RO-MAN 2018 Workshop on

Human-Robot Interaction through Virtual Reality (HRI-VR)

Object of the workshop

We can recently use various kinds of devices for virtual/augmented/mixed reality such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Play Station VR, Microsoft HoloLens and so on. These devices are currently applied to game systems, entertainment products and so on; however, the potential of the devices also have a great influence on research on human-robot interaction. With the help of recent motion measurement technologies, we can log in to an avatar in virtual reality. Thus the interaction between virtual robot agents and real humans is easily available on such VR systems. Conventional robotics research using virtual space tends to focus on the dynamics simulation of physical behavior of robot systems; however, analysis of cognitive and social human-robot interaction in VR space would also be attractive applications as new trends. For example, the SIGVerse system released by the organizer has already applied to robot competitions to evaluate and promote a new type of tasks which require cognitive and social human-robot interaction ability.

In this workshop, we’d like to discuss how to build such Virtual/Augmented/Mixed reality system to promote human-robot interaction research, and exchange cutting-edge research topics from an interdisciplinary point of views. ‘Human-Robot Interaction’ in this workshop does not focus only on conventional robot systems but includes a variety of applications such as teleoperation of semi-autonomous robots, tele-existence systems, rehabilitation systems, haptic human interfaces for VR application and so on.

We invite contributions in the following topics that are indicative but by no means exhaustive:

  • Virtual reality for human-robot interaction
  • Augmented / Mixed reality for assistive systems
  • Human and virtual agent interaction
  • Cyber physical systems for human-robot interaction
  • Robot competition using robot simulator
  • Robot simulation for interaction/collaboration with human
  • Virtual/Augmented/Mixed reality for interactive systems
  • Multimodal sensor collection and learning in VR/AR/MR
  • Teleoperation of semi-autonomous robots
  • Teleexistence
  • Intelligent Space / Smart House
  • Haptic Interface in Virtual Environment
  • Rehabilitation Systems based on VR/AR/MR

In the poster session, we welcome interactive demonstration using actual VR/AR/MR systems. We accelerate discussion and exchange of acknowledgement through real experience on the demonstration.

Workshop Vanue

Room 206 at the RO-MAN 2018 conference venue

The Jiangsu International Conference Center, (江蘇省會議中心)

which is the same location as the Nanjing Zhongshan Hotel (南京鐘山賓館)

Address: 307 Zhongshan East Road, Nanjing

Organizers

  • Tetsunari Inamura (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
  • Kazuhiro Nakadai (Honda Research Institute Japan Co., Ltd., Japan)
  • Michita Imai (Keio University, Japan)
  • Masashi Konyo (Tohoku University, Japan)
  • Feng DUAN (Nankai University, China)

Invited Speaker

  • Kouta Minamizawa (Keio University Graduate School of Media Design / JST ACCEL Embodied Media project)

Title: Expanding Human Embodied Interaction with Haptic Technologies

  • Yoshinobu Hagiwara (Ritsumeikan University)

Title: Large Scale Learning System of Multimodal Spatial Concept using Immersive VR Environments

  • Jeffrey Chuan Too TAN (Nankai University)

Title: Learning of Embodied Collaborative Behaviors in Cyber-Physical Human-Robot Interaction with Immersive User Interfaces

  • Yoshiaki Mizuchi (National Institute of Informatics)

Title: Simulation platform for evaluation of human-robot communication behavior in immersive VR