Dear colleagues,

below the CFP for
RO-MAN 06: The 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human 
Interactive Communication

6-8 September 2006, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK.

More information is available at: http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk/

I hope that you consider to contribute!

Please note that we invite submissions for tutorial and special session 
proposals (which can be submitted between now and 15 February).

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2006!

best wishes, Kerstin Dautenhahn

-----
Professor of Artificial Intelligence
General Chair RO-MAN 06: The 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and 
Human Interactive Communication, 6-8 September 2006, University of 
Hertfordshire
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd/
http://adapsys.feis.herts.ac.uk/
------------

CALL FOR PAPERS

RO-MAN 06: The 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human 
Interactive Communication

Theme: Getting to Know Socially Intelligent Robots

6-8 September 2006, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom

Sponsors:
IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society
IEEE Robotics & Automation Society
The Robotics Society of Japan

Contact:
Web: http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk
Email: [log in to unmask]

Topics and Theme

Human-Robot Interaction and Communication is a quickly growing research 
area at the intersection of research fields such as robotics, engineering, 
psychology, ethology and cognitive science. Significant initiatives are 
currently underway funded by public, academic, governmental as well as 
industrial initiatives, exploring and aiming at advancing this research 
field and opening up novel and challenging applications. Robots moving out 
of laboratory and manufacturing environments face hard problems of 
perception, action and cognition. For robots to be accepted as assistants 
or companions in people's private homes and everyday environments 
technological solutions do not suffice: The 'human in the loop', as the 
potential customer and user will decide on the ultimate success of a 'home 
robot' as a product. Application areas that heavily involve human contact 
are a particularly challenging domain.

Human societies have easily assimilated new technologies, such as mobile 
phones, but it is less clear in which application areas robots will be 
accepted. Robots as embodied beings, physical, possibly humanoid or android 
entities that share our living environments and accompany our lives will 
have a certain degree of autonomy, initiative, cognitive skills and will 
communicate and interact with people in ways inspired by human-human 
contact. Interaction and communication of embodied physical robots with 
humans is multi-modal, and involves deep issues of social intelligence, 
communication and interaction that have traditionally been studied 
primarily in psychology and other areas. The design of a robot’s behaviour, 
appearance, and cognitive and social skills is highly challenging, and 
requires interdisciplinary collaborations across the traditional boundaries 
of established disciplines.

IEEE RO-MAN 06 provides a forum for an interdisciplinary exchange for 
researchers dedicated to advancing knowledge in the field of human-robot 
interaction and communication. Importantly, RO-MAN has traditionally 
adopted a broad perspective encompassing research issues of human-machine 
interaction and communication in networked media as well as virtual and 
augmented tele-presence environments. Submissions are invited from a 
variety of research areas that can advance our understanding of human-robot 
interaction and communication, including areas of engineering and 
information sciences as well as psychology, social sciences, cognitive 
science and related areas.

The annual RO-MAN International Workshop series originated in 1992, with 
the first workshop held at Hosei University in Japan. Since then, different 
Japanese, European and USA institutions have hosted the workshop. In 2006 
IEEE RO-MAN is a symposium and will be hosted in United Kingdom by the 
Adaptive Systems Research Group at University of Hertfordshire. The event 
will include tutorials, special organized sessions, and distinguished 
invited keynote speakers.

Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

-innovative robot designs for HRI research
-user-centred design of social robots
-novel interfaces and interaction modalities
-long-term experience and longitudinal HRI studies
-evaluation methods and new methodologies for HRI research
-androids
-degrees of autonomy and teleoperation
-human factors and ergonomics in HRI research
-virtual and augmented tele-presence environments
-ethical issues in human-robot interaction research
-robots in education, therapy and rehabilitation
-medical and surgical applications of robots
-robot companions and social robots in home environments
-assistive robotics for supporting the elderly or people with special needs
-applications of social robots in entertainment, service robotics, space 
travel and others
-anthropomorphic robots and virtual humans
-interaction with believable characters
-non-verbal cues and expressiveness in interactions: gesture, posture,
social spaces and facial expressions
-interaction kinesics
-monitoring of behaviour and internal states of human subjects
-robotic etiquette
-social intelligence for robots
-social presence for robots and virtual humans
-creating relationships with robots and humanoids
-personalities for robotic or virtual characters
-embodiment, empathy and intersubjectivity in interaction with robotic
and virtual characters
-motivations and emotions in robots
-curiosity, intentionality and initiative in interaction
-linguistic communication and dialogue with robots and intelligent interfaces
-multimodal interaction and conversational skills
-cognitive and sensori-motor development in robots
-cognitive skills and mental models for social robots
-social learning and skill acquisition via teaching and imitation
-programming by demonstration
-cooperation and collaboration in human-robot teams
-human-robot interaction and collaboration in manufacturing environments
-motion planning and navigation in the vicinity of humans
-machine learning and adaptation in human-robot interaction
-multi-modal situation awareness and spatial cognition
-computational architectures for human-robot interaction
-detecting and understanding human activity
-narrative and story-telling in interaction

Plenary Speakers include

Prof. Shuji Hashimoto (Waseda University, Japan)
Prof. Illah R Nourbakhsh (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)

Instructions for Authors

Papers reporting original and unpublished work are invited. Submissions 
should include the paper title, names, tel/fax numbers, email and postal 
addresses of all authors, and an abstract on the first page. All 
submissions should be in English (6 pages maximum length in IEEE two-column 
format). Papers will be peer-reviewed according to IEEE standards and 
selected for oral or poster presentations based on their quality, 
originality, significance, relevance and clarity of presentation. The paper 
submission deadline is 15 March 2006. Final camera-ready submissions of 
accepted papers to be published in the Proceedings are due on 10 June 2006.
ONLY ON-LINE SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED (please consult 
http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk where updates of the submission 
procedure will be posted)

Tutorials

We are inviting suggestions for half-day tutorials relevant to the themes 
of IEEE RO-MAN 06 to be held on the first day of the event (6th September 
2006). Please submit the following information (1-2 pages maximum) to the 
Programme Chairs ([log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]) as 
soon as possible but no later than 15th February 2006:

-Title of tutorial
-Tutorial speaker(s), including short CVs
-Motivation/Background (half a page)
-Structure/Overview of tutorial including topics covered
-Links and references relevant to the tutorial
-Any other relevant material
If accepted, the submitted material will be used for advertising the 
tutorial as part of IEEE RO-MAN 06.

Special Sessions

IEEE RO-MAN 06 is inviting proposals for organized sessions. Please submit 
the following information to the Programme Chairs ([log in to unmask] 
and [log in to unmask]) as soon as possible but no later than 15th 
February 2006:

-Organizer(s) of special session
-Proposed theme of special session
-One paragraph motivating the relevance of theme to IEEE RO-MAN 06
-List of 4-5 proposed contributions, including planned titles of papers, 
names and affiliations of authors, and short abstracts of papers

Double special sessions (8-10 papers) will also be considered but should be 
discussed with the programme chairs. If accepted, the organizers of the 
special session are responsible for high-quality peer-review of the 
submitted papers according to IEEE standards (2-3 anonymous peer-reviews, 
using the RO-MAN 06 review criteria plus any additional criteria particular 
to the special session). Additional reviewers will be acknowledged in the 
proceedings.

Important Dates

15 February 2006 Deadline for proposals for organized special sessions and 
tutorials
25 February 2006 Notification for organized special sessions and tutorials
15 March 2006 Submission of full-length papers due
10 May 2006 Notification for paper submissions
10 June 2006 Submission of camera-ready final papers
6-8 September 2006 IEEE RO-MAN 06 Symposium

Organizing Committee

Conference Chair:

Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Programme Chairs:

Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Chrystopher Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Treasurer:

Bob Guscott (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Student Programme Chair:

René te Boekhorst (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Publicity Chairs:

Guido Bugmann (University of Plymouth, UK)
Terry Fong (NASA Ames Research Center, USA)

Local Arrangements Chair:

Bob Guscott (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Publications Chairs:

Lola Cañamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
David Lee (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Secretariat:

[log in to unmask]

Webmaster:

Mike Blow (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Programme Committee

Ana Paiva (INESC, Portugal)
Anton Nijholt (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
Aude Billard (EPFL, Switzerland)
Ben J.A. Kröse (UvA, The Netherlands)
Catherine Pelachaud (Université de Paris 8, France)
Cecilia Laschi (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy)
Cristina Conati (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Elisabeth André (University of Augsburg, Germany)
Erwin Prassler (B-IT and Fraunhofer Institute, Germany)
Fiorella de Rosis (University of Bari, Italy)
François Michaud (University of Sherbrooke, Canada)
Frederic Kaplan (Sony CSL, France)
Gerhard Sagerer (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
Gernot Kronreif (ARCS, Austria)
Giorgio Metta (University of Genova, Italy)
Giulio Sandini (University of Genova, Italy)
Guido Bugmann (University of Plymouth, UK)
Helmut Prendinger (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Henrik I Christensen (KTH, Sweden)
Hideki Kozima (Communications Research Laboratory, Japan)
Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University and ATR, Japan)
Hisato Kobayashi (Hosei University Research Institute, Japan)
Karl F. MacDorman (Indiana University, USA)
Kazuhiko Kawamura (Vanderbilt University, USA)
Kerstin Severinson Eklundh (KTH, Sweden)
Lola Cañamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Lynne Hall (University of Sunderland, UK)
Marge Skubic (University of Missouri-Columbia, USA)
Minoru Asada (Osaka University, Japan)
Naoyuki Kubota (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan)
Nilanjan Sarkar (Vanderbilt University, USA)
Oussama Khatib (Stanford University, USA)
Pamela Hinds (Stanford University, USA)
Patrizia Marti (University of Siena, Italy)
Peter Kahn (University of Washington, USA)
Peter Wallis (Sheffield University, UK)
Rachid Alami (LAAS, France)
René te Boekhorst (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Reid Simmons (CMU, USA)
Ruth Aylett (Heriot-Watt University,UK)
Sara Kiesler (CMU, USA)
Stacy Marsella (USC-ISI, USA)
Stephen J. Cowley (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Takanori Shibata (AIST, Japan)
Takayuki Kanda (ATR, Japan)
Tatsuya Nomura (Ryukoku University and ATR, Japan)
Terry Fong (NASA Ames Research Center, USA)
Toyoaki Nishida (Kyoto University, Japan)
Zsofi Ruttkay (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, UK)
Yoshihiro Miyake (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
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-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn
Professor of Artificial Intelligence
Adaptive Systems Research Group
http://adapsys.feis.herts.ac.uk/
The University of Hertfordshire, School of Computer Science
College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, United Kingdom
URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Fax: +44-1707-284-303 Tel: +44-1707-284-333