The Workshop BAILAR  (Behavior Adaptation and Learning for Assistive Robotics) will be held

in conjunction with the 33rd International Conference on Robots & Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN 2024), 

26- 30 August, 2024, Pasadena, California (USA).

SCIENTIFIC CONTEXT and OBJECTIVES

Originating from its historical roots, the focal points of the BAILAR Workshop revolve around Behavior Adaptation, Interaction, and Learning for Assistive Robotics. Over the years, this workshop has delved into various topics aimed at understanding and adapting robot behavior to suit assistive scenarios. Particularly, emphasis has been placed on topics pertaining to Mutual affective understanding and Theory of Mind (ToM) between humans and robots.

Mutual affective understanding serves as a cornerstone for achieving successful, acceptable, and intelligent social human-robot interaction (HRI). This entails embracing novel paradigms in robotic control systems. These paradigms not only enable robots to interpret human observable behaviors and internal/emotional states to anticipate and adapt to subsequent reactions but also aid humans in interpreting and anticipating the robot’s state, intentions, and future actions through legible behavior designed around the emotional dimension of communication. It is crucial to equip robots with the capability to comprehend how human partners perceive the world and the robot itself, thus enabling better understanding and generation of behaviors comprehensible to humans.

Furthermore, robots should possess the ability to display affective and social responses in a clear manner for humans, thereby facilitating acceptability and efficient human-machine communication, especially in the realm of Socially and Assistive Robotics (SAR), where interactions often involve disabled or vulnerable individuals. Additionally, robots can alleviate the workload and physical contact of healthcare specialists, particularly benefiting situations where elderly or vulnerable individuals are susceptible to infection. Ensuring positive feelings and acceptance while providing necessary assistance underscores the significance of intelligent and empathic socially assistive robots.

In this context, it is imperative to consider the impact of verbal and non-verbal emotional social cues of the robot on the user's affective state during interaction. While robots can provide assistance to individuals with disabilities, their actions must be tailored to individual needs and expectations to prevent triggering negative emotions, such as stress or discomfort, which could be counterproductive. Robots could leverage affect-sensing capabilities to learn and adapt their behavior to better suit individuals and enhance learnability and acceptability through inclusive interaction.

The upcoming edition of the BAILAR Workshop aims to explore the mutual understanding of affective/emotional states between robots and humans, alongside learning and user adaptation within HRI. Methodologies and technologies for detecting and adapting to users’ mental states, emotions, and dispositions during HRI will be presented and discussed. Experimental protocols and results may shed light on potential effects of gender, age, personality, and pathology on robot perception from an emotional and affective standpoint, alongside ethical considerations regarding the acquisition and utilization of personal data within assistive applications.

List of Topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Online adaptive behavior

• Acceptability and personalization in HRI

• User and behavior modeling for adaptation

• Emotion and intention recognition

• Multimodal interfaces for emotion recognition

• Affective and emotional robots

• Empathy in robotics

• Mutual affective communication

• Affective computing in SAR

• Internal state monitoring

• Detection of verbal and non-verbal behavioral cues

• Lifelong (or continual) learning and adaptation methods in HRI

• Short-term personalization in HRI

• Incremental and online learning in HRI

• Robot behavior explainability and legibility

• Theory of Mind in Robotics

• Understandable Communication

• Ethical Aspects of Affective HRI communication and personalization in SAR

• Evaluation metrics for adaptive robot behavior                                                                                                                                                                                               

NEWS

• The Deadline for paper submission has been extended: 7th of June 2024