Special Sessions

Special Sessions:

SS01: Cultural Robotics

Organisers:

  • Jeffrey TKV Koh, Design Factory, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore
  • Belinda J Dunstan, UNSW Creative Robotics Lab, University of New South Wales, Australia

Description:

Cultural robotics examines how robots are shaped by, express, and transform cultures across art and performance, language and ritual, design and craft, ethics and govern-ance, and everyday socially interactive practices. This special session invites full papers that advance the philosophy, theory, methods, design, and case studies on robots as cultural actors and artifacts. The invited speakers will explore the deep impact of social robots as cultural agents, as well as the impact of culture on the design, development, testing and integration of robotics, across a broad spectrum of disciplines.
This special session will focus on the following key themes:

  • Philosophies, Theories, Definitions and Practices of Cultural Robotics. Cultural Robotics within/beyond HRI; pluriversal, decolonial, and situated perspectives; culture as emergent practice.
  • Emerging Topics in Cultural Robotics. Exploratory or speculative areas not yet fully defined within Cultural Robotics, including unexpected applications, hybrid human–robot cultural forms, posthuman imaginaries, experimental technologies, and crossovers with adjacent fields (e.g., climate adaptation, blockchain, PNFTs, immersive arts, bio-robotics).

List of Topics:

  • Cultural-based Methods: Practice-based research, research-creation, ethnography, participatory/indigenous methods, curatorial methods, long-form field deployments.
  • Cultural Creativity- Art, Performance & Media: Robots on stage and in galleries; dramaturgies, choreographies, and scenographies for human–robot encounters; cultur-al computing.
  • Language & Semiotics: Multilingual interaction, narrative and storytelling, symbol-ism, humor, metaphor, idiom, and ritual in HRI.
  • Communities & Inclusion: Accessibility, disability perspectives, education, intergenerational
    and cross-cultural engagements; community labs and living-lab models.
  • Ethics, Policy & Governance: Cultural rights, heritage, consent, data stewardship,
    value tensions, and policy frameworks for culturally aware robots.
  • Design for Cultural Sustainability: Circular design, repair and reuse, regenerative
    lifecycles, local materials and craft, cultural heritage conservation with/through robots.
  • Tools, Platforms & Datasets: Open corpora and benchmarks capturing cultural
    variation; toolkits for culture-aware robot behavior; reproducible evaluation protocols.
  • Cultural Domains & Cases: Care, education, tourism, creative industries, public
    spaces, religious/ritual contexts, and civic/cultural institutions.
  • State-of-the-Art Syntheses: Systematic reviews, meta-reviews, and position papers articulating future research agendas in Cultural Robotics.

Website: https://www.culturebots.org

Poster: Download SS01 Call Poster

SS02: Participatory Futures in Social Robotics and AI

Organisers:

  • Karin Aue, Division of Industrial Design, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • Doros Polydorou, Department of Multimedia and Graphics Arts, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus

Description:

As robots and AI systems become increasingly embedded in complex socio-technical systems, such as eldercare, education, public services, and cultural production, they participate in transitions that unfold over decades and across diverse domains of human life. Designing for such long-term societal integration raises key questions:

  • How can we collaboratively imagine and prototype future human-robot/AI relations and systems?
  • How do we design for transitions that involve evolving, complex, and often divergent stakeholder visions?
  • How might narrative and futuring approaches help reveal potential futures, surface tensions, and foster shared understanding?

This special session explores participatory and narrative approaches to shaping long-term societal transitions in social robotics and artificial intelligence. It invites researchers and practitioners to share methods, case studies, and experiments that use co-design, storytelling, and futures thinking to engage communities, institutions, and other stakeholders in collectively envisioning responsible and inclusive human–machine futures.

List of topics:

  • Co-design and co-creation across multi-stakeholder & multispecies contexts
  • Storytelling and narrative methods as tools for engagement, sense-making, and collective imagination
  • Futures thinking and speculative design to explore possible, plausible, and preferable AI and robotic futures
  • Narrative foresight and collective visioning to surface values, tensions, and long-term implications
  • Robots as facilitators or participants in co-creation
  • Transition design and management frameworks to guide responsible robotics development

Poster: Download SS02 Call Poster

SS03: Continual Learning and Generative AI in Social Robotics

Organisers:

  • Abolfazl Zaraki & Khashayar Ghamati, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science (SPECS) and Robotics Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Description:

This special session focuses on the convergence of Continual Learning and Generative AI as the foundation for next-generation social robots capable of adaptive, creative, and context-aware behaviour. As robots increasingly engage in open-ended social environments, they must learn continuously, generalise across unseen situations, and generate novel responses beyond pre-programmed capabilities.
Continual learning enables robots to acquire and retain knowledge across time without catastrophic forgetting, while generative AI enhances creativity and flexibility in perception, communication, and decision-making. Together, these paradigms support robots that evolve through experience, adapt post-deployment, and engage in meaningful, human-like interaction.
This special session invites contributions that explore the theoretical, architectural, and practical integration of continual and generative learning in robotics from reinforcement and meta-learning to multimodal post-training frameworks such as LLMs and VLMs, toward socially intelligent, self-improving, and ethically aware robots.

This special session will focus on the following key themes:

  • Continual and Lifelong Learning in Social Robotics
  • Generative AI for Behavioural, Cognitive, and Affective Modelling
  • Post-Training and Online Adaptation for Robotic Intelligence
  • Memory, Retention, and Knowledge Consolidation in Continual Systems
  • Multi-Modal Generative Perception (Vision, Language, and Action)
  • Human-in-the-Loop and Co-Adaptive Learning
  • Evaluation, Safety, and Ethics of Continually Evolving Robots

List of Topics:

  • Continual Reinforcement Learning and Catastrophic Forgetting Mitigation
  • Generative Behaviour and Dialogue Synthesis for Social Robots
  • Post-Training Adaptation of Multimodal AI Models (LLMs, VLMs, etc.)
  • Memory-Based Architectures for Lifelong Learning
  • Sim2Real and Domain Adaptation in Generative Agents
  • Human Feedback, Interactive Teaching, and Shared Autonomy
  • Evaluation Metrics, Datasets, and Benchmarks for Continual Generative Systems
  • Embodied and Cognitive Models for Adaptive Social Intelligence
  • Ethical, Societal, and Policy Implications of Continual Generative AI in Robotics

Website: https://ghamati.com/icsr–2026/

SS04: Social Robotics and Art for Health

Organisers:

  • Anna Bucchieri, Inria Centre, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France
  • Thomas Sievers, Institute of Information Systems, University of Lübeck, Germany

Description:

This session explores the intersection of social robotics, artistic practice, and healthcare delivery, emphasizing how robotic systems — embodied with tailored cognitive abilities — can communicate empathetic behavior through art-inspired mannerisms. We invite contributions in robotics and AI that investigate an artistic approach (performance, installation, storytelling, tangible media, participatory theater) to extend beyond conventional therapy into the domain of emotional support, inclusive healthcare experiences, community engagement, and home-based assistance.

The goal of this session is to bring together researchers from social robotics, human-robot interaction, art and design, healthcare and therapy, interactive media and performance studies — to challenge and re-imagine how robots can participate in healthcare not only as tools but as expressive, relational entities embedded in creative, caring ecosystems.

List of Topics:

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

  • Artistic Social Robotics for Health and Well-Being – Exploring how artistic expression informs the design and interaction of robots in healthcare contexts.
  • Creative Robotic Design for Emotional and Physical Well-Being – Integrating artistic principles to enhance emotional engagement and holistic health support.
  • Art and Social Robotics in Rehabilitation and Therapy – Employing movement, performance, and creative embodiment in robotic-assisted therapy.
  • Artistic Social Robotics for Assistance and Daily Care – Designing aesthetically and emotionally engaging robots that promote dignity and comfort in caregiving.
  • Robotic Art in Medical and Clinical Environments – Using artistic forms of robotic expression to humanize medical procedures and patient experiences.
  • Artistic Social Robotics in Telemedicine and Remote Care – Fostering connection and empathy through artistic telepresence and phygital robotic communication.
  • Ethical and Cultural Dimensions of Robotic Art in Healthcare – Examining how art-driven robotics reshape care ethics, identity, and social perception.
  • Human-Centered Artistic Design in Healthcare Robotics – Co-creating robotic forms and interactions through participatory art practices with patients and caregivers.
  • Phygital Robotic Art for Health and Well-Being – Combining physical and digital artistic robotics to enrich rehabilitation and therapeutic engagement.
  • Translating Artistic Robotic Innovations into Healthcare Practice – Pathways from creative prototyping and exhibitions to clinical integration and evidence-based impact.
  • Creating mental models and awareness for empathetic behavior
  • Implementation of cognitive abilities for art-driven social robots in care

SS05: Social Robotics and Future Crime

Organisers:

  • Sarah Y. Zheng & Lorenzo Pasculli, Dawes Centre for Future Crime, and Department of Security & Crime Science, University College London (UCL), UK

Description:

The growing use of social robots in public and private contexts raises important questions about their crime and security implications. Like most technologies, social robots will likely create opportunities for new forms of crime or reshape existing criminal threats. Our recent studies indicated a broad scope of social robot-enabled threats that include using social robots to deal and deliver illicit drugs, cause public unrest, and burgle, as well as various data privacy violations (e.g., unconsented monitoring of vulnerable users, espionage in public spaces), and aggressive behaviours from humans against social robots (e.g., driven by racist or gender biases). We invite the wider social robotics community to submit original papers discussing any type of crime or criminal threat related to social robots, any potential countermeasure meant to prevent specific future crime or security threats, and/or any creative way of engaging the wider public with open questions (e.g., ethical, legal/policy, technical limitations) in this space.

List of Topics:

  • Social robot-enabled crime, future crime
  • Social robot (cyber)security risks
  • Public safety
  • Crime prevention
  • Robot rights and further legal implications (e.g., questions of liability in case robot “commits crime” or when humanoid robot gets “abused” by human user)
  • Discrimination and violence against social robots
  • Social robot ethics
  • Social robot etiquette
  • Criminalisation based on anthropomorphising tendencies towards social robots: whether social robots can be ascribed moral personhood based on their human-like simulation thereof or not
  • To what extent can social robots be considered autonomous machines, i.e., entities that can make decisions without human intervention?

SS06: Assistive Robotics and Exoskeletons for Human Augmentation and Wellbeing

Organisers:

  • Farshid Amirabdollahian, Mohamad Reza Shahabian Alashti, Shadiya Alingal Meethal, Patrick Holthaus & Gabriella Lakatos, Robotics Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Description:

This special session bridges the fields of assistive robotics, rehabilitation, and social human–robot interaction, with an invitation to explore new intersections with creative and expressive therapies. As the field of social robotics matures, it becomes increasingly important to consider not just how robots assist physically, but how they engage, empower, and emotionally support users in therapeutic contexts.
We focus on wearable robotic systems—such as exoskeletons, soft exosuits, and intelligent assistive devices—designed to enhance physical function, facilitate recovery, and promote independence in both clinical and everyday environments. These systems often integrate biosignals (EMG, EEG, IMU), deep learning models, and co-adaptive control for personalised support.
In addition to traditional rehabilitation, this session also invites contributions at the interface of assistive robotics and creative therapies, including art therapy, where social robots and assistive technologies are designed to support cognitive, emotional, and expressive goals. From supporting movement through collaborative painting to enabling voice and gesture in therapeutic storytelling, we aim to foreground how social and wearable robots can participate in multimodal, human-centred healing practices.
This session embraces ICSR’s mission of advancing socially intelligent robotics while building bridges with fields such as occupational therapy, cognitive neuroscience, digital arts, and healthcare design.

List of Topics:

  • Wearable Assistive Robotics: Exosuits and exoskeletons for daily support and motor recovery
  • Multimodal Sensing and Intent Detection: EMG, EEG, IMU, and biosignal integration
  • AI-Driven Adaptation: Deep and meta-learning for real-time, personalised assistance
  • Human–Robot Interaction in Rehabilitation and Art-Based Therapies
  • Social Robots in Creative and Complementary Therapy: Use of robots in art therapy, music-based interventions, or storytelling
  • Ethical and Inclusive Design: Trust, long-term use, accessibility, and identity-sensitive interaction
  • Real-World Evaluation: Clinical trials, longitudinal studies, and deployment in care and cultural settings
  • Benchmarks and Frameworks: Open datasets, replicability, and cross-domain methodological tools

Website: https://robotics.herts.ac.uk/icsr_special_session/

SS07: Social Robotics in Education — Theories, Designs, and Practices

Organisers: 

  • Ilona Buchem, Communications Lab, Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Germany
  • Jessie Durk, Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, University of Cambridge, UK
  • Beatrice Wohl, Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London, UK

Description:

Social robots are increasingly entering educational environments, acting as tutors, peers, collaborators, and facilitators of learning. This special session explores the dual perspective of using social robots in education and building social robots for education, from theoretical and pedagogical foundations to design, implementation, and evaluation of robot-supported learning. As the field evolves, new challenges emerge: 

  • How to develop pedagogically sound frameworks for social robotics in education?
  • How to ethically conduct research in educational settings, and 
  • How to leverage artificial intelligence to enhance both the learning experience and the robot’s adaptive behavior?

We invite contributions that advance the understanding of social robots as learning partners, educational tools, and design objects. The session welcomes theoretical, empirical, methodological, and design-based research addressing educational robotics from interdisciplinary perspectives, including learning/educational sciences, human–robot interaction (HRI), artificial intelligence in education (AIED), and learning/instructional design.

List of Topics:

  • Theories and Pedagogies for Social Robotics in Education: Learning theories, pedagogical models, and didactic frameworks informing the design and integration of social robots in educational settings.
  • Design Frameworks and Methodologies: Design-based research, participatory design, and iterative development approaches for educational social robots and their applications.
  • Research Methods in Social Robotics for Education: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches; classroom studies, field experiments, and longitudinal research.
  • AI and Social Robotics: Teaching and learning about AI through social robots; using AI to design adaptive, personalized, and data-driven robot interactions.
  • Ethical and Responsible Research: Data ethics, privacy, and consent in schools and other educational institutions; ethical implications of data collection with learners.
  • Embodied Learning and Physical Computing: Social robots as mediators of embodied cognition, kinesthetic interaction, and sensorimotor learning. Robotics as physical computing for tangible and embodied education.
  • Inclusive and Equitable Design: Designing social robots and learning scenarios for diverse learners and inclusive education.
  • Collaborative and Language Learning with Social Robots: Robot-assisted language learning (RALL), robot-supported collaborative learning (RSCL), and peer learning scenarios.
  • Evaluation and Impact Assessment: Measuring learning outcomes, engagement, motivation, and social interaction quality in robot-mediated education.
  • Future Directions: Conceptual and empirical syntheses, roadmaps, and visions for the next generation of educational social robots.

Poster: Download SS07 Call Poster

SS08: Speculative and Creative Approaches in Human-Robot Interaction

Organisers: 

  • Minja Axelsson, University of Cambridge, UK
  • Daniel Tozadore, University College London, UK
  • Malak Sadek, University of Cambridge, UK
  • Lea Luka Sikau, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany

Description:

Speculative and creative methods in HRI aim to create novel Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) designs, provoke thought and imagine possible near and far futures, and critique the values, norms and sociotechnical implications embedded into robotic designs. We invite authors
to submit full papers utilising speculative and creative methods exploring the questions:

  • 1) What kind of desirable and undesirable human-robot interaction futures might we imagine through speculative and creative methods?,
  • 2) How can we use speculative and creative methods to challenge assumptions in HRI?,
  • 3) What kind of socio-technical and ethical discussions around HRI can be provoked using speculative and creative methods?

In this special session, we invite researchers and artists to submit full papers that imagine creative and speculative “what-if” futures of human-robot interaction, challenge assumptions of HRI, and provoke discussion about desirable and undesirable human-robot futures. We are motivated by the fact that speculative and creative approaches are currently underutilised in HRI research. We believe that these approaches can enable critical conversations about where the HRI field is headed, having a positive impact on its future. With this special session, we aim to create a space where participants across disciplines can learn from each other about how speculative and creative approaches can be usefully
applied in HRI. We welcome submissions that explore speculative and creative human-robot interaction, as well as empirical, technical, theoretical and artistic contributions with elements of speculation and creativity.

List of Topics:

  • Speculative and Critical Design in HRI: Works incorporating speculative and critical design methods in HRI, including design fiction, design probes, aesthetic and narrative prototyping, aesthetic analysis, futures exploration and analysis, artefact generation and analysis, participatory speculation, critical speculation, etc.
  • Creative Methods in HRI: Works incorporating creative practice and arts adjacent methods in HRI, including performances, artefacts, painting and sketching, storyboarding and comics, theatre and music, comedy, participatory creative, critical creativity, storytelling and narratives, prototyping robotic characters and personalities, etc.
  • Artistic contributions for HRI: Such as performances, robotic artefacts, narratives, immersive arts, games and installations. We expect that these submissions are framed as an academic contribution, including detailed methodology, critical analysis and positioning of the contribution in relation to relevant HRI literature, and identifying insights and implications for the HRI community.
  • Methodological advances in speculative, creative or artistic HRI: Works advancing and documenting the use of speculative and creative methods as applied in or for the development of the HRI field.
  • Empirical, technical, and theoretical contributions with a significant speculative, creative or artistic element.
  • Aesthetics of human-robot interactions: Exploring the impact and implications of robot and human-robot interaction aesthetics, e.g. creepy or cute robots.
  • Utopian and dystopian human-robot futures: Speculative and anticipatory work exploring socio-technical configurations of human-robot futures, ethical and critical analysis of speculative futures, political and sociological perspectives in human-robot futures.
  • Human-robot imaginaries: Analysing and critiquing existing imaginaries of human-robot interactions across arts, industry and research.
  • Human-robot relationality: Creative approaches and speculations on configurations of human-robot relationality, ethical and cultural implications, labour and class in human-robot relations.

Website: https://dtozadore.github.io/ICSR_special_session/

Email: speculativecreativehri@gmail.com

SS09: The Body, AI and Social Robotics: From the Socio-Technical to Somabotics, an Evolving Field of Research

Organisers: 

  • Alan Chamberlain, Mixed Reality Lab, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, UK
  • Elizabeth Churchill, Department of Human Computer Interaction at MBZUAI – the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, UAE
  • Steve Benford, Mixed Reality Lab, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, UK

Description:

Human and non-human (including robot) bodies are represented in numerous ways in the arts, media, literature, medicine and science. In looking at these representations we would argue that this has an impact upon the ways that we start to think about designing, creating and engaging with social robots. This special session pushes beyond the technical framing of robotics and asks researchers, artists and designers to think critically about the social nature of the body/bodies and the way that our practices, feelings, senses, beliefs and values impact upon the area of Social Robotics. In this special session we would like to hear from artists and researchers that have used the body and notions of embodiment as a focal point in their work. This session will highlight the evolving nature of Social Robotics in relation to developing interdisciplinary areas of research which bring together discourses around the body, AI and social robotics, such as Somabotics, and Arts & Humanities inspired social robotics.

Our general themes centre around 3 core areas which relate to social robotics:

  • Designing for Non-human Actors & Ecosystems.
  • Societal Impact & Collective Intelligence.
  • Extended cognition & Human-AI-Robotic Augmentation.

We list some topics of interest below as a general guide, but we would like to hear from anyone with an interest in the area.

List of Topics:

  • More than Human Design – in terms of the environment, other species, transhuman debates and their relation to Social Robotics.
  • Physical Scale and Social Robotics – Landscape, large scale, small scale, nano.
  • Representations of the Body and Robotics in Art, the Humanities, by AI and issues of authenticity.
  • Socially scaling up Social Robotics and delivering physical services to a population.
  • Identity and positionality in Social Robotics.
  • Representations of the body in art, religion, medicine and the sciences in Social Robotics.
  • Beyond assistive robotics – Ageing, the body and Social Robotics.
  • Evolving Frameworks & Methods –  Mixed methods, subjectivity, making meaning, interdisciplinary art/science approaches and design research practices.
  • Social Robotics and the Body in everyday practice, ritual and ceremony.
  • Arts & Humanities approaches to Human Robot Interaction (HRI) design and research.
  • Experiential responses to design, and Social robotic systems.
  • Architecture and its impact on the body in Social Robotic systems.
  • The augmentation of the body in Social Robotics.
  • Multimodal Social Robotics – the social nature of senses in Social Robotics.

Website: https://www.stahrc.org/socialrobots

SS10: Trustworthy Affective Social Robotics

Organisers: 

  • Sonabayim Huseynzade, TU Dortmund University, Germany
  • Kristiina Jokinen, University of Helsinki, Finland
  • Markus Pauly, TU Dortmund University, Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security, Germany
  • Sven Mayer, TU Dortmund University, Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security, Germany
  •  Giulia Barbareschi, University of Duisburg-Essen, Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security, Germany
  • Florence Sedes, University of Toulouse, France
  • Elkhan Richard Sadik-Zada, Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany

Description:

This session invites research on the full spectrum of Affective Computing in Social Robotics, from fundamental advancements in multimodal emotion recognition to the ethical engineering of safe interactions. We welcome contributions that explore how emotional AI can be made more robust, adaptive, and secure, ensuring that robots foster genuine well-being without compromising user privacy or trust.

Our general themes center around 3 core areas and we would like to invite authors to submit papers centering to these topics and not limited to:

  • 1. Synthetic Empathy & Alignment: Advancing the technical accuracy and psychological grounding of robotic emotional responses using modern AI.
  • 2. Affective Security: Developing technical guardrails and privacy-preserving architectures to protect the emotional data of users.
  • 3. Human-Centered Protection: Focusing on the ethical design and long-term impact of affective interactions with our most vulnerable populations.

List of Topics:

  • Multimodal Affective Recognition: Fusing facial, vocal, and physiological signals for robust and nuanced affect detection in the wild.
  • Generative Empathy in Social Robotics: Utilizing LLMs and foundation models to synthesize context-aware, empathetic, and linguistically aligned robot responses.
  • Affective Security & Safety: Designing privacy-preserving architectures (e.g., Edge AI) to secure sensitive emotional data and mitigate synthetic manipulation.
  • Affective Robotics for Vulnerable Populations: Evidence-based case studies involving children, the elderly, and individuals with cognitive impairments (ASD, Dementia).
  • Trust, Ethics, and Empathy: Addressing the moral dimensions of artificial empathy, including the mitigation of over-trust, emotional deception, and social manipulation.
  • Adaptive Affective Loops: Personalizing robotic empathy and interaction strategies based on long-term user behavior and longitudinal mental states.
  • Evaluation Metrics for Empathy: Developing new, validated methods for measuring the safety, authenticity, and long-term impact of robotic empathy within sensitive contexts.

SS11: Trust-Adaptive Shared Autonomy for Social and Assistive Robots

Organisers: 

  • Amir Aly, University of Plymouth, UK
  • Zhegong Shangguan, University of Manchester, UK
  • Tuyen Nguyen, University of Southampton, UK
  • Patrick Holthaus, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Description:

Many assistive and social robots are designed to help people with daily tasks. But for these robots to be effective and accepted, they must adjust how much support they offer depending on the user’s needs and comfort level. If a robot steps in too soon, the user may feel overruled; if it waits too long, it may miss the chance to help. This session explores how robots can adapt their level of autonomy based on how much users trust them and how confident the robot is in its own decisions.

We invite contributions on methods for sensing trust, handling uncertainty, adjusting robot behaviour, and designing clear and supportive interactions. We also welcome studies involving real users and practical settings, including healthcare, education, and independent living.

List of Topics:

  • Estimating user trust through behaviour, gaze, speech, or simple sensors
  • Robot decision-making that adapts to trust and task uncertainty
  • Shared control strategies in social and assistive settings
  • Interfaces that clearly explain the robot’s actions or confidence
  • Techniques to build, maintain, and calibrate user trust over time
  • Personalising robot support to individual users
  • Evaluating when, how, and how much a robot should help
  • User studies and co-design approaches with diverse populations
  • Ethical and social aspects of trust and autonomy in HRI
  • Real-world applications in care, rehabilitation, and learning

SS12: Smart Textiles and Robotics for Fashion

Organisers: 

  • Kiren Passi, Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London, UK
  • Saina Akhond, Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London, UK

Description:

This special session explores how smart textiles and robotics are redefining traditional fashion and textile practices. As textiles evolve beyond their natural properties, embedded electronic and robotic systems are enabling garments to sense, react, adapt, and move in response to environmental conditions or user interaction.

Smart textiles (fabrics integrated with sensors, actuators, or other intelligent components) unlock new possibilities such as health monitoring, adaptive thermal control, responsive movement, enhanced comfort, and interactive fashion experiences.

This session invites contributions from researchers, engineers, designers, and practitioners working at the intersection of robotics, materials, and fashion to advance this growing interdisciplinary field.

List of Topics:

  • Smart textiles and soft robotics
  • E-textiles for interactive fashion
  • Haptic systems embedded in apparel
  • Shape-changing or adaptive garments
  • Robotic couture and kinetic fashion installations
  • Smart embroidery and textile art (e.g., sculptural or experimental work)
  • Assistive or rehabilitative wearable systems
  • Digital fabrication for textiles: weaving, knitting, and hybrid fabrication
  • Sustainability and circular fashion 

SS13: Bridging Tools for Expressive Interactions: From Social Consumer Robots to Extended Reality Settings

Organisers: 

  • Davide Calandra, Department of Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
  • Alessandro Visconti, Department of Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
  • Giacinto Barresi, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

Description:

This session explores bridging tools and methodologies that enable expressive – particularly artistic – interactions across social consumer robots and extended reality (XR) settings. As social robots enter domestic and commercial environments and XR technologies become mainstream, understanding how expressive interaction paradigms can be designed and transferred between these domains is essential. We examine the synergies between physical robotic embodiment and immersive digital environments, with attention to how artistic practices can inform more engaging consumer technologies.

We invite contributions on tools, frameworks, and design patterns bridging social robotics and XR – from motion capture and affective sensing to interaction design principles translating between physical robots and virtual agents. The session fosters dialogue between academic researchers and industry stakeholders on developing expressive technologies for consumer markets. Our goal is to convene researchers from HRI, XR, consumer electronics, affective computing, and industrial design to identify shared challenges and transferable solutions across robotic and immersive platforms.

List of Topics:

  • Shared Interaction Paradigms for Social Robots and XR Avatars – Identifying common design principles for expressive agents across physical and virtual embodiments.
  • Cross-Platform Expressive Technologies – Motion capture, facial tracking, gaze detection, and affective sensing tools that serve both consumer robotics and XR application, leveraging affordable hardware (wearables, depth cameras, XR headsets).
  • Phygital Experiences and Hybrid Interaction Spaces – Combining physical social robots with XR overlays to create seamless expressive environments for consumers.
  • Telepresence and Embodiment Transfer – XR-mediated control of social robots and the experience of presence through robotic and virtual bodies.
  • Digital Twins and XR Simulation for Robot Development – Using immersive environments to prototype and validate expressive behaviours before deployment.
  • Artistic and Creative Approaches to Expressive Technology Design – How performance, installation art, and creative practice inform the development of engaging consumer robots and XR experiences.
  • User Experience and Industrial Design for Market Readiness – Translating expressive interaction research into commercially viable consumer products.
  • Comparative Studies: Physical Robots vs. Virtual Agents – Investigating differences in user trust, engagement, and emotional connection across embodiment types.
  • Ethics, Privacy, and Responsible Design in Consumer Expressive Technologies – Addressing data collection, consent, and societal implications of expressive robots and XR in domestic environments.

SS14: Human Interaction with Multi-Robot Systems

Organisers: 

  • Edmund Hunt, University of Bristol, UK
  • Mohammad Soorati, University of Southampton, UK
  • Nicola Webb, University of Bristol, UK
  • José Carlos Castillo, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain

Description:

While Social Robotics has traditionally focused on dyadic (one-human, one-robot) interaction, the deployment of robot teams in public spaces, logistics, and care environments, for instance, necessitates a shift toward understanding Human-Multi-Robot Interaction (HMRI) or Human-Swarm Interaction (HSI). This special session explores the distinctive social dynamics that emerge when humans interact with groups, teams, or swarms of social robots. It posits that interaction with a collective is a distinct category of HRI, creating novel questions that do not exist in single-agent scenarios.

A central theme of this session is the interplay between component-level (individual robot) and system-level (the group) interaction. We invite research into how users perceive and attribute agency, intent, and personality to a collective entity versus its constituent members. For instance, how does a positive or negative experience with a single agent influence the user’s attitude toward the entire swarm? How do we design interfaces that allow for the seamless scalability of social interaction from one to many?

This session welcomes contributions on a range of topics falling under the broad remit of HSI, including the legibility of group motion, the design of collective behaviours that are socially acceptable, and the psychological effects of interacting with MRS or swarm intelligence. By focusing on the “social” aspect of MRS/swarms, we aim to bridge the gap between technical multi-agent control and human-centred design.

List of Topics:

  • Component vs. System Interaction: Perceptual differences between interacting with a single robot versus a collective.
  • Attitudinal Spillover: How experiences with individual robots affect attitudes (e.g. acceptance, reliance, trust) toward the overall system.
  • Legibility of Group Behaviours: Designing collective robot motion and coordination that is intuitive and socially acceptable to human bystanders.
  • Cognitive Load and Attention: Managing human attention when interacting with multiple social agents simultaneously, understanding and measuring human workload in interacting with swarms.
  • Interfaces for Social Swarms: Novel modalities for commanding, querying, or socialising with robot teams (e.g. gesture, voice, augmented reality), human-swarm interaction interface design and visualisation.
  • Scalability of Social Cues: Adapting social behaviours (e.g. gaze, proxemics) for multi-robot scenarios.
  • Collective Agency and Attribution: Human attribution of intent, responsibility, and animacy to groups vs. individuals.
  • Social MRS/Swarms in the Wild: Case studies of multi-robot deployment in e.g. public, educational, or care settings.
  • The “Uncanny Valley” of Swarms: Psychological responses to coordinated, distributed robotic intelligence.
  • Decision Making in Swarms: Collective decision-making strategies, swarm dynamics, collective perception, or task allocation, and user interaction therein
  • Language Models and Generative AI in Multi-Robot systems: Large language models and Generative AI methods for human-swarm interaction, swarm communication and coordination.
  • Trustworthiness and Responsibility: How multi-robot systems can be designed to be ethical, trustworthy and responsible in their human interactions
  • Multi-human multi-robot social interaction: Multiple interaction scenarios involving robots and human actors
  • Multi-robot interaction in people assistance and care scenarios: Multiple robots performing care and assistance and cognitive
  • Social robotics in group intervention activities: The role of social robots in physical, cognitive and affectionate stimulation activities

SS15: Relational Futures. Sustainable Socio-Techno-Ecologies for Human–Robot Co-Existence

Organisers: 

  • Luisa Damiano, Antonio Fleres & Hagen Lehmann, IULM University, Milan, Italy

Description:

This Special Session addresses a question that social robotics can no longer postpone: how can human– robot co-existence evolve toward forms that are socially and ecologically sustainable?
We invite contributions that explore how sustainability can become an operative principle in the design, implementation, and evaluation of social robots. This includes work that rethinks foundational dimensions of the field — social presence, interaction models, behaviours, embodiments, deployment contexts, techno-social communities, and end-of-life procedures — so that robots can take part in social and environmental systems in ways that are responsible, resilient, and future-oriented.
Submissions may present technical solutions, interaction studies, design strategies, empirical findings, philosophical explorations, creative prototypes, or visionary concepts that investigate how sustainable co-existence might be realised in practice.
We particularly welcome work that expands how social robotics understands “the social” — not only in human-centred settings, but as a relational space that extends across multispecies communities and ecological systems. This includes contributions that explore how artificial social agents can meaningfully inhabit and contribute to environments shared with humans, animals, infrastructures, and living ecologies, acting generatively toward the long-term flourishing of diverse forms of life. We encourage proposals that consider how social robots might participate in multispecies relations, support the resilience of local socio-technical ecosystems that respond to social and environmental concerns, or engage with broader planetary processes.
The aim is to outline futures in which social and ecological sustainability becomes an active force shaping the design, roles, and integration of the next generation of social robots.

List of Topics:

  • Relational futures in social robotics
  • Sustainable human–robot co-existence
  • Social and ecological sustainability in robot design
  • Rethinking social presence under sustainability constraints
  • Sustainable interaction models and behaviours
  • Multispecies and ecological perspectives in social robotics
  • Techno-social communities and long-term robot integration
  • End-of-life procedures and circularity in robotic ecosystems
  • Environmental impacts of social robots across contexts
  • Social robots in collective, urban, domestic, and multispecies environments
  • Philosophical and ethical frameworks for sustainable social robotics
  • Creative and speculative approaches to sustainable human-robot co-existence
  • Visionary concepts for a sustainable diffusion of social robots

SS16: Skilful Practices in Social Robotics and HRI—Approaches from the Performing Arts

Organisers: 

  • Maaike Bleeker, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
  • Ester Fuoco, IULM University Milan, Italy
  • Marco C. Rozendaal, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Description:

The past decades have witnessed increased recognition of the relevance of skills and expertise from the performing arts to the development of robot behavior and HRI. Acting and directing methods, choreography and movement analysis, puppeteering, improvisation, scripting, as well as other aspects of making and analyzing theatre and dance have been tried and tested for how they may further the development of social interaction, robotic gesture, movement, and identity, support engagement with users and stakeholders, and contribute to the implementation of robotic assistants in a variety of social contexts. The integration of AI, motion capture, and algorithmic movement-mapping expands what counts as “expressive” robotic behavior, while simultaneously challenging assumptions about authenticity and affective fidelity—especially in non-humanoid systems with limited expressive affordances.

As Lucy Suchman reminds us, these technologies do not simply reproduce human intention but reconfigure the very conditions under which agency and emotion become legible. Guy Hoffman observes that theater acting and other performing arts could serve as useful testbeds for the development and evaluation of action coordination in human-robot interaction, as well as for providing insights into action-perception frameworks that can support the AI of social robots. With his Robot Theatre Project (in collaboration with director Oriza Hirata), Hiroshi Ishiguro demonstrates how the practical knowledge of theatre directors and actors provides valuable insights for engineers designing robot behavior, while also enabling large-scale evaluation of audience impressions of acting robots, which can then be fed back into the design process. Heather Knight identifies eight lessons about designing non-verbal interaction that can be learned from the theatre and demonstrates the potential of stand-up comedy for experimenting with and testing out robot behavior and HRI. She refers to Cynthia Breazeal’s pioneering work and observes that “using the theater context and body of knowledge to bootstrap the development of effective social robots is important because non-verbal expression is key to understanding sociability”. Petra Gemeinboeck, Amy LaViers, and others demonstrate the value of dancers’ skills and expertise for sophisticated nonverbal (inter)action. These performing arts-inspired developments meet with a growing recognition of performativity, materiality, situatedness, and relationality as fundamental components of HRI and the successful integration of robots in social contexts.

This special session invites contributions that show how various skills and expertise from the performing arts (such as acting, directing, dancing, choreographing, scenography, puppeteering, playwriting, and improvising) are deployed for the development of social robots and HRI, and what they can contribute to the advancement of innovative, creative, and responsible approaches to social robotics.

List of Topics:

  • Examples of the use of skills and expertise from the performing arts (such as acting, directing, dancing, choreographing, scenography, puppeteering, playwriting, and improvising) for various aspects of robotics and HRI
  • The practice of performing arts-robotics collaborations: how to organize them, how to make them successful, how to deal with power dynamics, challenges, risks, and gains
  • The emergence of new specializations such as robo-puppeteers, techno-dramaturgs, computational dramaturgy, improbotics, and robostories.
  • The transferability of skills, and questions related to tools and training for new types of collaborations
  • New conceptual and methodological frameworks for developing and understanding performing arts-robotics collaborations, such as co-design, rehearsal-based iterative development, and embodied prototyping in performing-arts-robotics collaborations