Human-Friendly Robotics 2020

The growing need to automate daily tasks, combined with new robot technologies, is driving the development of a new generation of human-friendly robots, i.e., safe and dependable machines, operating in the close vicinity to humans or directly interacting with them in a wide range of domains. The technological shift from classical industrial robots, which are safely kept away from humans in cages, to robots, which are used in close collaboration with humans, is facing major challenges that need to be overcome.

The objective of the workshop is to bring together academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects related to the introduction of robots into everyday life. The workshop covers a wide range of topics related to human-robot interaction, both physical and cognitive, including theories, methodologies, technologies, empirical and experimental studies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Fundamentals of human-friendly robots

• mechatronic design
• control methods for safe and adaptive interaction
• interaction-based robot design
• telerobotic systems
• methods for physical and cognitive human-robot interaction
• multimodal human-robot communication
• human monitoring and intention recognition
• cognitive modelling
• adaptive interfaces
• cooperative task execution and sliding autonomy
• learning by demonstration
• human factors
• benchmarking and performance analysis
• social and ethical issues

2. Applications of human-friendly robots

• medical and rehabilitation devices
• prostheses and orthoses
• robot assisted therapy
• personal and entertainment robots
• collaborative robots
• social robots
• human-robot interaction in hazardous environments

3. Social and Ethical Issues in Robotics