Human-Robot Interaction Conference

Human-Robot Interaction Conference
Name	Human-Robot Interaction Conference
Status	Active
Frequency	Annual
Discipline	Robotics
First	2006
Organizer	Association for Computing Machinery
Publisher	ACM Press
Country	International

Human-Robot Interaction Conference is an annual scholarly event bringing together researchers, practitioners, and industry representatives in Robotics, Human–computer interaction, Artificial intelligence, Cognitive science, and Design. The conference fosters cross-disciplinary exchange among contributors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Tokyo and corporations such as Google, Amazon, Boston Dynamics and Honda Motor Company. Speakers and attendees often include members from IEEE, Association for Computing Machinery, National Science Foundation and European Commission research programs.

History

The conference originated in a period of rapid growth in Robotics and Artificial intelligence research, with roots in workshops held at institutions like MIT Media Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania and University of Cambridge that responded to advances by labs such as Honda Research Institute, Sony Corporation and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Early formative steering committee members included scholars affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Oxford, and the inaugural meetings drew participants from projects funded by DARPA, European Research Council and National Institutes of Health. The conference evolved alongside seminal events such as IJCAI, NeurIPS, CHI, and ICRA, establishing a distinct venue emphasizing social, cognitive, and interactional dimensions of automation exemplified by work from Hanson Robotics, SoftBank Group, and academic labs at University of Tokyo.

Scope and Themes

The conference covers interaction paradigms linking work from Human–computer interaction, Cognitive science, Social robotics, Affective computing, Computer vision, Natural language processing, and Ethics initiatives. Typical themes include trust and transparency explored by teams at Stanford University, ETH Zurich, Cornell University, and University of Washington; embodied cognition investigated at Brown University and University of California, San Diego; and autonomous systems integration pursued by MIT, Imperial College London, KAIST and Tsinghua University. Workshops and panels frequently address regulation involving stakeholders like European Commission, United Nations, World Economic Forum, and advocacy groups associated with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Organization and Governance

Governance is administered by committees drawn from Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and academic steering groups representing University of Michigan, University of Toronto, Seoul National University, and Peking University. Program committees rotate annually, incorporating experts from research labs at Google DeepMind, Facebook AI Research, Microsoft Research and startups such as OpenAI-adjacent teams. Local organizing committees have been hosted by institutions including Osaka University, University College London, University of Sydney, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, collaborating with city partners like Boston, Tokyo, London, and Paris.

Conferences and Meetings

Annual meetings feature keynote addresses by leading figures from MIT Media Lab, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University human-robot teams, and industry leaders from Toyota Research Institute, Apple Inc., Intel Corporation and Samsung Electronics. Satellite events include workshops aligned with CHI, ICRA, HRI Workshops and symposia coordinated with NeurIPS and ICASSP. Past conference locations have included San Diego Convention Center, Kyoto International Conference Center, Moscone Center, ExCeL London and Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, attracting delegations from National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Fraunhofer Society, and Riken.

Publications and Proceedings

Peer-reviewed proceedings are published by Association for Computing Machinery and indexed in databases maintained by IEEE Xplore partners and repositories used by arXiv preprint authors. Journals that commonly republish extended work include ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, and special issues in Nature Machine Intelligence and Science Robotics. Citation networks link contributions to foundational papers from Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Rodney Brooks and project outputs from OpenAI and DeepMind.

Awards and Recognition

The conference confers best paper awards, student paper awards, and practitioner awards judged by panels including representatives from NSF, ERC, Google Scholar-indexed senior researchers, and award committees with members from IEEE, ACM SIGCHI and ACM SIGGRAPH affiliates. Notable honored works have been later recognized by ACM CHI Best Paper, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Awards, and national academy citations from National Academy of Engineering. Young researcher and doctoral consortium awards have involved mentors from Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, ETH Zurich and Imperial College London.

Impact and Criticism

The conference has shaped research agendas informing deployments by Boston Dynamics, Toyota, Honda Motor Company, and municipal pilots in Singapore, Dubai, and Barcelona. Critics from think tanks like RAND Corporation and scholars at Harvard University and Yale University have raised concerns about reproducibility, inclusivity, and commercialization, while policy analysts at OECD and European Commission have questioned governance of datasets contributed by labs such as Google Research and Facebook AI Research. Debates have compared practices to those in NeurIPS and CHI regarding conflicts of interest, open science, and ethical review processes advocated by groups including ACM Code of Ethics signatories.

Category:Conferences in robotics