Augmentative Human-Robot Interaction workshop-IROS 2025

2025 IROS workshop:

Augmentative Human-Robot Interaction: From Human Augmentation to Human-Inspired Collaboration

24th October, 2pm-6pm, Room 206, workshop ID: 4811

Hangzhou International Expo Center (HIEC), Hangzhou, China

About the workshop

Robotic technology has significantly enhanced human capabilities across various domains. It is interesting and also essential to continuously consider the relationship between humans and robots, ensuring their interaction maximizes mutual benefits while minimizing any negative effects. Augmentative human-robot interaction goes beyond conventional assistive robotics by extending a person’s physical, cognitive, or sensory abilities through wearable robotic technologies. These advancements allow individuals to perform tasks that would be impossible using only their own bodies. Beyond that, robots can also extend human action and perception into remote or extreme environments that are not accessible for human. Robots are becoming more intelligent, enabling them to adapt to and collaborate with human operators as partners through shared control and intention prediction. Moreover, human-robot interaction is not limited to low-level actions and perception. It also extends to high-level communication, including persuasion and emotional influence, enabling robots to engage with humans in more intuitive and meaningful ways.

This half-day workshop will present state-of-the-art findings on augmentation technologies for human-robot interaction, covering a range of topics including wearable robotic interfaces, human-robot shared control to improve performance in teleoperation, and communication with human-like robots. We will bring together experts in this field and facilitate extensive interactions throughout the workshop. It will consist of two modules; i) human perception and action augmentation with robotic assistance; ii) Human-robot shared control and bidirectional communication. At the end of each module, a moderated live Q&A panel discussion will allow the audience to engage directly with the speakers. Additionally, there are two Lightning talk sessions with six 5-min short presentations. A poster session will also be held in the break time.

Figure: Augmentative human-robot interaction covered by the workshop. (a) Personalized data-driven wearable robotic interfaces for human augmentation and compensation; (b-c) Human-robot shared control for teleoperation and supernumerary robotic arms ; (d) Human-robot interaction with humanoid robot

Invited speakers

Goldie Nejat

Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada

Yanan Li

Reader (Associate professor), Robotics, University of Sussex, U.K.

Jonathan Eden

Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering, University of Melbourne, Australia

Shen Treratanakulchai

Lecturer (Assistant professor), Robotics, Mahidol University , Thailand

Cristina Piazza

Assistant Professor, Robotics, Technical University of Munich, Germany.

Xingxing Wang

Unitree Robotics, Hangzhou, China

Temporary Schedule

14:00 - 14:10 Welcome and opening remarks

Module 1: Human perception augmentation with robotic assistance

14:10 - 14: 30 Motor synergies for the design and control of bionic limbs by Cristina Piazza, University of Munich

14:30 - 14: 50 Soft Robotic Teleoperation in Minimally Invasive Surgery by Shen Treratanakulchai, Mahidol University

14:50 - 15:10 Task-specific and individually personalized synergies for human-prosthetic interface by Jonathan Eden, University of Melbourne

15:10 -15:30 Interactive discussion I

15:30 -15:50 Lightning talk session I, three 5-min short presentations

15:50 - 16:15 Coffee break, Posters

Module 2: Human-Inspired Robot Interactions

16:15 - 16:30 Lightning talk session II, three 5-min short presentations

16:30 - 16:50 Unitree's Latest Advances and Future Perspectives by Xingxing Wang, Unitree Robotics

16: 50 - 17:10 Differential game theory for physical human–robot interaction by Yanan Li, University of Sussex

17:10 - 17:30 Intelligent, Emotional and Persuasive Social Robot Behaviors for HRI in Healthcare and Beyond by Goldie Nejat, University of Toronto

17: 30 - 17:50 Interactive discussion II

17:50 - 18:00 Closing remark

Call for contribution

We invite researchers and industry professionals to submit a 2-page extended abstract for poster presentations at our upcoming workshop "Augmentative Human-Robot Interaction".

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Human sensorimotor augmentation
Soft and wearable robotics
Humanoid robot interaction
Virtual reality and artificial sensory feedback
Shared and augmented control
Human-robot communication
Remote control and teleoperation
Human-inspired algorithms
Cognitive models for robot perception
Multimodal interaction

Important Dates

Abstract Submission deadline: 31 August, 2025 15 September, 2025

Acceptance Notification: 15 September, 2025, 31 September, 2025

Please submit a 2-page abstract in PDF format (maximum file size: 10 MB) through the google form.

Submissions will be reviewed in a single-blind manner by domain experts. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to present their work in dedicated poster sessions and deliver a five-minute lightning talk during the workshop. Authors are responsible for printing and bringing their posters to the venue. Each poster must be presented in person by at least one of the contributing authors. Accepted abstracts will be made available on the official workshop website but will not be included in the IEEE conference proceedings. For further information or inquiries, please contact the corresponding workshop organizer at yanpei.huang@sussex.ac.uk.

Organizers