The 1st Workshop on Public Space Human-Robot Interaction (PubRob 2013)

Robots in public spaces: towards multi-party, short-term, dynamic human-robot interaction
Held as part of the International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2013)
Bristol, United Kingdom
27 October 2013

Workshop overview

The development of robots capable of interacting with humans has made tremendous progress in the last decade, leading to an expectation that in the near future, robots will be increasingly deployed in public spaces, for example as receptionists, shop assistants, waiters, or bartenders. In these scenarios, robots must necessarily deal with situations that require socially appropriate human-robot interactions of a specific nature: interactions that are short and dynamic, and where the robot has to be able to deal with multiple persons at once. In order to do so, robots typically require specific skills, including robust video and audio processing, fast reasoning and decision making mechanisms, and natural and safe output path planning algorithms. As a result, research on public space robots is often fundamentally different from other work in social robotics and HRI that focuses on long-term, robot companions who interact with humans in one-on-one interactions. This workshop aims to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines, in order to explore this research area from different perspectives.

Invited speakers

  • Dan Bohus, Microsoft Research, USA
  • Jon Barker, Speech and Hearing Research Group, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

Papers and slides


Introduction Workshop introduction and overview [slides]
Manuel Giuliani

JAMES talk Planning for task-based social interaction in the JAMES bartender domain [slides] [JAMES]
Ron Petrick

Invited talk Dialog in the Open-World: Challenges and Opportunities
Dan Bohus

Invited talk Towards Human-Robot Speech Communication in Everyday Environments [slides]
Jon Barker

Long paper Pilot study of a socially assistive robot for the practice of the medical examination in hospital of adults with cognitive disabilities [paper] [slides]
C. Granata, P. Bidaud, J. Bourgeois, C. Poirey, and P. Robert

Long paper NAO Robot as a Social Mediator: A User Study [paper]
Yasir Tahir, Umer Rasheed, Keng Hui, Shoko Dauwels, Justin Dauwels, Daniel Thalmann, and Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann

Long paper User evaluation of a multi-user social interaction model implemented on a Nao robot [paper] [slides]
Simon Keizer, Pantelis Kastoris, Mary Ellen Foster, Amol Deshmukh, and Oliver Lemon

Long paper The Particle Swarm Optimization: A Flexible approach to Generate Robot Behaviors [paper]
A. Meddahi and R. Chellali

Short paper Short Duration Robot Interaction at an Airport: Challenges from a Socio-Psychological Point of View [paper] [slides]
Michiel Joosse, Manja Lohse, and Vanessa Evers

Short paper A museum guide robot: Dealing with multiple participants in the real-world [paper]
Karola Pitsch, Raphaela Gehle, and Sebastian Wrede

Programme committee