13:30 - 13:45
Welcome (15 min)
Workshop organizers will provide a summary of the goals and objectives of the workshop.
13:45- 14:15
Invited Speaker (30 min): Developing intelligent and persuasive socially assistive robots for wellbeing and health of older adults
Goldie Nejat, Ph.D., P.Eng., FASME
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Robots for Society
Director of the Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory (ASBLab)
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
University of Toronto
14:15- 14:50
DEI Student Pioneers: Spotlight Presentations (15 min) & Panel Discussion (20 min)
Lena Fiedler - Gendered Robots Shape Gender Stereotypes, Norms and Justice: An Analysis based on Nussbaum’s Theory of Justice
Alicia Mitchell - Co-Designing Multimodal Experiences with People with Intellectual Disability and Social Robots in Supported Environments
Ridhima Phatak and Zhao Han - Physical Protectives to Mitigate Female Robot Abuse
14:50- 15:00
Poster Lightning Talks (10 min)
Jessica Barfield - Robot Ethnic Identity and the Design of Inclusive Interfaces for Human-Robot Interaction
Amol Deshmukh, Mary Ellen Foster and Emily Cross - Designing for Equity: A Cross-Cultural Study of a Social Robot - ``WallBo'' for Handwashing Promotion in Diverse Socio-Economic Contexts
Zoe Evans, Muhammad Abdul Basit Malik, Matteo Leonetti, Gerard Canal and Martim Brandao - Towards Inclusive Robot Competitions
Lena Fiedler and Sabine Ammon - Rethinking Accessibility for Robots in Public Spaces
Raj Korpan - Encoding Inequity: Examining Demographic Bias in LLM-Driven Robot Caregiving
Ruchira Ray, Leona Pang, Sanjana Srivastava, Li Fei-Fei, Samantha Shorey and Roberto Martín-Martín - Why Automate This? Exploring the Connection between Time Use, Well-being and Robot Automation Across Social Groups
Wenxi Wu, Michelle Nwachukwu, Atmadeep Ghoshal, Madeleine Waller and Martim Brandão - Dimensions of Diversity in Robot Datasets: Literature Analysis and Recommendations
15:00 - 15:30
Coffee Break & Poster Session
15:30 - 16:00
Invited Speaker (30 min): Cultural Power in Robotics: Escaping the White Patriarchal Robot Imaginary
Tom Williams, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Computer Science | Robotics | Humanitarian Engineering
Director, MIRRORLab
Colorado School of Mines
16:00 - 16:50
Town Hall (50 min)
Participants will engage in a whole-group discussion that will bring the community together to talk about how to advance DEI efforts in HRI.
16:50 - 17:00
Wrap-up and Closing Remarks (10 min)
We will close the workshop with some final remarks and discuss passing the mic for future workshops.