CFP SPECIAL SESSION: RE-THINKING INTERACTION WITH ROBOTS
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                        IEEE RO-MAN-2010

              19th IEEE International Symposium in Robot
           and Human Interactive Communication

                12-15 September 2010, Viareggio (LU), Italy

                    http://www.ro-man2010.org 

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Robotics has recently produced technologies that have made interdisciplinary
studies possible and opened up interesting and new prospects. Nowadays robot
technology has the ambition of achieving autonomous ³bonding² and sustained
socialization with people and the concept of sociality in robots takes on a
wide variety of nuances and meanings.
The special session ³Re-thinking interaction with robots² explores such
variety of meanings and interaction issues from a multidisciplinary
perspective to gain a better understanding of the psychological,
sociological, philosophical and design aspects defining a meaningful
interaction experience with robots.
The session welcomes theoretical studies as well as research and design
cases providing insightful reflections on how people interact with robots,
communicate with them, understand and share intentions with them, engage in
meaningful and qualitative interaction with robots in their daily lives. We
also welcome contributions that critically reflect on different meanings and
models of relationships envisaged for current robots, e.g. companions.
Moreover, we invite research reflecting on models of sociality and
relationships in recent applications envisaging robots as caretakers for
children, elderly people, or robots for therapy and patients in hospitals.
The goal of the special session is to bring together participants from many
different fields of research and involve participants in discussions and
reflections on re-thinking human-robot interaction from a multidisciplinary
viewpoint.
The session is expected to cover state-of-the-art theoretical and design
concepts, field studies, longitudinal evaluation studies, ongoing research
projects and innovative applications of social robots.
In addition to contributions from roboticists and human-robot interaction
researchers we encourage cross-disciplinary contributions from interaction
designers, philosophers, psychologists, researchers and practitioners to
address new trends and challenges that require interdisciplinary
collaborations across the traditional boundaries of established robotics and
computer sciences disciplines.

TOPICS OF INTERESTS include but are not limited to:
- Design and evaluation of Human-Robot relationships
- Intentionality in Interaction
- Aesthetic interaction with robots
- Meaningful interaction with robots
- Empathy and Expressiveness
- Innovative Robot Designs
- Novel interaction paradigms
- Relationship models in human-robot interaction
- Social referencing and emotional communication
- Shared attention
- Social acceptance of robots
- Applications of robots in therapy, childcare, care for the elderly and
hospitals, everyday life contexts.


IMPORTANT DATES
Special Session Papers Submission:  1st April 2010
Notification of Acceptance: 11th June 2010
Final Submissions Due:  12th July 2010
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PAPER SUBMISSION:
Please visit http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/start.pl
Select "Special Session Paper" and use the code: AWRH

Submissions to the special session will be reviewed following the same
procedure used for regular papers. Accepted papers will be published in the
conference proceedings.

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SPECIAL SESSION ORGANIZERS
Patrizia Marti
Communication Science Dept, University of Siena
marti@unisi.it

Kerstin Dautenhahn
School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire
K.Dautenhahn@herts.ac.uk