*** WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT *** [Apologies for multiple copies of this announcement]

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Adaptive Social Interaction based on user’s Mental mOdels and behaVior in HRI ASIMOV 2025

Naples (Italy), September 10, 2025

Held in conjunction with the 17th International Conference on Social Robotics

https://sites.google.com/view/asimov2025

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------------------------------------------------------ IMPORTANT DATES ------------------------------------------------------ - Deadline for Paper Submission: July 20th, 2025 - Paper Acceptance Notification: July 30th, 2025 - Camera Ready Paper: August 11th, 2025 - Main Conference Date: September 10th–12th, 2025 - Workshop Date: September 10th, 2025

------------------------------------------------------ AIM AND SCOPE ------------------------------------------------------ The ability to understand and adapt to people’s mental models is a key objective for enabling natural, efficient, and successful human-robot interaction (HRI), in particular in human-centered scenarios where robots are expected to meet people’s social conventions. Theory of mind and mental models are largely investigated in human-computer interactions, however, it is still unclear what level of others’ mental states a robot should be aware of in order to communicate with people in a transparent and socially acceptable way. The ASIMOV workshop will constitute a unique opportunity to gather roboticists, psychologists, and philosophers and computer scientists to discuss a variety of current and new approaches aiming at endowing social robots with learning abilities, enhancing cognitive and social abilities based on mutual understanding.

SCIENTIFIC CONTEXT The ASIMOV Workshop investigates how social robots can engage in meaningful, ethically aware, and cognitively grounded interactions with humans, particularly in sensitive contexts such as education, healthcare, and assistive scenarios. Despite the promise of social robots in such domains, users often remain cautious about employing them due to ethical, psychological, and safety concerns as well as a lack of trust in such technologies. Addressing these acceptability challenges requires considering not only individual psychological and behavioral factors, but also emergent group dynamics in the design of social interactions, integrating insights from ethics, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology. Central to this exploration is the question of how robots can be designed and behave to respect and respond to human values, expectations, and vulnerabilities. To achieve natural and effective human-robot interaction (HRI), robots must be endowed with learning and real-time adaptation abilities to perceive and interpret users’ mental states, navigate group dynamics in teamwork scenarios, while explicitly taking into account social and ethical rules. Beyond functional alignment, we seek to understand how socio-cognitive architectures, adaptive behaviors, and affective signals can support morally appropriate engagement—avoiding manipulation, misunderstanding, or dehumanization. This requires not only technical innovation, but also a reflective framework that integrates perspectives from ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of mind. Recent research shows that these capabilities are essential to bridge the gap between user expectations and the robot’s actual behavior, enhancing mutual understanding, engagement, and interaction efficiency. Robots' acceptability increases when they can understand and meet people'sexpectations during HRI. By equipping robots with moral, social and cognitive skills, which may be integrated through AI supports, they can convey contextually appropriate affective and social signals in an intelligent and readable way. From the mutual comprehension of mental states, an effective HRI can emerge, allowing human partners to suspend disbelief and fostering trust, partnership, and acceptability.

OBJECTIVES The ASIMOV Workshop brings together interdisciplinary experts in robotics, AI, cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy to explore the design of socially assistive robots that are cognitively competent in modeling both individual mental states and complex group dynamics, while being ethically informed and norm-aware. Focusing on sensitive domains such as education, healthcare, and assistive technologies, the workshop emphasizes integrating socio-cognitive architectures with normative frameworks to ensure robots respect human values, autonomy, and dignity. Key topics include individual and multi-user interaction modeling, moral agency, and mechanisms for real-time ethical adaptation, all aimed at fostering trustworthy, human-centered human-robot interaction grounded in moral psychology and philosophy of mind.

TARGET AUDIENCE We aim to bring together a diverse audience from the fields of social and assistive robotics, cognitive and behavioral robotics, and HRI. The workshop will serve as a platform for exchanging ideas, discussing innovative concepts, and addressing unresolved issues in ongoing research. We encourage the participation of PhD students and young researchers working on user modeling, HRI and control interfaces, machine learning, and ethical aspects of human-machine interaction, among others.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: Mental models in HRI Human-aware perception-action loop Emotion and intention recognition Affective and ethical adaptation Groups, teams and emergent states Group dynamics and fairness Multi-user collaborative robots Empathy and Theory of Mind in Robotics Mutual affective understanding Real-time monitoring of behavior and mental states Detection of non-verbal behavioral cues Multimodality in human-robot interaction Autonomy and responsibility Robots with personality Online adaptive behavior Acceptability and personalization Physiological monitoring and biofeedback systems BCI (brain-computer interfaces)-enabled adaptive interaction Objective metrics and scales for evaluation of HRI Human partnership and trust in HRI Explainable AI in HRI Security and safety in HRI Robot ethics and moral philosophy Value-sensitive design Assistive and educational robotics Human dignity and ethics of care in HRI

------------------------------------------------------ INVITED SPEAKERS ------------------------------------------------------ Prof. Paolo Dario, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, IT Prof. Giovanna Varni, University of Trento, Trento, IT

------------------------------------------------------ SUBMISSIONS ------------------------------------------------------ We welcome prospective participants to submit either full papers (up to 6 pages) or extended abstracts (up to 2 pages). Such contributions, focusing on the topics of the workshop, will be peer reviewed by at least two experts of the domain.

Papers can be on research that the authors would like to discuss during the workshop, especially encouraging papers on new ideas or research that the authors plan to conduct. Possible topics of the submissions will cover a wide view of the state of the art. Workshop papers must clearly indicate that they are part of ASIMOV workshop.

All material collected during the Workshop: video, slides, papers, etc. upon approval of the authors, will be made available on the workshop website.

Selected papers will be invited to present extended versions of their work for a new book series on Robotics for Healthcare by Elsevier.

It is highly recommended to use the Springer LNCS/LNAI style for the layout. Detailed instructions for paper submission are available on the conference website (https://icsr2025.eu/call-for-papers/#regular-paper). LNCS style templates are available on the Springer LNCS website. Each paper will receive two reviews. Accepted papers require that at least one of the authors register for the workshop.

All submitted papers will be reviewed by two reviewers. The abstracts of the accepted papers will appear on the workshop website.

Authors are requested to submit a PDF copy to sanzalone (at) univ-paris8.fr.

------------------------------------------------------ WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS ------------------------------------------------------ Salvatore M. Anzalone Université Paris 8, France

Giuseppe Palestra University of Bari, Italy

Carlotta Bettencourt The Sherkow Center for Child Development and Autism Spectrum Disorder, USA

Elena Ricci Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, IT

Alberto Pirni Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, IT

Maryam Alimardani Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Mariacarla Staffa University of Naples Parthenope, Italy

This workshop is sponsored and partially founded by: - RESTART - Italian National Project - Robot Enhanced Social Abilities based on Theory of Mind for Acceptance of Robot in Assistive Treatments, funded by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research —MIUR (D.D. no.861) (RESTART) - “TRust in Technology: How to Assess and Improve RoboT-User Interaction in Elderly Care Integrating EtHical, Technical and Social Variables” project, funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) (CUP B83C22004800006) - PEPR O2R "Robotique Organique" AS3 (ANR-22-EXOD-007) - France 2030 program