HRI

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2010). HRI is a single-track, highly selective annual conference that showcases the very best research and thinking in human-robot interaction. HRI is inherently interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, reflecting work from researchers in robotics, psychology, cognitive science, HCI, human factors, artificial intelligence, organizational behavior, anthropology, and many other fields.

The theme of HRI 2010 is "Grand Technical and Social Challenges in HRI." Robots are increasingly becoming part of people's everyday social lives. In future years, robots may become caretaking assistants for the elderly, or academic tutors for our children, or medical assistants, day care assistants, or psychological counselors. Robots may become our co-workers in factories and offices, or maids in our homes. As we move to create our future with robots, hard problems in human-robot interaction (HRI) exist, both technically and socially. This year's conference seeks to take up grand technical and social challenges in the field - and speak to their integration.

The call for papers attracted 124 full paper submissions from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. The program committee led by the program co-chairs conducted a rigorous review process for full papers, accepting 26 full papers for oral presentation and publication in the proceedings. This year, taking advantage of having both IEEE and ACM as the sponsor, all papers are archived in both the IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library.

Furthermore, 65 late-breaking reports were screened for relevance and accepted for presentation at the HRI conference as posters, exposing a broader perspective of solutions, challenges and issues in HRI. They will be made available in the IEEE Xplore as well as the ACM Digital Library. Finally, a total of 12 videos (out of 23 submissions) were accepted based on importance, novelty and entertainment value and will be shown in a special video session. The accepted presentations cover a variety of topics, including verbal and non-verbal human-robot communication, social learning, social and moral interaction with robots, interface design, and methods for studying human-robot interaction.

This year's local event is "the Drama with Robots", where humanoid robots are used in art. The drama is directed by a famous director Oriza Hirata. It is designed to show how people might have relationships with robots in future society. We hope that visitors experience the interacting capability of robots and methods to express robots' feelings.