The theme of HRI 2025, "Robots for a sustainable world", reflects a growing concern that new technologies such as robots should be developed with a mindset of sustainable development and care for resources. In the field of Human-Robot Interaction, we must not only explore how robots can contribute to a more sustainable World but also critically examine the sustainability of our own practices as researchers. 

This workshop aims to engage the HRI community in a critical examination of sustainability within our field. Our approach extends beyond the narrow view of “robots for environmental applications” to consider the multifaceted impact of HRI research and its potential to foster a more  sustainable world — socially, ecologically, and technologically. We provisionally define sustainability in HRI as encompassing two key dimensions:

• Sustainable research practices: resource management, open science, transparency, and ethical considerations throughout the robot design, development, and deployment pipeline.

• HRI’s contribution to global sustainability efforts: how can our field address the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and broader societal challenges? 

Our exploration of these questions is fundamentally motivated by a desire (and, given the state of the world, a pressing need) to engage the HRI community in thinking more broadly about the impact of robot design, development and deployment. We propose that sustainability in HRI is multifaceted and deeply interconnected with real-world needs and ethical responsibilities. Through this perspective, sustainability complements recent movements around e.g. Feminist HRI [1], robots for social justice [2] and critical robotics [3], [4] in addition to broader topics of e.g. the social shaping and politics of technology [5] and trustworthy and socially sustainable artificial intelligence.

Goal

The workshop is designed to achieve several interconnected objectives:

1. Broaden the Concept of Sustainability in HRI: we aim to encourage researchers to think beyond conventional applications and consider the wider impact of our work on society and the planet. 

2. Critical Mapping of HRI Components: participants will examine the entire HRI pipeline through a sustainability lens, reflecting on research practices, resource management, and ethical considerations. 

3. Interdisciplinary Dialogue: we seek to connect HRI back to the “real world” by inviting diverse perspectives, including from non-technical fields and from activists, to address pressing global needs.

That said, we want to do this with care. Climate anxiety is real, and we want to provide a space for researchers, especially early-career scholars, to discuss and navigate the tensions between technological innovation and sustainability concerns, to wrestle with any conflict they might experience between wanting to make the world a better place and the reality of developing resource-intensive technologies —“feature-heavy electronic devices meeting the imaginary needs of imaginary users” [6]. We as researchers can support each other to critically analyze robotic research as a  phenomenon, and explore research methods and approaches that support a sound critical discourse on the role and emergence of robotics in society [3], [4] to address our responsibility in the politics of technology and shaping of society [5].

Through collaborative activities and discussions, we aim to develop a conceptual framework for sustainability in HRI, addressing both the research process itself and its intended outcomes. We hope the workshop can be a first step in developing a community as a site of resilience, change,  reflection, and mutual support.

What to expect

We will conduct a full-day workshop centred around group activities and discussion, and not a "mini-conference". For this reason, please note that we do not have a call for papers: we believe that actionable insights will be gained from having a full day of engaging activities, where everyone's voice can be heard.

This workshop also aims at creating a community that can foster change within, and outside, of HRI, by working together on a "sustainability statement" that encompasses all dimensions of sustainability relevant to HRI, and that can be reused by researchers (akin to an "ethical statement" when conducting user studies). We also plan to write a review paper after the workshop, and we will be happy to include any interested participant who wants to contribute to this work. 

Given the nature of the workshop, where group discussions in the afternoon are built on the basis of the conversation with the invited speakers in the morning, we kindly ask participants to attend the entire workshop.