International Journal of Social Robotics - Call for Papers: Special Issue on Robot Avatars for Telepresence and Social Interaction
Guest Editors: Serena Ivaldi, Inria, France (corresponding) Sven Behnke, University of Bonn, Germany Rafael Cisneros, Research scientist, AIST, Japan Luigi Penco, IHMC, USA Kourosh Darvish, University of Toronto, Canada Dongbin Kim, United States Military Academy, USA Jacki Morie, XPRIZE, USA
Opening date October 1, 2022 Closing date June 1, 2023
Description This special issue is timely with the growing interest for the robotics community for robots that are teleoperated to act as human avatars to enable telepresence and social interaction. Avatars are robotics systems that are commanded remotely by skilled operators to execute a variety of tasks in the real-world. With respect to simple teleoperated systems, they can convey a sense of presence to the operators thanks to augmented sensing and interaction interfaces, which widens the potential applications of avatars. For example, in the future, these technologies could lead to robotic avatars used in healthcare to provide skilled examens; avatars could be deployed for remote inspection and intervention in dangerous or emergency situations; they could be used for exploration and distant collaboration, reducing physical travels and maximizing social presence and knowledge sharing. Differently from other robotics fields, here the robot is not the goal but a tool to achieve a complex form of multi-party human robot interaction. The ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition has accelerated this field of research to enable robotics avatars to be operated by humans to enable social presence and remote actions on the environment. The competition is focused on the development of an avatar system that will deploy a human’s senses, actions, and presence to a remote location in real time, while conveying a sense of presence for both the operator and the recipient across several interactions.
There are numerous challenges for making robotics avatars. First, the robot is only one part of a complex robotics solution that also includes the operator interface, typically consisting of a mixture of sensors and actuators. Second, the communication system that enables the operator to connect with the robot and to receive feedback from it, which is not only the medium of communication and the devices used to exchange information, but also the selection and processing of information that is displayed to the operators. The user experience for the humans interacting with the operators through the robot, called recipients, is also non-trivial: recipients are interacting with a human "hidden" inside a robot body. Training is required by both humans involved in the interaction, to learn how to best leverage the robotic system in the given situation.
Submissions are invited from leading researchers in the fields including, but not limited, to the following topics of interest: - Telepresence - Teleoperation - Embodied agents and robot design - Social robots design - Human-machine interfaces for teleoperators - Sensing and perception (local and remote) - Human-robot interaction - VR, haptics and other interfaces for robotics avatars - Repercussions of network latency and countermeasures - Evaluation methods for teleoperation - Possible applications
We are particularly soliciting papers from the teams that participated in the XPRIZE competition, in semifinals and finals, to present their robotics solutions, experiments conducted in their laboratories and/or in the competition and lessons learned.
Each paper will receive 2-3 independent peer reviews by qualified researchers in the domains of social interaction, telepresence, teleoperation, HRI or robotics. The lead guest editor will assign the received papers to one among the guest editors or herself. In case of COI (paper submitted by one of the co-organizers of this special issue), the paper will be handled by Agnieszka Wykowska (since the other Editor in chief is lead guest editor), and we will provide to her a list of possible reviewers to facilitate the handling of the papers.
The special issue is created as submission questionnaire in the system. When you submit your paper you will be asked if your paper belongs to a special issue. Please answer yes, and then select “S.I. Embodied Agents for Wellbeing” from the pull-down menu.
All submitted papers will be reviewed on a peer review basis as soon as they are received. Accepted papers will become immediately available Online First until the complete Special Issue appears.
Guest Editor Biographies Serena Ivaldi is a tenured research scientist at Inria, leading the humanoid and human-robot interaction activities of Team Larsen in Inria Nancy, France. She obtained her Ph.D. in Humanoid Technologies in 2011 at the Italian Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Inria, she was a post-doctoral researcher in UPMC in Paris, France, then at the University of Darmstadt, Germany. She was Program Chair of the conference IEEE/RAS Humanoids 2019, co-leader of the Humanoid Robotics Group of GDR Robotique (the French Robotics society), and one of the judges of the ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition on telexistance and teleoperation of robots. She is also serving as Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Social Robotics, associate Vice-President of IEEE/RAS Member Activities Board and Co-Chair of the IEEE/RAS ICRA Steering Committee. She was awarded the Suzanne Zivi Prize for excellence in research and she was nominated by Robohub and Women in Robotics in the list of “50 Women in Robotics you need to know about” in 2021 (this opens in a new tab).
Website link: https://members.loria.fr/SIvaldi
Sven Behnke is Full Professor for Autonomous Intelligent Systems at the University of Bonn, Germany since 2008 and heads the Institute for Computer Science VI – Intelligent Systems and Robotics. In 1997, he graduated in Computer Science (Dipl.-Inform.) from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and in 2002, he received his doctorate in Computer Science (Dr. rer. Nat.) from Freie Universität Berlin. In 2003, he did postdoctoral research on robust Speech Recognition at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA. From 2004 to 2008, Sven Behnke led the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group “Humanoid Robots” at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. His research interests include Cognitive Robotics, Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Sven Behnke received several Best Paper Awards, three Amazon Research Awards (2018-20), a Google Faculty Research Award (2019), and the Ralf-Dahrendorf-Prize of the BMBF for the European Research Area (2019). He coordinated the H2020 project CENTAURO: Robust Mobility and Dexterous Manipulation in Disaster Response by Fullbody Telepresence in a Centaur-like Robot. His team NimbRo has won numerous robot competitions (RoboCup Humanoid Soccer, RoboCup@Home, MBZIRC). In the ANA Avatar XPRIZE Semifinals NimbRo received the highest number of points and was ranked 1st.
Website link: https://ais.uni-bonn.de/behnke
Rafael Cisneros is a tenured research scientist at CNRS-AIST JRL (Joint Robotics Laboratory), IRL, AIST. He is the technical manager of team JANUS, one of the finalist teams competing at ANA Avatar XPRIZE. He received the B.Eng. degree from the University of the Americas - Puebla (UDLA-P), Mexico in 2006, the M.Sc. degree from the Center of Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV-IPN), Mexico in 2009, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Tsukuba, Japan in 2015. Since then, he has been working at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, from 2015 to 2018 as a postdoc and from 2018 until now as a researcher. Prior to ANA Avatar XPRIZE, he has also participated at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) - Finals and at the Japan Virtual Robotics Challenge (JVRC), both as a member of the team AIST-NEDO in 2015. His research interests include torque control, whole-body multi-contact motion control of humanoid robots, multi-body collision dynamics, humanoid teleoperation and telepresence, as well as tactile feedback.
Luigi Penco is a Postdoctoral Fellow at IHMC and focuses on improved efficiency and mobility for teleoperated humanoid robots. He earned his bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering from Roma Tre University in 2015 and a master's in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from La Sapienza University of Rome in 2018. In 2022 he received a PhD in robotics from Université de Lorraine, while conducting his doctoral studies at Inria Nancy Grand-Est. During his doctoral research at Inria, he has contributed to the EU H2020 AnDy project on human-robot collaboration. He currently works on the Office of Naval Research’s SquadBot project, where the goal is to develop autonomous and semi-autonomous behaviors to allow a next generation humanoid robot called Nadia to function in urban environments. His research focuses on humanoid robotics, with a particular interest in teleoperation and machine learning techniques used to improve the control and skills of robots.
Kourosh Darvish is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto, Canada. He obtained his PhD at the University of Genova, Italy, in 2018, then was a postdoc at the Italian Institute of Technology from 2018 to 2022, where he contributed to the teleoperation of the iCub3 avatar. His research interests include collaborative robotics, human-robot interaction, teleoperation and machine learning.
Dongbin Kim is a postdoc fellow at United States Military Academy at West Point, under U.S. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Research Associateship Program. He was control czar and logistic lead of team AVATAR-Hubo (UNLV) at ANA Avatar XPRIZE. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) until 2022 . He received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, UNLV, under Dr. Paul Oh, former NSF Robotics Program Director. His PhD research project was to develop a Mobile Manipulating Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (MM-UAV) for bridge inspection and maintenance with support from the United States Department of Transportation (US-DOT). His current research interests include Aerial Manipulation, Embodied Human Intelligence, Augmented/Virtual Reality, Haptics, Artificial Intelligence, Human Behavior and Human Stiffness.
Jacquelyn (Jacki) Morie is senior advisor at XPRIZE and Chief Scientist at All These Worlds LLC. She spent 13 years as a Senior Research Scientist at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), which she helped found. While there, she created novel VR telehealth and educational activities using her deep understanding of art, computer animation and human behavior to enhance engagement with these programs. As Founder and Chief Scientist of her company, All These Worlds, LLC, Morie continued this work for private and government clients, including NASA’s Behavioral Health & Performance Research group, for whom she developed the ANSIBLE Project, which studied how to mitigate psychological issues that might imperil future long duration space travelers. She served as a member of the DARPA Information, Science And Technology think tank from 2011 through 2015, and lectures extensively on how technology will affect our future selves and humanity. Dr. Morie is also an ACM Distinguished speaker, and holds masters’ degrees in both Fine Art and Computer Science. She also holds a doctorate in immersive technologies from the prestigious SmartLab Program through the University of East London.
