Hi everyone! Apologies if you see this posting multiple times. I'm the lead organizer of this years AI-HRI, and the theme is Service Robots. I think that this will be really relevant to participants in the league. Let me know if you have any questions.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

The sixth annual AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) will take place on November 7-9 at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, VA, USA, and is now open for paper submissions as indicated below. For more information, please visit the symposium website (https://ai-hri.github.io).

IMPORTANT DATES:

• SUBMISSION: July 20, 2019

• NOTIFICATION: August 10, 2019

• SYMPOSIUM: November 7-9, 2019

OVERVIEW:

The past few years have seen rapid progress in the development of service robots. Universities and companies alike have launched major research efforts toward the deployment of ambitious systems designed to aid human operators performing a variety of tasks. These robots are intended to make those who may otherwise need to live in assisted care facilities more independent, to help workers perform their jobs, or simply to make life more convenient. Service robots provide a powerful platform on which to study Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the real world. Research sitting at the intersection of AI and HRI is crucial to the success of service robots if they are to fulfill their mission.

This symposium seeks to highlight research enabling robots to effectively interact with people autonomously while modeling, planning, and reasoning about the environment that the robot operates in and the tasks that it must perform. AI-HRI deals with the challenge of interacting with humans in environments that are relatively unstructured or which are structured around people rather than machines, as well as the possibility that the robot may need to interact naturally with people rather than through teach pendants, programming, or similar interfaces.

TOPICS:

• Architectures and systems supporting autonomous HRI

• Interactive learning

• Interactive dialog systems and natural language

• Field studies, experimental, and empirical HRI

• Tools for autonomous HRI

• Design ethnography for service robots

• Development, fielding, and experimentation for service robots

• Physical human-robot interaction

• Knowledge representation and reasoning to support HRI and robot tasking

• Applications of autonomous service robots

FORMAT:

In addition to oral and poster presentations of accepted papers, the symposium will include panel discussions, position talks, keynote presentations, and a hack session with ample time for networking.

• SPEAKERS: Keynote talks will give different perspectives on AI-HRI and showcase recent advances towards humans interacting with robots on everyday tasks. Moderated discussions and debates will allow participants to engage in collaborative public discussion on controversial topics and issues of interest to the AI-HRI community.

• NETWORKING: A large part of this effort is to bring together a community of researchers, strengthen old connections, and build new ones. Ample time will be provided for networking and informal discussions.

PRESENTATION AND PUBLICATION:

All accepted full and short papers will be presented orally and published in the proceedings through Arxiv. Authors will be notified as to whether they have been assigned a “full-length” or “lightning” presentation slot. Authors assigned to full-length talks will be invited to participate in a panel discussion. Authors assigned to lightning talks will be invited to participate in a poster session.

SUBMISSIONS:

Authors may submit under one of these paper categories:

• FULL PAPERS (6-8 pages) highlighting state-of-the-art HRI-oriented interacting learning research, HRI research focusing on the use of autonomous AI systems, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products.

• SHORT POSITION PAPERS (2-4 pages) outlining new or controversial views on AI-HRI research or describing ongoing AI-oriented HRI research.

In addition, philosophy and social science researchers are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the design, implementation, or analysis of HRI studies.

Industry professionals are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the development, enhancement, or deployment of HRI technologies in the real world.

Please see the AAAI Author Kit ( http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit18.zip) for paper templates to ensure that your submission has proper formatting.

Contributions may be submitted here:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aihri2019

Kind regards,

The AI-HRI 2019 program chairs

• Justin W. Hart (UT Austin)

• Nick DePalma (Samsung Research of America)

• Richard G. Freedman (Smart Information Flow Technologies and UMass Amherst)

• Luca Iocchi (Sapienza University of Rome)

• Matteo Leonetti (University of Leeds)

• Katrin Lohan (Heriot-Watt University)

• Ross Mead (Semio)

• Emmanuel Senft (Plymouth University)

• Jivko Sinapov (Tufts University)

• Elin A. Topp (Lund University)

• Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines)