Now accepting submissions for the 2007 HRI workshop.

The field of human-robot interaction is new but growing rapidly. While there are now several established researchers in the field, many of the current human-robotic interaction practitioners are students or recently graduated. This workshop, to be held in conjunction with the HRI 2007 conference, aims to bring together this group of researchers to discuss their work, talk about the important upcoming issues in the field, and hear about what their colleagues are doing.

The workshop is the second annual workshop for junior researchers in HRI held in conjunction with the HRI conference. Those who have not attended a previous session are highly encouraged to submit to this workshop. Previous attendance will be considered for acceptance as well.

We would like to announce Dr. Henrik Christensen of the Georgia Institute of Technology as our keynote speaker. Dr. Christensen is the KUKA Chair of Robotics at Georgia Institute of Technology and director of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the same institution. He has earlier been director of Autonomous Systems at the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden and coordinator of European Robotics (1998-2006). He earned an initial degree in Mechanical Engineering before earning M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees from Aalborg University - Denmark, 1987 and 1989 respectively. His research is focussed on robotics systems and in particular systems integration, embedded in real applications. Henrik Christensen has published more than 200 contributions in AI, Robotics, and Computer Vision and is the co-foundered of 3 companies. Henrik serves on the editorial board of AI Magazine, Autonomous Robots, Intl Jour of Robotics Research, and Service Robotics. Further information is available on his web site.

The format of the workshop will have participants presenting their work in short talks, hearing from an expert in the field on the important problems in HRI, and meeting in small group sessions to discuss common research themes.

The workshop will take place on Thursday, March 8, 2007, in Washington, DC in conjunction with the HRI 2007 Conference to be held in DC March 9-11. Potential participants are encouraged to submit an abstract of their current research, a 1 paragraph statement of motivation for attending the workshop, and a letter of support from their research advisor by September 30, 2006 to hri-workshop@media.mit.edu. Please limit abstracts to two pages.

We plan to accept approximately 30 students and young researchers to the workshop. Twelve will be asked to give a brief (10 minute) talk to the workshop about their work. The remainder will be expected to talk about their work during breakout sessions and meals.

• Jennifer Burke, University of South Florida, USA
• Cory D. Kidd, MIT Media Lab, USA
• Andrea Thomaz, MIT Media Lab, USA
• Adriana Tapus, University of Southern California, USA

• Dr. Julie Adams, Vanderbilt University, USA
• Dr. Ronald Arkin, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
• Dr. Aude Billard, Ecole Polytechnic Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland
• Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, MIT Media Lab, USA
• Dr. Henrik Christensen, KTH, Sweden
• Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire, UK
• Dr. Takayuki Kanda, ATR IRC Lab, Japan
• Dr. Robin Murphy, University of South Florida, USA
• Dr. Marjorie Skubic, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA
• Dr. Holly Yanco, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

• 30 September 2006 -- Abstract Submission Deadline
• 15 November 2006 -- Notification of Acceptance
• 8 March 2007 -- HRI Workshop
• 9-11 March 2007 -- HRI 2007 Conference