[robotics-worldwide] IROS 2008 Workshop: Teaching HRI to Humans

[Jenny Burke]

Workshop: Teaching HRI to Humans

Human-robot interaction is widely acknowledged as one of the most  
critical areas of study in the coming decade. This 1Ú2 day workshop  
entitled "Teaching Human-Robot Interaction to Humans" will be held at  
the 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and  
Systems to be held September 22-26, 2008 in Nice, France. The  
workshop is designed to complement the IROS 2008 Conference by  
providing a forum for faculty teaching in the field of human-robot  
interaction to share teaching content and methods with their peers in  
an interactive setting. It is anticipated that the workshop can  
accommodate 20-30 participants, with preference given to those  
actively teaching HRI at the graduate or undergraduate level (or  
preparing to do so).

The objectives of the workshop are to:

- Create a community of educators within the emerging HRI research  
community

- Identify what is essential in an HRI course

- Leverage the experiences to date in teaching HRI

- Define the content of a HRI course(s) for different audiences  
(engineering, psychology, multi-disciplinary, advance graduate,  
advanced undergraduate or first year graduate student)

- Foster the exchange of best practices and pedagogical methods

- Provide reference materials for instructors teaching HRI

The motivation for the workshop is a direct response to a key finding  
from the NSF sponsored HRI Young Pioneers Workshops, held in  
conjunction with the annual ACM/IEEE Conference on Human Robot  
Interaction. One of the key published findings to emerge from these  
annual workshops is the need for an interdisciplinary course/ 
curriculum in human-robot interaction to be taught at the university  
level. However, there has been no venue for faculty to gather and  
discuss such a curriculum or teaching methods.

The workshop will address the ideal content, structure and methods  
for teaching a graduate (or undergraduate) level course in human- 
robot interaction. The focus will be on teaching material directly  
related to HRI, both novel material that would not be covered in a  
non-HRI course (ex. affect) or would be taught in a new, multi- 
disciplinary way for HRI (ex. statistics, natural language  
processing, hardware design).

Description

The workshop will address the ideal content, structure and methods  
for teaching a graduate (or undergraduate) level course in human- 
robot interaction. The focus will be on teaching material directly  
related to HRI, both novel material that would not be covered in a  
non-HRI course (ex. affect) or would be taught in a new, multi- 
disciplinary way for HRI (ex. statistics, natural language  
processing, hardware design).

Particular topics that will be addressed (but are not limited to) are:

- What concepts or topics are unique, or essential, to HRI and must  
be included in a course?

- What methods have been used to teach HRI to a multi-disciplinary  
audience?

- How to teach statistics and evaluation methods? Are there examples  
of how psychology courses or materials can be leveraged for  
engineering and computer science majors?

- What resources are available, such as the HRIweb website? What are  
the needs? The gaps?

- What are lessons learned from summer schools and other events?

- What is the role and experiences using simulations and competitions  
such as USARsim, Microsoft Robotics Studio, RoboCup, or other systems?

- How to incorporate specific topics from established domains such as  
natural language programming and hardware design into a HRI course?

The workshop's format includes short presentations from invited and  
selected participants, moderated discussion, and small group  
activities geared toward production of a shared set of teaching  
resources, including websites, videos, and syllabi/reading lists.

Format

The format of the workshop will be:

- Keynote Address (tba)

- Invited and Solicited Short Briefs on HRI Teaching Materials and  
Methods.

- Breakout groups and discussion. Topics would include:

  	The essential reading list

  	The ÒperfectÓ syllabus	

  	Hands-on exercises or activities for students

  	Regional differences in teaching HRI

  	Other topics suggested by participants

- Moderated wrap-up discussion.

This set of shared teaching resources will be published on the  
Workshop's website and the HRIweb site supported in part by the IEEE  
Robotics and Automation Society. In addition, depending on the  
maturity of the content, a special issue devoted to the teaching of  
HRI may be proposed for publication in an internationally recognized  
professional journal such as the Robotics and Automation Society  
Magazine.

Submissions/Dates

The workshop will have both invited speakers and speakers selected  
from solicited submissions.

Invited Submissions:

Participants are encouraged to submit 2-page briefs on HRI teaching  
materials and methods. The deadline for submission is June 30, 2008.  
Selected participants will give 5 -10 minute presentations during the  
workshop. Briefs and presentation slides will be published as part of  
the Workshop proceedings. Submissions should be sent directly to the  
conference organizers.

6/30/08   Deadline for workshop submissions

7/10/08   Notification of acceptance

7/21/08   Submission of final presentation materials (2 MB limit)  
to                              workshop organizers

9/22/08   Workshop

Organizers:

Dr. Jenny Burke, Director, Human-Robot Interaction Lab, University of  
South Florida, USA email: jennifer.l.burke at gmail.com

Dr. Robin Murphy, University of South Florida, USA email:  
murphy at cse.usf.edu

Dr. Aude Billard, EFPL, Switzerland email: aude.billard at epfl.ch

Dr. Tatsuya Nomura, ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication  
Laboratories & Ryukoku University, Japan email:  
nomura at rins.ryukoku.ac.jp

We welcome your participation--come and be a part of the action in  
HRI Education!






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