Website: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/10214

Apologies for multiple copies
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Social robots and virtual avatars are emerging technologies
that promise opportunities for an effective interaction with
humans. This ability emerges from a coherent exploitation of
social skills that explicitly take into account the human
presence in the perception-action loop. Identifying users,
understanding their actions, inferring their mental and
emotional states, processing non-verbal gestures, planning
their action in a more “human-aware” fashion, are just some
examples of social skills that are pushing interactive agents
towards an efficient and practical collaboration with humans
in different scenarios; as partners in industries, as
companions for children and elderly, as educational tools, as
assistants in public or personal spaces and so on. However,
despite progress in the field of Human-Agent Interaction (HAI),
today’s state-of-the-art agents still lack skills in
accomplishing complex social tasks and are yet unable to
function autonomously in real-world social scenes.

This Research Topic aims to present rigorous scientific and
technical advances in methods, models, techniques and algorithms
that enrich the mutual interplay between humans and artificial
agents and improve their social skills and awareness. Welcome
contributions will focus on theoretical aspects as well as
practical applications of embodied, autonomous and
semi-autonomous social cognition of virtual agents and robots.

Particular attention will be given to the integration of
electrophysiological (brain activity, heart rate, skin responses,
etc.) and behavioural signals (verbal, non-verbal, vocal
communication, gestures, posture, facial expressivity, etc.) in
the agent’s decision making process and in the coherent social
behaviour production based on the user’s emotional states,
attention, stress levels, etc.

Keywords: Social Robots, Virtual Avatars, EEG, EMG, EDA,
 ECG, Eye Tracking

Important Dates
———————-
 – Abstract submission : 31 July 2019
 – Manuscript submission : 31 January 2020

Topics of interest
———————-
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– Human-aware perception-action loop
– Social signal processing for HAI
– Physiological monitoring and biofeedback systems
– BCI (brain-computer interfaces)-enabled adaptive interaction
  with artificial agents
– Emotion recognition and real-time detection of mental states
– Long-term, personalized HAI
– Neural outcomes of interaction with artificial agents
– Relationship between neural, verbal, and non-verbal signals
  in HAI
– Objective metrics and scales for evaluation of HAI
 

Organizers
———————-
Maryam Alimardani
 Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences
 Tilburg University
 Tilburg, Netherlands

Salvatore Maria Anzalone
 CHArt Laboratory
 Université Paris 8
 Saint-Denis, France

Kazuo Hiraki
 Department of Systems Science
 The University of Tokyo
 Bunkyō, Japan

Contacts
———————-
Info :
 – m.alimardani (at) uvt.nl
 – sanzalone (at) univ-paris8.fr
Website:
 – https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/10214