Social robots can have several roles such as home care robots (e.g. for seniors), mediators (e.g. for persons with autism spectrum disorders), and companions (e.g. for children alone at home). When a new application/behavior is created on a robot, researchers need to validate it. Obviously, they need to validate technical aspects: has the robot correctly executed its tasks, has it correctly moved its actuators, etc. Nevertheless, they also need to validate psychological aspects. Indeed, the literature shows that the interaction between a robot and a human is complex. Robots, with their presence, and their capabilities to act on our environment, influence people. And literature also shows that humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize robots, and can reject a robot (for example if the robot does not respect particular social norms). Evaluating an application on a robot is complex because the need to understand how humans experience the interaction is not easily met with our current methodologies. Some common objectives in HRI are to “maximize” well-being, to build robots which are acceptable, to build robots which can efficiently help people. We need to understand the relationship between robots and humans, for example studying which social skills are important, what is the impact of robots, which roles the robot can and cannot fulfill and so on. To learn about the robots and about the interaction, we need to study humans when interacting with robots.

People who create robot applications are typically computer scientists or roboticists. They often are not experts in evaluating human-robot interactions and their effects. As such input from psychologists, ethologists, sociologists, philosophers, anthropologists, ergonomists (not an exhaustive list), who are specialists in analyzing human behaviors and attitudes, is invaluable. These disciplines use different methodologies, but all are to a large extent readily available for Human-Robot Interaction studies. For example, Human-Robot Interactions are mainly evaluated in controlled environments, such as laboratory settings. Even if these types of evaluations bring knowledge, they do not help with evaluating Human-Robot Interactions in natural contexts. We also notice that the existing literature shows articles presenting studies performed without specialists, which may contain some methodological errors or biases. Therefore, we believe it is necessary to standardize Human-Robot Interaction evaluation methods.

Target Audience

This workshop focuses only on the interaction/relationship between a human and a robot, but not on robot’s evaluation. Our main objective is to define new evaluation methods in order to make HRI research reproducible. This call is open to all experts of Human-Robot Interaction studies: psychologists, ethologists, ergonomists, sociologists, philosophers, anthropologists, computer scientists, and roboticists.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

A non-exhaustive list of topics to be covered in the workshop is as follows:

• Application to HRI evaluation of ethology, ergonomics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, …
• New approaches to evaluate Human-Robot Interaction
• Human-Human interaction studies
• Human-Animal interaction studies
• Human-Computer Interaction studies
• Human-Robot Interaction studies
• Communication studies
• Good practices in the evaluation of Human-Robot Interaction
• Human factors
• User-experience
• Evaluation methods
• Evaluation metrics