QISAR 2020

Welcome to the Second Edition of the Quality of Interaction in Socially Assistive Robots Workshop! Our Previous Edition can be found here.

This half-day workshop will focus on the quality of interaction in socially assistive robots.

Socially assistive robots (SAR) are entering our everyday lives, which brings about human-robot interactions across in diverse settings including private homes, workplaces, health care centers, schools, and public spaces. To facilitate successful interaction between humans and robots, it is essential that the interaction between robots and their users be of high quality; not only to ensure that the interaction is natural for the users but also to prevent misunderstandings by the users with potential harm as a result.

The workshop aims to be a forum for discussion on what defines the quality of interaction from a range of different perspectives. It will be an opportunity to discuss methodologies and approaches to achieve a high quality of interaction, as well as how to combine different qualitative and quantitative metrics for a general evaluation of interaction between SAR and their users. This workshop aims to enhance our knowledge of the quality of human-robot interactions to lead better HRI.

We invite researchers from different backgrounds ranging from psychology, sociology, computer vision, human-robot interaction design, natural language processing, machine learning, neuroscience, ethics and robotics, among others. It will be an excellent opportunity for sharing the ideas towards understanding the quality of interaction in SAR and potentially define guidelines for a standardized definition and evaluation.

Authors are invited to submit original, previously unpublished research papers written in English. All submitted papers will be reviewed by two reviewers from the program committee. All accepted papers will appear on the workshop website. The extended versions of the accepted papers will be invited to SPECIAL ISSUE on Human-Robot Interaction Quality on Interaction Studies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Evaluation of human-robot interaction quality
• Static/dynamic factors affecting human-robot interaction quality
• Interaction modalities (verbal and non-verbal)
• Understandable and explainable robots
• Human factors affecting the quality of interaction in HRI
• Human-centered design
• Interaction dynamics in HRI
• Theories, models, methodologies, and tools for developing quality of interaction in HRI
• Objective measures for evaluating quality of interaction
• Human-in-the-loop approaches
• Engagement in socially assistive robots