Workshop Program
Schedule
| Time | Type | Title | Speaker(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 – 9:15 | Opening | Welcome and Introduction | Workshop Chairs |
| 9:15 – 10:00 | Keynote | Why we should care about accessibility in HRI | Friederike Eyssel |
| 10:00 – 10:15 | Paper | Towards Affect-Adaptive Human-Robot Interaction: A Protocol for Multimodal Dataset Collection on Social Anxiety | Vesna Poprcova |
| 10:15 – 10:30 | Paper | A Multimodal Large Language Model Framework for Gesture Generation in Social Robotics | Nguyen Tan Viet Tuyen |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Break | Coffee Break | — |
| 11:00 – 12:00 | Debate | "A personalized robot today is a surveillance system tomorrow" | Micol Spitale (FOR - in person), Shruti Chandra (FOR - online), Maha Elgarf (AGAINST - online), Mike Lightart (AGAINST - in person) |
| 12:00 – 12:45 | Keynote | Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: Designing, Ethical, Adaptive Social Robots for Inclusive Assistive Care | Hanan Salam |
| 12:45 – 14:00 | Break | Lunch Break | — |
| 14:00 – 14:15 | Paper | Towards Safer Homes: Behavior-Adaptive Risk Assessment for Service Robots Using Semantic Context | Sena Ishii |
| 14:15 – 14:30 | Paper | Humanoids Robot in Pediatric Care Facilities: from Pain Management System to Cognitive Rehabilitation Support | Laura Fiorini |
| 14:30 – 15:15 | Keynote | Paging All Socially Assistive Robots: Persuasive And Intelligent Social Robots for Healthcare And Everyday Assistance | Goldie Nejat |
| 15:15 – 15:30 | Break | Coffee Break | — |
| 15:30 – 16:30 | Debate | "The more robot adapts to us, the less we adapt to others" | Tariq Iqbal (FOR - online), Daniel Tozadore (FOR - in person), Maartje de Graaf (AGAINST - online), Kim Baraka (AGAINST - in person) |
| 16:30 – 16:45 | Conclusions | Closing Remarks | Workshop Chairs |
Keynotes
Goldie Nejat
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Abstract
The world is experiencing a silver tsunami: rapid population aging. As the world’s older population significantly increases, dementia is becoming one of the fastest growing diseases, with no cure in sight. Socially assistive robots are a unique disruptive innovation that are becoming a crucial part of everyday society, especially in a post-pandemic world, aiding people in everyday life to meet urgent and immediate assistive needs. This talk will present some of my group’s recent research efforts (asblab.mie.utoronto.ca) in developing intelligent and persuasive socially assistive robots to improve quality of life and promote independence (aging-in-place) of older adults, including those living with dementia and their care providers. In particular, I will discuss some of my team’s many robots including Brian, Casper, Tangy, Blueberry, Salt, Pepper, Chili, Hans Solo, and Luke and Leia that have been deployed in human-centred environments from long-term care homes and hospitals to grocery stores to autonomously provide cognitive and social interventions, help with activities of daily living, and lead individual-based and group-based recreational activities, games and therapies. Our novel multimodal interactive robots are serving as assistants to individuals as well as groups of users, while learning to personalize these interactions to the needs and wants of these users by using perceptual, behavioural and persuasive intelligence. Numerous user studies conducted in care settings will also be discussed to highlight how these socially assistive robots can effectively be integrated into people’s everyday lives to support person-centred care and overall wellbeing.
Short Bio
Dr. Goldie Nejat, Ph.D., P.Eng., is the Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Assistive and Collaborative Robots and a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. She is also the Founder and Director of the Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory (asblab.mie.utoronto.ca). Professor Nejat is an Adjunct Scientist at both KITE in the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (University Health Network) and the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences, and a Fellow of both ASME and CIFAR. Dr. Nejat’s research focuses on developing intelligent service robots and robot cooperative teams for applications in health, eldercare, emergency response, search and rescue, security and surveillance, retail and manufacturing. Her ground-breaking robotics research is leading the development of intelligent socially assistive robots aimed at meeting the challenges posed by a rapidly aging population. She has been invited to speak about her research to scientists, healthcare professionals, policymakers, governments and the general public at many events, conferences and institutions around the world. She has served on the organizing, program and editorial committees of numerous international conferences and journals on robotics, automation, human-robot interaction and medical devices. She is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Social Robotics, a program co-chair for the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) and is also a past Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), and IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE). Her team's work has been presented in over 100 media stories including in Popular Science, National Geographic Magazine, Time Magazine, Bloomberg, NBC News, the Telegraph, Reader's Digest, and the Discovery Channel. In 2022, she received the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) Pioneering Research Award in Robot & Human Interactive Communication along with her students and collaborator. In 2022, she was also internationally recognized as 1 of 50 women in robotics you need to know by Women in Robotics for her inspiring contributions to robotics. In 2020, she received the Engineering Excellence Medal from the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (PEO) and the Professional Engineers Ontario. Her other recognitions include the Engineers Canada Young Engineer Achievement Award, and the Young Engineer Medal from PEO.
Friederike Eyssel
Bielefed University
Abstract
As social robots will become increasingly integrated into our daily lives, ensuring their accessibility is essential. This presentation examines the vital role that accessibility plays in the design and implementation of social robots. Considering accessibility the design of social robots empowers everyone, including diverse user groups and individuals with disabilities, to engage fully with these innovative technologies. Throughout the presentation, we will explore the current state of the art in the field of human-robot interaction, spotlighting both the promising developments and the challenges that remain in making social robots truly accessible for all. By tackling these challenges, we can pave the way for creating inclusive social robots.
Short Bio
Friederike Eyssel is Professor of Psychology and head of the research group “Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research” at the Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Bielefeld University, Germany. She has held visiting professorships in social psychology at the University of Münster, the Technical University of Dortmund, the University of Cologne, and the New York University Abu Dhabi. Friederike is passionate about basic and applied social psychological research and she is interested in various research topics ranging from social robotics, trust, and acceptance of novel techlologies to attitudes and attitude change. She is co-author of various textbooks on social robots, among them “HRI: An introduction (2020, 2024 Cambridge University Press, Hanser, 2020, 2022), “Robots in Education” (2021, Routledge), and “Theory and practice of sociosensitive and socioactive systems” (2022, Springer). Friederike Eyssel has received the Bielefeld University Award for sustainable engagement for Gender Equality in 2021. Furthermore, she received the Bielefeld University Karl-Peter Grotemeyer Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2021 and the IEEE-RAS Cognitive Robotics Distinguished Lecturer Award, 2022-2024 and 2025-2027. She has been an active part of the social robotics community, for instance, as Associate Editor for ACM “Transactions in Human-Robot Interaction” and Section Editor for “Robotics”.
Hanan Salam
New York University Abu Dhabi
Abstract
As socially assistive robots become increasingly integrated into healthcare and caregiving environments, the promise of personalization has never been more compelling, or more complex. In this keynote, I will explore how adaptive robotic systems can be designed to deliver meaningful, long-term support tailored to individual users’ needs, goals, preferences, and identities. Drawing on real-world deployments of socially intelligent robots in neurodiverse populations, including college students with ADHD, I will highlight how personalization through adaptive prompting, context modeling, and behavioral tailoring can enhance engagement, autonomy, and therapeutic alliance. However, with great personalization comes great responsibility. I will unpack the ethical dilemmas that emerge when robots learn to adapt: What boundaries should govern adaptive behavior? How can we ensure inclusivity and guard against algorithmic biases, overdependence, or surveillance creep? Can a robot’s empathy be both believable and bounded? Integrating perspectives from AI, human-robot interaction, and healthcare, this talk advocates for a value-centered design framework for personalization, one that balances behavioral adaptation with user agency, respects diversity, and embeds fairness and transparency by design. Ultimately, I argue that the next generation of personalized social robots must be not only intelligent and adaptive, but also accountable and inclusive.
Short Bio
Hanan Salam is Assistant Professor in Computer Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. She is also the director of Social Machines & Robotics Lab (SMART) & affiliated with the Center of AI & Robotics (CAIR). She is the co-founder of Women in AI, an international non-profit Do-Tank whose mission is to close the gender gap in the field of Artificial Intelligence through education, research, and events. Hanan holds a PhD in Telecommunications, Information, and Communication Sciences and Technologies from CentraleSupélec in France, an engineering degree in Computer Science and Telecommunications from the Lebanese University, and a Masters degree in Control, Robotics, Signal and Image Processing from Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France. After spending three years as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie (Sorbonne), she worked in the robotics industry where she was an R&D Engineer in AI and Robotics at A.I.Mergence, a startup specialized in intelligent autonomous robots for home security. Following, she worked as an independent consultant in AI and Data Science, in parallel with part-time lecturing at different French universities and engineering schools. She then joined Emlyon Business School as an associate professor in AI before joining NYUAD. Her scientific interests include Artificial Intelligence for mental healthcare, Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), social robotics, computer vision, personalized machine learning, and affective computing. She has published several international peer-reviewed conference and journal papers on social robotics and intelligent affective computing. She is an advocate of technology for common good and an activist for women empowerment.