[Final CFP] IROS Workshop on Building and Evaluating Ethical Robotic Systems (ERS 2021)

[Justin Svegliato]

Website: https://ers-workshop.com/

Submission Deadline: August 13, 2021 (AoE)
Submission Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ers2021
Contact: ers.wo...@gmail.com

Workshop Overview
The deployment of robotic systems has been accelerating in many domains that have a substantial impact on society. For example, robotic systems have been proposed for applications that range from elder care and autonomous driving to nuclear energy production and military technology. However, while our ability to build robotic systems that integrate into our daily lives has expanded over the years, it has outstripped our ability to build robotic systems that can account for the large number of different ethical considerations that may arise during operation. This workshop therefore focuses on building and evaluating ethical robotic systems at every level of the robotics stack while broadening the scope of areas that should be considered by researchers, such as how users can interact with new and existing technology or how legislators can develop actionable standards and regulations.

ERS 2021 aims to bring together researchers from academia and industry to discuss key challenges, learn from real-world case studies, identify potential research avenues, explore recent technical advances, present novel data sets, and survey existing work related to ethical robotic systems. Given this aim, we invite contributions that draw from a range of methods in artificial intelligence and robotics, such as planning, reinforcement learning, machine learning, deep learning, human-robot interaction, safety, explainability, transparency, formal verification, social preferences, and human factors. Most importantly, we welcome researchers from disciplines beyond robotics, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, and law, in order to represent diverse perspectives on building and evaluating ethical robotic systems.

Relevant research topics include but are not limited to:

• Value alignment in robotic systems
• Cultural, political, and societal impacts of robotics
• Methods for analyzing the ethical implications of autonomous systems
• Moral reasoning in autonomous systems
• Safe, transparent, explainable, or interpretable AI systems
• Ethical compliance in robotic systems
• Ethically sensitive design and implementation of autonomous systems
• Human-compatible or beneficial AI systems
• Law, regulation, and governance of robotics
• Challenges of building and evaluating ethical robotic systems
• Ethical models and algorithms in robotic systems
• Impacts of robotics on vulnerable groups
• Novel data sets or test suites for ethical robotic systems

Workshop Format
This is a virtual IROS workshop that will include invited speakers, oral presentations of accepted papers, poster sessions of accepted papers, discussion sessions, and moderated panels.

Submission Guidelines
We encourage a range of submission types to facilitate broad participation:

• Highlight Paper (up to 2 pages)
• Short Technical Paper (up to 4 pages)
• Full Technical Paper (up to 6 pages)
• Position Paper (up to 4 pages)
• Case Study Paper (up to 6 pages)
• Survey Paper (up to 8 pages)

Details: There is no page limit for references and supplementary materials. Submissions should be in PDF and follow the IROS 2021 format guidelines. All accepted papers will be included in an electronic, non-archival proceedings. Note that papers published, accepted, or under review at other conferences may be submitted and presented at the workshop subject to the conference guidelines.

Best Paper Award

The Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI) at UC Berkeley and the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI) are generously sponsoring the ERS 2021 Best Paper Award. The best paper will be selected based on a vote among the organizers and the program committee. The authors of the best paper will receive a $400 cash prize and a printed certificate at the end of the workshop.

Important Dates

• Paper Submission: August 13, 2021 (AoE)
• Author Notification: August 25, 2021
• Camera-Ready Submission: TBD

Invited Speakers

• Ron Arkin, Georgia Tech
• Francesca Rossi, IBM
• Matthias Scheutz, Tufts University
• Ben Kuipers, University of Michigan
• Bertram Malle, Brown University

Organizers

• Paul Bello, Naval Research Laboratory
• Louise Dennis, University of Manchester
• Dylan Hadfield-Menell, MIT
• Samer Nashed, UMass Amherst (Co-Chair)
• Justin Svegliato, UMass Amherst (Co-Chair)
• Alan Winfield, UWE Bristol