Towards novel concepts of social presence for robots

A Workshop @ ICSR 2024

Odense, Denmark

October 23-26, 2024

Workshop date: October 23rd, 2024

Contact: rebecca.mannocci@studenti.iulm.it; luisa.damiano@iulm.it

About the Workshop:

Acceptance and diffusion of social robots, within human everyday contexts, are processes in which the “social presence” of such robotic agents plays a key role. Specialists in social robotics and related fields often consider this characteristic as the ability of a robot to generate, in its human users, the “feeling of being in the company of someone”. Typically, the social presence of a robotic agent is construed, both at the conceptual and at the implementation level, as a combination of traits, skills or performance enabling these “social machines” to communicate with us through social signals compatible with ours – i.e., a wide variety of social signals, ranging from gestures to emotional expressions. 

This workshop aims to explore whether and how the notion of the social presence of robots can be further articulated and enhanced in order to facilitate, on one side, the acceptance and inclusion, in human social contexts, of this new class of artificial social actors, and, on the other side, a form of social co-evolution with these machines capable of supporting positive human self-development.

PROGRAM

CALL

ABSTRACTS

CONTACT

Plan for publication:

Once the workshop is concluded, we intend to proceed with the organization of a special issue in a scientific journal, preferably the International Journal of Social Robotics (IJSR). The special issue will contain an article presenting and discussing the roadmap generated during the workshop, extended versions of a selection of the papers presented at the workshop, plus articles selected based on a dedicated call and related peer review process.

Organizers:

• Luisa Damiano, IULM University, Milano, Italy

• Belinda Dunstan, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

• Rebecca Mannocci, IULM University, Milano, Italy