General topic. In 2006 Gianmarco Veruggio proposed a roadmap outlining research paths and providing guidelines for the future ethics of robotics. Since then, new challenges for contemporary society have arisen. The current climate emergency has focused our collective attention on environmental, social, and political issues concerning the health of our planet. The apparent urgency of these issues is leading researchers in the field of social robotics to explore the possible advantages of using its innovative technologies for sustainability. The evolution of robotics and its progressive integration into society have made it a fundamental tool for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. Robots can support sustainability across several areas: fighting climate change, recycling, reducing pollution and energy waste, monitoring the water quality of the ocean, etc. The compelling question this workshop wants to bring to the scientific community’s attention is: What is and can be the role of Social Robotics and HRI in achieving these goals?

Objectives. The workshop aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum in which experts and researchers in sustainability and robotics can investigate and discuss the potential, the limits, and the future of our interactions with social robots in order to use them as tools for sustainability. Our main goal is twofold:

·     Firstly, we want to promote the possibility of shaping human-robot interactions to support sustainability, both in its social and environmental aspects. In particular, we propose to explore new applications of Social Robotics to deploy the potential of the field to increase sustainability. With the workshop we intend to tackle this issue not just from technical, but also from theoretical, epistemological, social, and ethical points of view, to focus the attention of academia on sustainability issues that could be better considered within Social Robotics and HRI research programs.

·    Secondly, we target the creation of a scientific community engaged in building a roadmap on Social Robotics for Sustainability. We hope that this workshop can gather environmental engineers, social human-robot interaction experts, robot designers, and scholars in human sciences and ethics to collaborate in designing the next generation of social robots for sustainability.

Main research questions. Our workshop aims to propose a dialogue in which the participants can discuss several aspects of Social Robotics and sustainability, based on questions including, but not limited to, the following:

1. How can the interaction with social robots help us to rethink a new ecological and ethical way of living?

2. What robot prototypes can we imagine that are useful for sustainability? What features should they have? What design?

3. Can we develop robotic technologies and applications that interact with humans and at the same time can contribute to sustainability and the green transition?

4. Could we build robots in a more sustainable way? (e.g., with recyclable, reconditioned, or environmentally friendly materials) Could they work with renewable energy sources?

5. To what extent should a robot influence human behavior, even if it is for a noble purpose such as environmental sustainability?

6. What are the groundings, possibilities, limits, and expected results, of current research programs involving sustainability in Social Robotics and HRI research?

7. What are the possible ethical implications of such an invasive technology on people’s behavior?

8. What principles should be included in the design of next-generation social robots and human-robot (social) interactions?

Structure of the workshop. Our workshop will have two different parts. The first part is dedicated to presentations and focuses on sharing information and ideas on how to use social robots for sustainability. We plan to have 4 brief invited talks (hypothetically: 20 min + 5 min Q/A), and to select, through a call and related review process, 4 speakers for short talks (hypothetically: 15 min + 3 min Q/A). The second part of the workshop intends to create a roadmap for Social Robotics and sustainability. In order to build the roadmap, we will use the Three Horizons Framework introduced by Bill Sharp to question the future of Social Robotics and the ethical aspects of it. During this phase all the authors and attendees will contribute actively to ground the roadmap, which will be published in future work (cf. the ‘Publication Plans’ section).