Dear colleagues,

After the great success of the TRAITS (HRI 2021) and SCRITA (RO-MAN 2021) workshops, we are very pleased to announce the Special Issue “The Road to Successful HRI: Trust, Acceptance, Ethics, Social Signals and AI” of the International Journal of Social Robotics is open! The special issue aims at exploring successful HRIs from a multidisciplinary perspective, and how to shape the design of robots. The special issue will be open for submissions until January 31, 2022. We welcome submissions from all disciplines addressing topics that allow robots to 1) autonomously sense and react to the situation, people and the environment by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) techniques 2) such that people feel comfortable to interact with robots 3) and trust them to safely reach intended outcomes, and 4) by respecting ethical and legal principles.

More information can be found on the website of both workshops TRAITS and SCRITA, and on the Journal page.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information and questions using the emails below.

Kind regards, Alessandra

Dr. Alessandra Rossi Postdoctoral researcher PRISCA research lab University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy Visiting Researcher Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Adaptive Systems Research Group University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

===========================================================================================================================================

Call for Papers Special Issue on "The Road to Successful HRI: Trust, Acceptance, Ethics, Social Signals and AI.” International Journal of Social Robotics The design of natural human-robot dynamics is a key aspect for ensuring a successful and efficient lasting human-robot interaction (HRI). In particular, it is expected that a robot deployed in human populated environments not only needs to be able to successfully complete a task, involving perception, reasoning and decision-making of other agents and the surroundings, but also needs to show social intelligence to engage people in effective and natural interactions. In such interactions, robots and people need to be able to cooperate to reach a joint goal, which can only be achieved if people accept and trust robots to complete their task and prevent any potential harm (emotional or physical) to people, the environment and themselves. The agents involved need to correctly interpret each other's behaviour, and act accordingly. Finally, several studies have shown that socially aware robots are perceived more positively by people in social contexts and situations. Robots, therefore, should be able to understand and use people's direct and indirect modes of communication, such as verbal and non-verbal cues. Moreover, robots should be able to adapt their behaviours to satisfy people's needs (such as personality, emotions, preferences, habits), and incorporating reactive and predictive meta-cognition models to reason about the situational context (such as its own erroneous behaviours) and provide socially acceptable behaviours. This special issue will explore successful HRI from a multidisciplinary perspective and shape the design of robots, so that robots: 1) autonomously sense and react to the situation, people and the environment by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) techniques 2) such that people feel comfortable to interact with robots 3) and trust them to safely reach intended outcomes, and 4) by respecting ethical and legal principles.

Submissions are invited from leading researchers in the fields including, but not limited, to the following topics of interest: ● Impact of social cues on trust in human-robot interaction ● The impact of social robots on acceptance in HRI ● Measuring trust in human-robot interaction ● Trust violation and recovery mechanism in HRI ● Effects of humans’ acceptance on trust of robots ● Humans sense of control and trust in robots ● Trust and assistive robotics ● Overtrust in robots ● Antecedent of trust and human-robot trust ● Enhancing humans trust in robots ● User profiling and trust in human-robot interaction ● Evaluation of human-robot interaction quality ● Human factors affecting successful HRI ● Mental models in HRI ● XAI in HRI ● Trustworthy AI ● Legal frameworks for trustworthy robotics ● Ethics implications in HRI Important dates The submission deadline is January 31, 2022. The review process for submissions will start immediately after reception and accepted manuscripts will be published online with a DOI on an ongoing basis. How to submit your article All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publication. Interested authors should consult the journal’s “Submission Guidelines” at https://www.springer.com/journal/12369/submission-guidelines Articles can be submitted through Editorial Manager: https://www.editorialmanager.com/soro/default.aspx The special issue is created as submission questionnaire in the system. When you submit your paper you will be asked if your paper belongs to a special issue. Please answer yes, and then  select “S.I. The Road to Successful HRI: Trust, Acceptance, Ethics, Social Signals and AI” from the pull-down menu. All submitted papers will be reviewed on a peer review basis as soon as they are received. Accepted papers will become immediately available Online First until the complete Special Issue appears. Please feel free to contact us for further information or assistance. The Guest Editors:

• Dr. Alessandra Rossi (lead guest editor): a**************i@unina.it • Dr. Patrick Holthaus: p********s@herts.ac.uk • Antonio Andriella: a********a@iri.upc.edu • Dr. Anouk van Maris: a************s@uwe.ac.uk • Sílvia Moros: s*************l@herts.ac.uk • Dr. Gabriella Lakatos: g*******s@herts.ac.uk • Dr. Marcus Scheunemann: m***********n@herts.ac.uk