[CfP][meetings] CfP: Variable Autonomy for human-robot Teaming (VAT) workshop at HRI 2023

[Bruno Lacerda]

We cordially invite paper contributions to the Variable Autonomy for human-robot Teaming (VAT) workshop at the 18th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). https://vat-hri-2023.cs.umu.se/

As robots are introduced to various domains and applications, Human-Robot Teaming (HRT) capabilities are essential. Such capabilities involve teaming with humans in\ on\ or out-the-loop at different levels of abstraction, leveraging the complementing capabilities of humans and robots. This requires robotic systems with the ability to dynamically vary their level or degree of autonomy to collaborate with the human(s) efficiently and overcome various challenging circumstances. Variable Autonomy (VA) is an umbrella term encompassing such research, including but not limited to shared control and shared autonomy, mixed-initiative, adjustable autonomy, and sliding autonomy. This workshop is driven by the timely need to bring together VA-related research and practices that are often disconnected across different communities as the field is relatively young. The workshop's goal is to consolidate research in VA. To this end, and given the complexity and span of Human-Robot systems, this workshop will adopt a holistic transdisciplinary approach aiming to 

a) identify and classify related common challenges and opportunities;

b) identify the disciplines that need to come together to tackle the challenges;

c) identify and define common terminology, approaches, methodologies, benchmarks, and metrics;

d) define short- and long-term research goals for the community.

The workshop will consist of a mix of invited talks, contributed papers, and an interactive discussion panel, toward a shared vision for VA.

Workshop format: Hybrid half-day (in-person and online)

Paper format: extended abstracts and short papers of up to 4 pages (excluding references), in HRI’s submission format https://humanrobotinteraction.org/2023/full-papers/#additional-info

Submission website: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=vathri2023

Submission deadline: 20 January 2023

Notification of acceptance: 5th February 2023

Workshop Registration deadline: To be announced

We invite contributions on the following topics (but not limited): 

• Variable Autonomy paradigms and control methods for Human-Robot Teaming and HRI (including shared control and shared autonomy, mixed-initiative, human-initiative, adjustable autonomy etc.)
• Trustworthy Variable Autonomy, Human-Robot Teaming and HRI
• Transparency and XAI in HRI, Human-Robot Teaming, and Variable Autonomy
• Human factors, psychology and modelling of human behaviour
• Situation awareness for context-dependent Human-Robot Teaming and Variable Autonomy
• Interfaces
• Practical work/experiments with Variable Autonomy robotic systems
• Testbeds, experimental design and evaluation methods
• Opinion pieces, summaries of research along with lessons learned and future directions

Organising Committee:

• Manolis Chiou, University of Birmingham, UK.
• Serena Booth, MIT, MA, USA.
• Bruno Lacerda, University of Oxford, UK.
• Simon Rothfuß, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
• Andreas Theodorou, Umeå University, Sweden.

Best wishes,

Bruno

-- 
Senior Researcher in Robotics
Oxford Robotics Institute
Department of Engineering Science
University of Oxford
http://ori.ox.ac.uk/~bruno/