SAFE AND ACCEPTABLE HUMAN-ROBOT COLLABORATION

Special Session on

for the

29th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and

Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2020)

31/8-4/9/2020 Naples, Italy

Motivation and goals of the session: The purpose of this special session is to explore how collaborative robots can interact with humans in a safe and acceptable way fostering their integration in real world contexts. The special session will focus any human-robot collaboration (HRC) application with a specific attention to industrial scenarios (one of the most promising application areas for HRC). This special session will focus on three aspects of human-robot collaboration: (1) investigation of cognitive features and functions to support human-robot interaction during the execution of collaborative tasks, (2) technological development for guaranteeing safe and effective human-robot collaboration and (3) human behavior and expectations as a means to understand the acceptance aspects of collaborative robots in real scenarios. This special session is also related to a Workshop held in RO-MAN 2017 “Human-Robot Collaboration for an improved Quality of Work” and will continue to pursue deeper understanding on HRC.

List of Topics (not limited to):

Cooperative and Collaborative Human-Robot Interaction;
New enhancing safety functions for the current status of ISO Robotics Standards or future directions in relating to HRI;
Vocal and gesture commands and physical contacts in real world applications;
Communication and coordination between human and robot;
Robot motion and navigation in realistic environments
Cognitive features for collaborative robots;
Long-term autonomy in human-robot collaborative scenarios;
Human-aware planning and execution in human-robot collaboration;
Generation of robust robot controllers;
Failure detection and recovery in HRC control systems;
Evaluation methods for HRC workplaces and process (productivity, flexibility etc.);
Benchmarking and objectively & quantitatively evaluating performance of robots during the cooperation with human;
Ergonomics of HRC (Physical, Intensity of signals, alarms, visual field etc.);
Vision and control of industrial robots for HRI applications;
Novel Sensing and grasping technologies for HRI;
Interfaces for real-time path and motion planning and collision avoidance;
HRC design;
Case Studies, Experiments, Ethics and Outreach

TEMPLATES AND SUBMISSION PROCEDURE FOR REGULAR AND SPECIAL SESSION PAPERS
All papers submitted to RO-MAN 2020 will undergo a peer-review process. A manuscript will be reviewed by at least two reviewers, who will provide detailed comments and - if the submission gets accepted - the authors submit a revised ("camera-ready") version that takes into account this feedback. The review process is managed by the program chair, the program co-chairs, the editors, and the conference associate editors.

All papers are reviewed using a single-blind review process: authors declare their names and affiliations in the manuscript for the reviewers to see, but reviewers do not know each other's identities, nor do the authors receive information about who has reviewed their manuscript.

Authors should use the templates provided by the electronic submission system. The templates for US Letter format paper should be used.

The manuscript submission website will require that you submit your abstract and make any final changes to the author list and title of the paper before uploading the paper.

All authors and co-authors must be registered in the electronic system. It is the corresponding author's responsibility to ensure that the complete author list and the correct title are being entered. This information will be used for the conference program and the proceedings.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: MARCH 15, 2020
Notification of acceptance: MAY 27, 2020
Camera-ready deadline: JUNE 15, 2020

AUTHORS SHOULD ADHERE TO THE FOLLOWING STEPS FOR SUBMITTING THE PAPER (FOR INITIAL SUBMISSION):
Create an account: go to https://ras.papercept.net/, then PIN and fill out the form. Ask all your co-authors to do the same if they do not have an account on the system yet, write down the authors' PINs (this information is needed for manuscript processing purposes).
Go to Support Menu and depending on how you are preparing your paper, download a template: LaTeX or MS-Word, Use these templates/style files to create the paper and save in PDF format.
Upload the paper: go to https://ras.papercept.net/ and click on "Submit a contribution to RO-MAN 2020".
Submit (special session paper).
Fill in the form presented on the next page (make sure to enter all author PINs created in Step 1).

List of organizers:

Dr.-Ing. Mohamad Bdiwi, Fraunhofer Institute for machine tools and forming technology, Chemnitz, Germany, mohamad.bdiwi@iwu.fraunhofer.de
Bio sketch: Dr.-Ing. Mohamad Bdiwi (male) has been working at the Fraunhofer IWU in Chemnitz since 2013. He leads the Department of Robotics (€1.2 million annual research budget; 22 employees and students). Dr. Bdiwi has received his PhD degree from the Technical University of Chemnitz, Germany, Department of Robotic Systems. His PhD thesis is entitled "Development of Integration Algorithms for Vision/Force Robot Control with Automatic Decision System". Dr. Bdiwi has published more than 30 international scientific papers and journal articles. Furthermore, he is leading many national and international projects. He is also managing the CTC-Collaborative Technology Cluster for Human-robot interaction and robotics applications.
Alberto Finzi, Federico II University of Naples, Naples, Italy alberto.finzi@unina.it
Bio sketch: Alberto Finzi is Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (DIETI), University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy). His research interests include Cognitive Robotics, Human–Robot Interaction, Executive and Cognitive Control, Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, Planning and Scheduling Systems, Multi-agent Systems, Formal Methods for Autonomous Systems. He has been recently involved in several research projects sponsored by the International (e.g., European Commission, NASA, ESA, etc) and National (e.g., ASI, MIUR, MISE, etc) funding agencies, and private industries.
AndreA Orlandini, Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology (CNR-ISTC), Rome, Italy, andrea.orlandini@istc.cnr.it
Bio sketch: Andrea Orlandini is a Researcher at CNR-ISTC. His research interests spans over automated planning, temporal logic, dependable plan execution and model-based robot control. He worked in investigating robust plan-based control systems in safety critical scenarios. He investigates the development of human-aware task planning technology for human-robot collaboration in industrial scenarios within several EU-funded projects. Currently he is PI for CNR-ISTC in ShareWork (H2020 FoF) project for developing a human-aware task planning for HRC.
Nicola Pedrocchi, Institute of Intelligent Industrial Technologies and Systems for Advanced Manufacturing (STIIMACNR), Milan, Italy, nicola.pedrocchi@stiima.cnr.it
Bio sketch: His research are mainly focused on robot motion control and planning, with specific focus on online optimization and robot behaviour adaptation to real scenario. He worked in investigating humanaware motion planning in human-robot collaborative industrial scenarios within several EU-funded projects. Currently he is PI for CNR-STIIMA in ShareWork (H2020 FoF) project for developing a human-aware and safe robot motion planner for Human-Robot Collaboration.

The special session is promoted by SHAREWORK project (H2020 Factories of the Future G.A. 820807).