Debates
The ICSR debates will take place in the Debate Hall (Senate Room) on 2 July 2026.
The following debates have been selected for presentation at ICSR + Art 2026. They represent critical and timely discussions at the intersection of social robotics, society, and the arts. Together, these sessions reflect the conference’s commitment to fostering open, interdisciplinary dialogue on the ethical, cultural, and technological questions shaping the future of social robots. The selected debates span key domains including education, healthcare, fashion, and the commercial dimensions of social robotics.
D1: A Conversation about Robotics in Education – Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) – Towards a deployable framework
- Dr Beatrice Wohl, Research Fellow, University of the Arts London, Creative Computing Institute, UK
- Prof. Dr. Ilona Buchem, Professor for Communication and Media, Berlin University of Applied Sciences Berlin, Germany
- Dr Jessie Durk, Research Associate, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Cambridge University, UK
- Dr Jose Sepulveda, Vicerrector de Tecnología y Transformación Digital, VIU – Universidad Internacional de Valencia, Spain
Contact: b.wohl@arts.ac.uk
Date: 2 July 2026
Time: 9:00 to 10:15
Both the rise of AI/ML tools and breakthroughs in social robotics have brought questions about robots in education from the hypothetical to reality. This includes the use of robotic kits to make computing education more engaging, telepresence robots for students who cannot attend class in person, and robots serving as teaching assistants.
Alongside these demonstrable applications of robots in education, there continues to be significant hype and promise about how robots could be deployed in the classroom, either working alongside teachers or potentially replacing them in some cases. These debates have been occurring in both the education discourse and the robotics community, with each discipline highlighting different strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, but with little resulting guidance on best practices or key areas of concern.
With the introduction of the Education track at ICSR 2026, the Education chairs feel this is an ideal opportunity to draw on the deep knowledge and experience of the conference’s community to host a discussion about the role of robots in education. This conversation has the potential to start an ongoing dialogue within the social robotics sector, where we can share the knowledge of the capacity and limitations of this technology. This can help manage expectations around classroom integration and raise informed questions about how the deployment of these technologies can be done in a safe and ethical manner.
Rather than using a traditional ‘debate’ or panel format, we are going to use the BarCamp or unconference approach. We are aiming for a facilitated conversation, which may have some aspects of debate, but is ultimately directed at creating the foundation of either recommendations or a framework that can help shape both the debate and the future deployment of these technologies in education.
We are going to be using the ‘BarCamp’ or ‘unconference model’ with Bea Wohl facilitating the conversation to ensure that all voices are heard, respected and valued – specifically members of our community from diverse backgrounds. As this will be a bit more like a workshop than a debate, venue wise we want to have space ( and sound options) that allow us to hear from members of the audience rather than just from a panel on a stage.
D2: The Evidence We Cannot See: Are We Missing What Matters in Healthcare Robotics?
- Prof Mona Nasser, Professor in Clinical epidemiology and Oral health research, University of Plymouth, UK
- Dr Caroline Zheng, Assistant Professor, University of Nottingham, UK
- Murray Mackay, Human Factors Consultant, Amentum, UK
Contact: mona.nasser@plymouth.ac.uk
Date: 2 July 2026
Time: 10:45 to 12:00
Healthcare robotics has made remarkable progress in sensing, perception, machine learning, and autonomous decision-making. Much of this progress has been built upon increasingly sophisticated forms of evidence, including physiological measurements, behavioural observations, clinical outcomes, and standardised performance metrics. Yet an important question remains: are we building increasingly sophisticated robotic systems on an incomplete understanding of what actually matters in human care?
Many aspects of healthcare are difficult to quantify. Trust, anxiety, hesitation, consent, caring touch, embodied interaction, and clinical judgement emerge through relationships, context, timing, and experience rather than existing as isolated variables. Although these factors profoundly influence both patient experience and clinical decision-making, they often remain invisible within current approaches to evidence generation. As a result, the challenge for healthcare robotics may not simply be that we need more data, but that we may be collecting the wrong kinds of data.
This session brings together researchers from robotics, healthcare, human factors, and human-computer interaction to explore what counts as evidence for healthcare robotics and whether current evidence paradigms are sufficient to support the next generation of socially intelligent robotic systems. The discussion will draw upon a series of research case studies, including work on recognising anxiety in clinical environments, caring touch and haptic interaction, embodied technologies for healthcare, and human-centred design. Alongside these empirical examples, we will use selected works of science fiction, including Klara and the Sun, Solaris, and To Be Taught, If Fortunate, as thought experiments that challenge our assumptions about observation, understanding, adaptation, and the limits of our scientific models.
Rather than using a traditional debate format, this session will follow a facilitated conversation. Mona Nasser and Caroline Zheng will introduce the central questions through a series of short provocations drawn from research and science fiction. These will be followed by responses and discussions from the panel before opening the discussion to participants. The aim is to bring together perspectives from across disciplines to examine where current approaches to evidence may be limiting healthcare robotics, and to identify new methodological directions for generating richer, more context-sensitive forms of evidence.
Ultimately, we hope this conversation will contribute to an ongoing dialogue within the social robotics community about how healthcare robots can be designed not only around what is measurable, but also around what is meaningful in human care.
This discussion was informed by previous research projects funded by the EPSRC IAA (a series of public engagement projects) and the Medical Protection Society Foundation through the AngST project.
D3: How can robotic garment manufacturing be considered social?
- Douglas Atkinson, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
- Lynne Craig, University of Edinburgh, UK
- Matthew Crowley, Chelsea College of Art, UK
Contact: d.atkinson@mmu.ac.uk
Date: 2 July 2026
Time: 14:00 to 15:00
This panel style discussion explores the social imaginaries reflected in current industrial garment manufacturing robotics, which are often developed to remove human labour entirely, in contrast with tools and processes developed in emerging research centres such as the Robotics Living Lab at Manchester Metropolitan University, which focus on collaborative robotics for creative automation of the fashion industry.
Through engagement with diverse approaches to robotic fashion and textile production, the debate aims to challenge narratives of robots taking jobs and the assumption that automated making removes human engagement.
D4: Innovation Through Creation: The Case for Building Our Own Social Robots for HRI Research
- Dr Carl Strathearn, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
- Dr Emilia Sobolewska, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
- Euclid Robot
Contact: c.strathearn@napier.ac.uk
Date: 2 July 2026
Time: 15:00 to 16:00
This debate is something a little different, it will be held in discussion with a ‘homemade’ fully automated humanoid robot called Euclid, who runs the latest VLM, Qwen 3.5 9b model locally (imagine Chat GPT with eyes if you will). In this debate, we will have an unscripted conversation about how building our own robots for research is more sustainable, cost effective and impactful than buying off the sheld commercial robots. Thanks to AI tools like, generative coding and gen3D modelling, it’s easier, cheaper and faster now more than ever to build our own social robots. We hope this talk will motivate academics and researchers to take the first step in creating and programming their own novel social robots, opening up new and exciting possibilities in HRI research.
Participants are encouraged to read this article before the debate.
Image: Euclid Robot
D5: In the Age of the Post-Body
- Elvira Grob, Samshin Acupuncture and University of the Arts London, UK
- Jenn Leung, University of the Arts London, UK
- Rebecca Evans, Pell Ensemble and De Montfort University, UK
- Alexa Pollmann, Peut-Porter and University of the Arts London, UK
Contact: a.pollmann@fashion.arts.ac.uk
Date: 2 July 2026
Time: 16:00 to 17:00
Fashion-weeks use robots as models, governments design AI ministers in traditional dress to counter corruption, whilst social media reminds us to breathe. What if the human body becomes a contested and possibly replaceable matter? Or are we simply moving on from outdated ideals of human exceptionalism? These are not distant speculations — they are conditions we already inhabit. This debate brings together a set of diverse practitioners from performance, acupuncture, fashion and creative technologies backgrounds to examine contemporary practices centred around the body in post-digital existence. The debate will ask: how does the concept of the human body evolve as it is constantly perceived, read and shaped by its interactions with technology? How are ancient practices adapting and adopting?
The panel will consist of creative practitioners who will look at robotics through their respective specialisms: they will consider interface and experience design as choreographic approaches, discuss the holistic approach of traditional medicine in the context of social robotics and speculate on how material knowledge and biological interfaces may shape the field.