September 2026 - RoboCup-humanoid

[journal][cfp] Special issue in International Journal of Social Robotics "Towards Ethical Deception in HRI"
by Alessandra Rossi 29 Sep '26

29 Sep '26

Dear colleagues, We would like to invite you to submit your works at the special issue on "Towards Ethical Deception in HRI" in International Journal of Social Robotics <https://link.springer.com/journal/12369> whose submission deadline is 19 December 2026. The special issue explores the design and ethical implications of robot deception in human–robot interaction, emphasising autonomy, well-being, and the protection of vulnerable populations. Read below further information, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Kind regards, Alessandra Rossi Alessandra Rossi, PhD Assistant Professor Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies - D.I.E.T.I. University of Naples Federico II Via Claudio, 21, 80125 - Naples, Italy w-page: https://alessandrarossi.net e-mail address: alessandra.rossi(a)unina.it e-mail address: a.rossi(a)herts.ac.uk X: @alhandra81 [image: image.png] This Topical Collection focuses on deception in human-robot interaction and its ethical implications. In particular, robot deception is a complex yet potentially beneficial strategy. Intentional behaviours such as white lies or deliberate errors can foster trust, reduce distress, and improve therapeutic or educational outcomes. Robots may strategically omit information to maintain psychological stability or simulate imperfections to appear more relatable. While deception in human–robot interaction remains ethically controversial, its applications can enhance empathy, engagement, and learning. Ultimately, the capacity for controlled, prosocial deception highlights the need to reconsider moral frameworks governing social robotics, emphasizing the potential for nuanced, emotionally adaptive interactions. This collection aims at exploring a design-centred and ethical-centred development of robotic deceptive behaviours for a successful human-robot interaction that, at the same time, is ethically acceptable and respect the autonomy and well-being of population, specially vulnerable individuals such as older people, patients and children. This Topical Collection is open to a broad audience from academia and industry researching social robotics, robot ethics, cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy of technology. It aims to attract an interdisciplinary audience that includes academics, industry researchers, designers, and policy-makers interested in exploring the integration of deceptive techniques in designed-centred and ethics-centred HRI. By collecting works addressing disciplinary and methodological boundaries, this collection seeks to promote a shared understanding of how social robots might responsibly employ complex behavioural strategies in human-centred contexts, such as education, healthcare and service. *Submission guidelines* All papers must be prepared in accordance with the Submission Guidelines. Articles for this Topical Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Editorial Manager <https://www.editorialmanager.com/soro/default.aspx>. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "*Towards Ethical Deception in HRI*" from the dropdown menu. Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to one of the topics of the Topical Collection. All papers will be evaluated on the basis of relevance, significance of contribution, technical quality, scholarship, and quality of presentation by at least two reviewers. It is the policy of the journal that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review at another journal or conference at any time during the review process. Final decisions on all papers are made by the Editors-in-Chief.

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Quori Community Meetup @ IROS 2026
by Ross Mead 25 Sep '26

25 Sep '26

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: * What: Quori Community Meetup @ IROS 2026 * When: Monday, September 28, 2026, 11am ET * Where: Liberty Center, 1001 Liberty Avenue, 5th Floor * RSVP: HERE <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qU8YGFWrBAHgwlu1PQzAi8bdqi8pEFKjFt9RruAq8f…> --- Hello colleagues! The Quori robot project team is planning an informal, in-person gathering at IROS 2026 in Pittsburgh for current and prospective members of the Quori robotics community. This event is scheduled to take place on Monday, September 28th, 11am ET at the Liberty Center, 1001 Liberty Avenue, 5th Floor. All are welcome! Quori is an NSF-funded, multi-award-winning, not-for-profit, open-everything, modular, social robot platform for the robotics research community (https://quori.org). The gathering at IROS will serve as an opportunity to meet with colleagues interested in the Quori robot platform and to network with other researchers interested in human-robot interaction and general robotics. To access the meeting venue, you must register! Names of attendees will be provided to Liberty Center staff in charge of access. Please RSVP to the Google Form HERE <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qU8YGFWrBAHgwlu1PQzAi8bdqi8pEFKjFt9RruAq8f…> to express your interest in attending. You are encouraged to forward this to anyone you think might be interested in Quori. Additionally, our next Quori Community Virtual Meeting will take place October 21st at 12pm PT. At the virtual meeting, we will provide Quori development updates and invite research groups to optionally share updates on their work. Stay tuned for an announcement with more information. Finally, if you want to get your own Quori robot, please express your interest (noncommittal) via the Google Form HERE <https://forms.gle/hLmcfMoqVeEhJSKu7>. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments. Thanks and we hope to see you at IROS 2026 and/or at the Quori community virtual meeting! --- The Quori Project Team * Ross Mead (Semio) * Bill Smart (Oregon State University) * Mark Yim (University of Pennsylvania) * Simon Kim (University of Pennsylvania) * Naomi Fitter (Oregon State University)

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Call for Participation: 13th Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop (RoHOW 2026)
by HULKs 22 Sep '26

22 Sep '26

Dear RoboCup Community, We invite you to the *13th Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop (RoHOW)*, hosted by team HULKs at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) from *November 27 to November 29, 2026*. RoHOW is our annual workshop for robot soccer teams to share insights, solve technical challenges, and build connections. *An Open Space Format* The participants shape the schedule. Bring your own topics, lead sessions, and exchange ideas on league development, software, or hardware. We take care of rooms, scheduling, and drinks. You bring the content. *All Robot Soccer Leagues Welcome* With the transition to the *Humanoid Soccer League (HSL)*, we warmly invite every HSL team to join us. We also invite teams from *all other robot soccer leagues* to take part. RoHOW is an open forum for the entire robot soccer community to collaborate. *Remote Participation* Remote attendance went well last year, and we are improving the stream quality this time around. We will stream the main talks for remote attendees. To keep the open exchange natural, informal discussion circles and couch sessions will remain in person. *Event Details* • *Dates:* November 27 to November 29, 2026 • *Location:* Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Hamburg, Germany • *Catering Included:* Drinks throughout the weekend, dinner on Friday, plus breakfast on Saturday and Sunday. *Ticket Options* • *Standard Ticket (75€):* For private individuals. Includes a payment receipt. • *Business Ticket (120€):* For university or company billing. Includes an invoice issued before the event. We know ticket prices are higher this year. The event is not-for-profit, and the higher rates reflect rising venue costs and lower sponsor support. *Registration* Email *hulks(a)hulks.de* by *November 15, 2026* with the following information: 1. Team name and league 2. Number of in-person attendees and their ticket type (Standard or Business) 3. Interest in the remote livestream If ticket costs are an issue for anyone on your team, please contact us, likely we can find a solution! Find updates at https://rohow.de <https://rohow.de/?utm_source=gemini>. Best regards, *Team HULKs*

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[CFP] NEmo 2026 @ NeurIPS - deadline EXTENDED to 14 September (AoE)
by Emanuele Musumeci 10 Sep '26

10 Sep '26

Dear RoboCup Humanoid League community, The submission deadline for NEmo 2026: Neuro-Symbolic Embodied Intelligence, a workshop at NeurIPS 2026 (December 12, 2026, Sydney, Australia), has been extended to September 14, 2026, Anywhere on Earth. NEmo focuses on the challenges of building long-lived autonomous agents that can perceive, reason, plan, learn, and adapt over extended interactions in physical or richly simulated environments. A central theme of the workshop is the role of neuro-symbolic approaches in making such agents more reliable and capable. Topics of interest include - combining learned perception, reinforcement learning and large language models with planning and structured symbolic knowledge - grounding and shared semantics - memory over long horizons - affordances - recovery from failed assumptions The workshop brings together researchers from machine learning, knowledge representation, planning, robotics, Semantic Web, human-robot interaction, and trustworthy AI. We accept ongoing and already published works as well as new contributions. Website: https://nemo.semantic.review <https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nemo.semantic.review&source=gmail&ust=…> Submit: https://openreview.net/group?id=NeurIPS.cc/2026/Workshop/NEmo <https://www.google.com/url?q=https://openreview.net/group?id%3DNeurIPS.cc/2…> Best regards, The NEmo 2026 Organizing Committee

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