1st International Workshop on Worker-Robot Relations
11TH MARCH 09:00 - 13:00, Mountain Standard Time, at HRI 2024
ABOUT
In Industry 5.0, cognitive robots and workers will engage in evolving and reciprocal relations, which we call worker-robot relations (WRRs). To enable evidence-based work futures with workers, we must co-develop WRRs and understand their impact on work, workers, management, and society. To this end, the HRI field should work beyond disciplines and include value-driven and plural perspectives through transdisciplinary research done with and for workers.
However, WRRs and transdisciplinarity pose unique technical, philosophical, and methodological challenges yet to be explored. We propose a workshop to engage the HRI community working on Industry 5.0, aiming at 1) taking stock of current WRR-related challenges in relevant disciplines, 2) collectively kick-off the exploration of a joint research agenda, 3) preliminary examining if and how transdisciplinarity could help the HRI community, and 4) start discussing how to deal with such complex knowledge integration in practice.
Main contact: Cristina Zaga - c.zaga@utwente.nl
Read our position in our workshop proposal paper:
PROGRAM
We plan a half-day workshop combining invited speakers’ plenary talks and collaborative, hands-on activities. The workshop will be hybrid, allowing for both online and in-person attendance. Participants will share their work in an interactive poster session starting at the coffee break. The session continues with a hands-on reflection on their disciplinary and societal roles in understanding and shaping "how might we" practice WRRs research.
08:30 - 09:00 Walk-in, Set-up Poster
09:00 - 09:06 Welcome - by Cristina Zaga
09:06 - 09:25 Intro to the workshop - David Abbink
09:30 - 09:45 Lightning Keynote: Prof. Bilge Mutlu
09:45 - 09:55 Q&A and discussion
09:55 - 10:05 Intro to participants and posters (1-minute pitch for each accepted paper)
10:05 - 10:40 Poster Session and Coffee Break
10:40 - 11:15 Disciplinary Refection and How Might We Work on
11:30 - 11:50 Panel with Dr. Hee Rin Lee, Dr. Eun Jeong Cheon, Eva Verhoef
12:00 - 12:15 Lightning Keynote: Ass. Prof. Sarah Fox
12:15 - 12:40 Final Discussion
12:40 - 13:00 Wrap-Up and Next Steps for a WRR community
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
Speakers
Bilge Mutlu
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Hee-Rin Lee
University of Michigan
EunJeong Cheon
University of Syracuse
Sarah Fox
Carnagie Mellon
Eva Verhoef
Robohouse
David Abbink
Delft University of Technology
Accepted Papers
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_2.pdfSimone Borsci, Cesco Willemse, and Elisa Prati Key dimensions to assess workers’ experience with cobots
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_3.pdfMarco Innocenti Improving Farmer-Robot Relations through Morally Motivated Conceptual Engineering
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_4.pdfJoost Mollen The Value of Detachment: Preventing Harmful Worker-Robot Attachments
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_5.pdfMerve Alabak, Raquel Salcedo Gil, Anna-Sophie Ulfert-Blank, Sonja Rispens and Pascale Le Blanc Knowledge Hiding in Worker-Robot Relationships
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_6.pdfFederica Nenna and Luciano Gamberini Discussing Worker-Robot Relationships of the Future Workplace: Perspectives from Psychology, Cognitive, and Human Sciences
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_7.pdfValeria Orso, Giulia Bassi, Silvia Salcuni, and Luciano Gamberini From Human-Cobot Interaction to Human-Cobot WorkTeam: A Mixed-Method Psychosocial Approach
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_8.pdfSamantha Shorey and Sarah E. Fox In/visible Worker-Robot Relations
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_9.pdfNikolas Martelaro and Sarah Fox Engaging Frontline Bus Operators and Union Organizers to Collaboratively Design Future Bus Automation Systems
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_10.pdfMary Ellen Foster, Shaul Ashkenazi, Andrew Blair, Andrés Ramírez-Duque, Samina Ali, Patricia Candelaria, Summer Hudson, Jennifer Stinson, Lauren Harris, Sasha Litwin, Fareha Nishat, Ronald P. A. Petrick, Alan Lindsay, David Harris Smith, Ahmet Dumlu and Frauke Zeller Including Front-Line Workers as Primary Stakeholders in Public-Space HRI
1sr_WP_on_WWRs_paper_11.pdfAlexandra Bremers and Wendy Ju Designing Interactions for Mixed-Initiative Machines: Balancing Automation and Craftsmanship
TECHNICAL CHALLEGES
PARTICIPATORY CHALLENGES
How can we involve workers and stakeholders in the full WRRs transdisciplinary process? How can we take power dynamics between academics and workers into account?
DESIGN CHALLENGES
METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
How can we decide on the relevant disciplines andstakeholders to involve? How can we allow for emergent knowledge production? What are the methodological barriers and enablers of knowledge integration in HRI to establish WRRs?
Organizers
Cristina Zaga is an assistant professor at the Human-Centred Design group at the University of Twente. Her research focuses on transdisciplinary and relational design methods for just futures of work and care. Cristina leads the Social Justice and AI network, is an associate editor of the ACM Transaction on HRI, and regularly organizes academic workshops in HRI.
Maria Luce Lupetti is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft. Her research explores the role of critical design approaches in developing responsible and desirable artificial agents.
Deborah Forster is a cognitive scientist and a researcher in the HRI group of the cognitive robotics department at TU Delft. Forster has over two decades of experience embedded in engineering and design projects spanning academia and industry. Currently practicing transdisciplinary research on the potential of worker-robot relations to shape the future of work.
Dave Murray-Rust is an associate professor in Human-Algorithm Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. He explores the messy terrain between people, data, algorithms, and things through making and thinking to build better futures for humans and AI.
Micah Prendergast is an assistant professor in Human-Robot Interaction at TU Delft in the Cognitive Robotics department. His research interests include computer vision, medical device design, robotic sensing, perception, and controls for the future of work.
David Abbink is a full professor in Human-Robot Interaction at TU Delft, at the Cognitive Robotics Department at Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering. He is the scientific director of the interdisciplinary institute AiTech and the transdisciplinary research and innovation center FRAIM. He focuses on understanding and shaping the future of physical work with and for workers.