Organizers: Hiroshi Ishiguro, Tatsuya Kawahara and Yutaka Nakamura
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/rss-2018-workshop-shri
The focus of robotics research is shifting from industrial robots to robots working in daily situations and one of the most important issues is to develop autonomous social robots capable to interact with and live together with humans, i.e., symbiotic robots with humans. The aim of this workshop is to introduce research activities in "Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction," and discuss the future challenges in this research area. One of the goals of this research is providing communication support for people, such as communication care support robot for elderly people, which is equally important as physical support in elderly care. Another aim is to offer a framework for understanding what human is by using robots as a communication stimulus input device in the actual situations. In this workshop, we will introduce the research activities using communication robots, along with a demonstration of an android, one of the most advancing communication robots. We will discuss the future of everyday robots, key technologies required to make them able to be true companions living together with us, and ethical and social issues related to this topic.