Highlights of the Humans at the Centre of HRI symposium 2022

The international symposium, organised by NAVER LABS Europe and INRIA, is a multidisciplinary event that brings together researchers and practitioners from various fields to discuss the latest developments in the domain of human-robot interaction (HRI).

We began with the Social Acceptability in Public Spaces session, where Anne Spalanzani, Sure Bak, Mads Bødker, and Rachid Alami discussed the challenges of integrating social robots into public and semi-public spaces. They highlighted the various methods that have been developed to address these challenges from different fields i.e., ethnography, design and computer science. They first explored the question of whether robots should comply with human norms or have their own specific social norms. Anne Spalanzani pointed out that autonomous vehicles that transport people should behave like human drivers to integrate safely into regular traffic, a context with very clear rules. Rachid Alami argued that the important thing is for robots is that they be pertinent, predictable and acceptable, but not necessarily behave like humans. Additionally, it was suggested that we should expect a kind of co-evolution between humans and robots. As Mads Bødker pointed out, we will learn more about this relationship after robots are more deployed in the real world. Speakers also discussed the potential for robots being bullied in social environments, and Sure Bak shared the strategies that seem to be more effective with the robots at Naver to respond to this. Finally, they analysed the advantages and drawbacks of creating robot-friendly environments.

In the second session, Ethics of Embodied AI, Laurence Devillers, Maria Luce Lupetti, Ajung Moon and Peter Asaro discussed the ethical issues surrounding the adoption of intelligent and learning technologies, including manipulation and privacy concerns. Laurence Devillers talked about the negative ways (the notion of sludge) in which manipulation can be used and gave examples of measures to mitigate this. Regarding privacy, a central theme in robotics given the continuous sensing that robotics requires, Peter Asaro reminded us that privacy is not an absolute value but something that is very much contextually dependant. Maria Luce Lupetti explained how the role of design is also very critical and to point out where technology is creating ethical issues. All speakers made the point that ethics is something that society should address with laws and regulations and that, although technology can provide some help, it cannot address this alone. However, given the rapid pace of change, it is fair to expect that our governments will need to be supported and advised about risks and solutions related to technology, a role we are in the position to take. They warned about the risks of “technology solutionism” and the need for more research to produce taxonomies of potential harms. Ajung Moon recalled that ethics discussions in robotics can be very distant from the everyday design decisions of HRI practitioners while there are pressing everyday-kind of issues that arise as we try and bring more robots into our buildings and streets. Finally, speakers also touched on the ethical issues surrounding the use of killer robots and the importance of avoiding trust loss.

In the third session, which focused on Verbal and Non-verbal Communication Modalities, Elisabeth Andre, Jerome Monceaux, Tommaso Colombino, Veronique Auberge and Marco Matarese discussed what is missing in today’s state-of-the-art robots in terms of verbal and non-verbal interaction capabilities, and whether we should focus more on increasing a robot’s capabilities in perception or expression. Speakers analysed the challenges in aligning a robot’s behavior to human behavior in real-time interaction. Elisabeth Andre argued that human robot interaction has to be in real time and perfectly synchronised and, in the same line, Veronique Auberge proposed that interaction is like a dance with dynamics that robots need to follow. Speakers also discussed the degree of interactivity that is required across different use cases. While Jerome Monceaux proposed that robots have to be able to engage the user and be able to react to more than just direct commands (e.g., to facial expressions, eye contact and environmental sounds), Tommaso Colombino questioned how interactive or dynamic a robot needs to be in order to accomplish a task, as not all robots have the embodied features necessary to be fully expressive and it might make sense to work within the limits of the platform. They concluded with a discussion on the challenges in evaluating the quality of user experience over time.

The event concluded with the session on Designing for Vulnerable Users and the Need for Adaptation, that featured Severin Lemaignan, Silvia Rossi, Ioana Ocnarescu, Tony Belpaeme, and Marion Olivier. They discussed how to decide when it is best to assist a human with a task or to fully automate it, and how to generate engagement when using speech interaction. Silvia Rossi and Ioana Ocnarescu argued that, while speech interaction is very challenging, especially in crowded environments, what is difficult (depending on the use case) is taking the context into account. On a similar note, Severin Lemaignan emphasezed the need for a holistic approach that is multi-modal. Speakers also highlighted the role of users in adapting to and learning from technology. They analysed how to handle breakdowns in interaction and the challenges of identifying and diagnosing failures in HRI. Tony Belpaeme suggested that people are the best evaluators of an interaction and proposed that gathering feedback from multiple people could be a useful way to evaluate the quality of the social interaction with a robot.

Overall, the HRI Symposium provided a valuable forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss the latest developments in human-robot interaction, and to explore the challenges and opportunities of integrating robots into human environments. We encourage you to watch the 18 talks and the 4 panel discussions on the website of the event and learn more about the exciting developments in the field of HRI!