Call for Papers
What happens when robots fail?
How does this impact human expectations of social robots?
What if encountering a robot who is a little less than perfect might actually make it more relatable?
Focusing on failure as a way to improve human-robot interactions represents a novel approach that calls into question human expectations of robots, as well as posing ethical and methodological challenges to researchers. In this space, interdisciplinary conversations are the key to untangling these challenges and bringing themes of power and context into view. We welcome authors and participants from multiple fields including, but not limited to, Social Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Design, Philosophy, Psychology, Science & Technology Studies, Media Studies and Gender Studies.
Topics for discussion at this half-day workshop might include:
Methods for studying failure (both robotic failures, but also ways of understanding human responses to failure)
Failures as a way to explore norms around assumed bodies and behaviours in the human-robot interaction
Detecting failure – how can a robot know it has failed?
Different kinds of failures – recognition, proximity, mechanical – and the impact on the interaction
Human tolerance for robotic failure – precise measurements for industrial robots (target radius, for example) as compared to social robots where what counts as “failure” may be harder to define
Popular culture representations of robots and user assumptions – the gap between fiction and reality
Too good to be true? The uncanny valley, likeability and warts on the noses of our robots
Cross-cultural studies on failures exploring how failures might be sanctioned differently in different cultures
Affective “scaffolding” performed by other humans: helping us to interact with failing robots
The normalization of failure in the robotics community: when does failure become an issue and when is it just “business as usual”?
Planning for failure "in the wild"
Submission format
Abstracts (2-4 pages in length, including references) must be submitted in PDF format. All submissions must follow the ACM/IEEE HRI template. Templates are available at this link (US letter). Papers will be reviewed for their relevance, novelty, and scientific and technical soundness. Submissions do not need to be anonymized. All accepted papers will be linked to the workshop website. We require at least one author to be registered for and attend the workshop for all accepted papers. Papers should be submitted via Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=imprr2023
Please feel free to reach out if you have questions to: failure.ws2023@gmail.com
Important dates:
Deadline for abstract submission: 14th of February 2023 31 January 2023
Decisions on abstract acceptance: 28th of February 2023 14 February 2023
Deadline for accepted authors to upload a 2-minute “teaser” presentation: 6 March 2023
Workshop: 13 March 2023, at HRI ’23, in Stockholm, Sweden.