Exploring applications for autonomous nonverbal human-robot interaction

Non-verbal Human-Robot Interaction (nHRI) encompasses the study of the exchange of human-robot gaze, gesture, touch, body language, paralinguistic, facial and affect expression. nHRI has advanced beyond theoretical and computational contributions. Progress has been made through a variety of user studies and laboratory experiments as well as practical efforts such as integration of nonverbal inputs with other HRI modalities including domain specific implementations. This workshop seeks to promote collaboration between two threads of research: experimental nHRI, and application domains that can benefit from its use. The workshop will link researchers working on new approaches to nHRI in the laboratory to applied roboticists who present challenges in specific domains, such as: service robots, field robotics, socially-assistive robotics, and human-robot collaborative work that could benefit from richer nHRI. This workshop will draw participation from diverse areas to evaluate best practices and integration efforts across different research domains. We will target a broad, cross-disciplinary audience, and provide a venue for recent efforts related to multimodal interaction, system integration, data collection, and user studies.