Human Robot Collaboration

Workshop to be held in conjunction with
2013 Robotics Science and Systems
June 24-28, 2013, Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: humanrobotcollaboration@gmail.com

HRC 2013
What would it take to introduce a robot into a human team, in an environment designed for humans? Sharing a workspace with humans and augmenting them to accomplish a task more effectively raises several important challenges. Humans must be able to effectively program the robot, as well as help it recover and learn from errors. The robot must be safe and intuitive, both through its hardware and through the way it acts and moves. It must not only possess or learn a model of the task at hand, but also coordinate its actions with those of its teammates within that model. In order to achieve this coordination, the robot must communicate relentlessly and via numerous channels (e.g. speech, gaze, motion). This full-day workshop will feature three oral sessions as well as a poster session. The oral sessions will consist of invited talks, contributed paper spotlights, and will feature a discussion that centers around a relevant challenge/issue in the community. Any papers that discuss challenges in developing human-robot collaborative systems in natural human environments are welcomed. In particular, we invite submissions that are centered on the following topics:
  • Motion Generation – Natural, predictable motion through trajectory optimization and learning from human motion;
  • Reactive Behavior – reactive motion through planning and control in dynamic human environments;
  • Learning from Demonstration – Learning skills or tasks from demonstrations, online error correction;
  • Coordination – Dynamic coordination, Multi-agent planning, Human-robot collaborative manipulation; and
  • Communication – Expressing robot intent and predicting human intent, social structures in human-robot relationship (co-worker vs. master/slave).
Important Dates
  • May 3 May 6 – Submission Deadline (extended!)
  • May 20 – Acceptance Notification
  • June 28 – 2013 HRC Workshop in Berlin, Germany
Submissions Instructions
We welcome all papers that contribute to the field of human robot collaboration including reactive behavior, learning from demonstration, coordination, and communication. All submissions will receive at least two single-blind reviews and be evaluated in terms of significance, relevance, and technical quality.

Submitted papers should be:
Organizing Committee
Program Committee
  • Henny Admoni – Yale University
  • Frank Broz – Plymouth University
  • Chad Jenkins – Brown University
  • Malte Jung – Stanford University
  • Ben Kuipers – University of Michigan
  • Iolanda Leite – Technical University of Lisbon
  • Sarah Osentoski – Brown University
  • Julie Shah – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Stefanie Tellex – Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Brown University
  • Russell Toris – Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Tentative Workshop Program
Coordination and Communication (9:00 - 12:00)
Lunch (12:00 - 13:30)
Robots Helping People (13:30 - 15:00)
Learning in Collaboration (15:00 - 16:40)
Poster Session (16:40 - 17:30)
Invited Talks
  • Brenna Argall – Northwestern University
  • Frank Broz – Plymouth University
  • Sonia Chernova – Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Matei Ciocarlie – Willow Garage
  • Julie Shah – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Stefanie Tellex – Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Brown University
  • Marc Toussaint – University of Stuttgart