Call For Participation

Handover tasks occur in a multitude of situations, where a robot may assist a human. A butler robot may hand a drink to its user, a scrub nurse may hand a scalpel to a surgeon, and a robotic assistant may hand a wrench to a human mechanic. Many of these tasks appear similar on the surface, but there are important differences. In some scenarios human gaze or language may be an important cue, in others such as the one of the scrub nurse, neither of the former two may be available. Moreover, the required synchronization may be achieved by combination of different modalities such as language, gesture, or sensorimotor communication, like force interaction, posture, etc.

Interestingly, solutions that are found for handover tasks may be adopted for solving other joint action tasks, as issues related to the degree of initiative - mixed-initiative vs. unilateral initiative - or “code-switching” between different channels of communication for the purpose of synchronization, are relevant for joint action tasks in general.

Thus, we would like to invite submission from all respective fields, such as robotics, HRI, psychology of joint action, and ethnomethodology. The workshop is set out to be interdisciplinary in order to create a venue fostering mutual appreciation and enabling potential future collaborations between members of different disciplines.

The Human-Robot handover setups of interest include, but are not necessary limited to:

  • Computational and/or robotic modelling of human-robot and robot-human handovers
  • Empirical studies on human-robot and robot-human handovers
  • Sensing for handover processes or closely related forms of joint-actions including force and tactile sensing
  • Communicative alignment and coordination during handovers or closely related forms of joint action
  • Sensorimotor communication (SMC) during handovers or closely related forms of joint action
  • Cognitive modelling of handovers and other closely related forms of joint actions
  • Intent recognition
  • Human awareness
  • Joint motion planning
  • Mixed-initiative interactions
  • Shared control or similar models of handovers or closely related processes
  • Joint action models and user studies
  • Joint behaviours from the point view of psychology
  • Behavioral micro-analyses (conversation analysis, ethnomethodology)
  • Action and reaction in humans from the point view of neuroscience

For those above, and other collaborative setups, we are happy to receive additional material (e.g., videos & posters) related to all human-human or human-robot research areas and applications.

Extended abstract of up to 2 pages (IEEE ICRA format) should be submitted via CMT. The submissions will be reviewed by the organisers. If accepted, authors will be kindly asked to present their work as a poster in one of the workshop Interactive Poster Sessions. Authors are likely to be invited to submit full-length manuscripts to a special issue in a leading journal in human-robot interaction such as the ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction.
For submissions please follow the following link: here

Important dates:
Paper submission: 20th of May
Notification of acceptance: 25th of May