learning, and ethical aspects of human-machine interaction, among others.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
Mental models in HRI
Human-aware perception-action loop
Emotion and intention recognition
Affective and ethical adaptation
Groups, teams and emergent states
Group dynamics and fairness
Multi-user collaborative robots
Empathy and Theory of Mind in Robotics
Mutual affective understanding
Real-time monitoring of behavior and mental states
Detection of non-verbal behavioral cues
Multimodality in human-robot interaction
Autonomy and responsibility
Robots with personality
Online adaptive behavior
Acceptability and personalization
Physiological monitoring and biofeedback systems
BCI (brain-computer interfaces)-enabled adaptive interaction
Objective metrics and scales for evaluation of HRI
Human partnership and trust in HRI
Explainable AI in HRI
Security and safety in HRI
Robot ethics and moral philosophy
Value-sensitive design
Assistive and educational robotics
Human dignity and ethics of care in HRI
Prof. Paolo Dario, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, IT will join the workshop as invited speaker.
Prof. Giovanna Varni, University of Trento, IT will join the workshop as invited speaker.
Prof. Marlena R. Fraune New Mexico State University, US will join the panel session.