WORKSHOP: Doctoral Consortium at the 2018 ACM/IEEE Human Robot Interaction (HRI) Conference

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This award support a Pioneers Workshop (doctoral consortium) of approximately 24 students (20 graduate participants, one undergraduate participant, and three student organizers), along with distinguished research faculty. The event takes place as part of the first day of activities at the 13th International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2018), held March 5-8 in Chicago, and which was jointly sponsored by ACM and IEEE. HRI is the premier conference for showcasing the very best interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research on human-robot interaction, with roots in diverse fields including robotics, artificial intelligence, social psychology, cognitive science, human-computer interaction, human factors, engineering, and many more. It is a single-track, highly selective annual international conference that invites broad participation. The theme of HRI 2018 was "Robots for Social Good." The conference sought contributions from a broad set of perspectives, including technical, design, methodological, behavioral, and theoretical, that advance fundamental and applied knowledge and methods in human-robot interaction, with the goal of enabling human-robot interaction through new technical advances, novel robot designs, new guidelines for design, and advanced methods for understanding and evaluating interaction. More information about the conference is available online at http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2018. The Pioneers Workshop was designed to afford a unique opportunity for the best of the next generation of researchers in human-robot interaction to be exposed to and discuss current and relevant topics as they are being studied in several different research communities. This is important for the field, because it has been recognized that transformative advances in research in this fledgling area can only come through the melding of cross-disciplinary knowledge and multinational perspectives. Participants were encouraged to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development, to form collaborative relationships, and to generate new research questions to be addressed during the coming years. Participants also gained leadership and service experience, as the workshop was largely student organized and student led. The PI expressed his strong commitment to recruiting women and members from under-represented groups. To further ensure diversity the event organizers considered each applicant's potential to offer a fresh perspective and point of view with respect to HRI, and worked to recruit students who are just beginning their graduate degree programs in addition to students who are further along in their degrees. The Pioneers Workshops are designed to complement the conference, by providing a forum for students and recent graduates in the field of HRI to share their current research with their peers and a panel of senior researchers in a setting that is less formal and more interactive than the main conference. During the workshop, participants talk about the important upcoming research themes in the field. The formation of collaborative relationships across disciplines and geographic boundaries is encouraged. To these ends, the workshop format encompasses a variety of activities including keynotes, a distinguished panel session, and breakout sessions. To start the day, all workshop attendees briefly introduce themselves and their interests. Following the opening keynote, approximately half of the participants present 3-minute overviews of their work, leading into an interactive poster session. This enables all participants to share their research and receive feedback from students and senior researchers in an informal setting. The workshop organizers facilitate the post-presentation discussion and encourage participants to ask questions of their peers during the interactive break and poster session. After lunch, the remaining workshop participants give their 3-minute overviews, followed by presentation of their posters during a second interactive poster session. Senior researchers (in addition to those on the panel) are invited to attend the student presentations and poster sessions in order to provide feedback to participants, and workshop participants are invited to present their posters during the main poster session of the HRI conference as well.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.