Special Issue on

Socially Acceptable Robot Behavior: Approaches for Learning, Adaptation and Evaluation

in Interaction Studies

I. Aim and Scope

A key factor for the acceptance of robots as regular partners in human-centered environments is the appropriateness and predictability of their behavior. The behavior of human-human interactions is governed by customary rules that define how people should behave in different situations, thereby governing their expectations. Socially compliant behavior is usually rewarded by group acceptance, while non-compliant behavior might have consequences including isolation from a social group. Making robots able to understand human social norms allows for improving the naturalness and effectiveness of human-robot interaction and collaboration. Since social norms can differ greatly between different cultures and social groups, it is essential that robots are able to learn and adapt their behavior based on feedback and observations from the environment.

This special issue in Interaction Studies aims to attract the latest research aiming at learning, producing, and evaluating human-aware robot behavior, thereby, following the recent RO-MAN 2021 Workshop on Robot Behavior Adaptation to Human Social Norms (TSAR) in providing a venue to discuss the limitations of the current approaches and future directions towards intelligent human-aware robot behaviors.

II. Submission

1. Before submitting, please check the official journal guidelines.
2. For paper submission, please use the online submission system.
3. After logging into the submission system, please click on “Submit a manuscript” and select “Original article”.
4. Please ensure that you select “Special Issue: Socially Acceptable Robot Behavior” under “General information”.

    The primary list of topics covers the following points (but not limited to):

• Human-human vs human-robot social norms
• Influence of cultural and social background on robot behavior perception
• Learning of socially accepted behavior
• Behavior adaptation based on social feedback
• Transfer learning of social norms experience
• The role of robot appearance on applied social norms
• Perception of socially normative robot behavior
• Human-aware collaboration and navigation
• Social norms and trust in human-robot interaction
• Representation and modeling techniques for social norms
• Metrics and evaluation criteria for socially compliant robot behavior

III. Timeline

1. Deadline for paper submission: January 31, 2022
2. First notification for authors: April 15, 2022
3. Deadline for revised papers submission: May 31, 2022
4. Final notification for authors: July 15, 2022
5. Deadline for submission of camera-ready manuscripts: August 15, 2022

    Please note that these deadlines are only indicative and that all submitted papers will be reviewed as soon as they are received.

IV. Guest Editors

1. Oliver Roesler – Vrije Universiteit Brussel – Belgium
2. Elahe Bagheri – Vrije Universiteit Brussel – Belgium
3. Amir Aly – University of Plymouth – UK
4. Silvia Rossi – University of Naples Federico II – Italy
5. Rachid Alami – CNRS-LAAS – France