AI-HRI 2021 Proceedings

TL;DR

The AI-HRI 2021 symposium reviewed a decade of progress in human-robot interaction, emphasizing interdisciplinary research, virtual evaluation methods, and ethical considerations amid growing AR/VR integration.

Contribution

This paper summarizes achievements, challenges, and future directions in AI for HRI, highlighting the shift towards non-physical evaluations and ethical discussions in the field.

Findings

Increased focus on AR/VR in HRI research.

Growing importance of ethics in HRI discussions.

Recognition of virtual and non-physical evaluation methods.

Abstract

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Symposium has been a successful venue of discussion and collaboration since 2014. During that time, these symposia provided a fertile ground for numerous collaborations and pioneered many discussions revolving trust in HRI, XAI for HRI, service robots, interactive learning, and more. This year, we aim to review the achievements of the AI-HRI community in the last decade, identify the challenges facing ahead, and welcome new researchers who wish to take part in this growing community. Taking this wide perspective, this year there will be no single theme to lead the symposium and we encourage AI-HRI submissions from across disciplines and research interests. Moreover, with the rising interest in AR and VR as part of an interaction and following the difficulties in running physical experiments during the pandemic, this year we specifically encourage researchers to submit works that do not include a physical robot in their evaluation, but promote HRI research in general. In addition, acknowledging that ethics is an inherent part of the human-robot interaction, we encourage submissions of works on ethics for HRI. Over the course of the two-day meeting, we will host a collaborative forum for discussion of current efforts in AI-HRI, with additional talks focused on the topics of ethics in HRI and ubiquitous HRI.