Workshop on Elderly Care Robotics – Technology and Ethics (WELCARO)

ICRA 2018, 21-25 May, Brisbane, Australia

Workshop Web page: https://sites.google.com/site/icra2018welcaro [1]

IMPORTANT DATES:

February 23rd: Submission deadline

April 5th: Notification of acceptance

April 22nd: Camera ready paper

May 21st: Workshop (full-day)

OVERVIEW:

The number of elderly people living at home is increasing, and this trend is

expected to continue in the coming years. In countries like Japan, the number

of elderly people is beginning to surpass the number of young people due to

the low birth rate and long life expectancy. Thus, there is a need for

technology, in term of software and hardware, that can support the elderly in

independent living. A part of this is to help their family as well as make

caregivers work effectively.

A number of mobile robot companions have been developed, providing advanced

sensing, reasoning and control. However, despite the available technology

seems promising, it poses several challenges when used in real scenarios that

range from how to handle complex and different environments to adequately

address possible ethical issues that can arise from its use. For instance,

technology can easily be seen as a threat to privacy, daily interpersonal

contact and citizens' control over their own lives. It can even give rise to

the elderly’s feeling being treated like an object rather than a human.

Thus, it is important to address how robots and systems are going to be

designed and used to avoid any negative impact and improve the elderly's

quality of life. In addition to robot control and mechanics, ambient sensing

and human-robot interaction are important topics in research on elderly care

technology. This workshop is intended to share knowledge about technological

opportunities and challenges regarding robots and systems for assistive care

as well as open a dialogue within the scientific society about the ethical

issues to be considered.

FORMAT:

Authors are required to submit a 2 pages extended abstract or 4 pages short

paper or 6

pages full paper as PDF in the standard ICRA conference format.

SUBMISSIONS:

Submissions will be judged based on relevance to the workshop topics,

technical quality,

and novelty. Authors of accepted papers are expected to give a lightning talk

(2-3 minutes)

and to present a poster at the workshop. A number of full papers will be

selected for longer 20 minutes oral presentation. The authors of the accepted

full paper will be invited to submit an extended version for tentative

inclusion in a journal special issue (pending).

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=welcaro2018 [2]

SCOPE AND TOPICS:

The aim of the ICRA2018 workshop is to provide a forum to disseminate and

discuss recent and significant research within elderly care robotics related

to both technology and ethics. We invite interested authors to submit their

original and unpublished work to this workshop.

Topics of interest within the given application domain for the workshop

include (but are not limited to):

• Ambient assisted living

• Ambient sensor systems

• Emotion detection

• Human-robot interaction

• Medical state classification and forecasting

• Mental disorders state classification and forecasting

• Mobile sensing

• Multi-sensor fusion

• On-body sensor systems

• Privacy in human monitoring

• Remote sensing and monitoring

• Responsible robotics

• Robot companion sensing

• Robot companion control

• Robotics ethics

• Sensitive data collection and storage

• Sensor networks

• Smart home technologies

• Social robots

• Temporal data analysis

• Time series modeling and forecasting

ORGANIZERS:

Jim Torresen, University of Oslo, Norway

Ryo Kurazume, Kyushu University, Japan

Edson Prestes, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil