Hello, I'm Hatice Gunes.
I'm one of the program chairs of HRI 2020.
I'm a reader
in affective intelligence and
robotics in the Department of
Computer Science and Technology
at the University of Cambridge,
I'm Laurel Riek
the other HRI 2020 Program Chair.
>> I'm a Professor of Computer Science and
Engineering at the University of California,
San Diego in the United States.
And we welcome you to the 15th Annual
ACM / IEEE International Conference
on human robot interaction,
HRI 2020 is virtually
held in the UK for
the first time in the historic
city of Cambridge.
>> The University of Cambridge was founded in
1209 and is the second oldest university
in the English-speaking world,
and the world's fourth
oldest surviving university.
Cambridge is known for its 800 years
of academic tradition,
as well as beautiful city of
Cambridge that you see here
on the photos and various aspects of it.
And the beautiful river Cam,
with its bridges and punts.
>> The importance of community is
even more relevant in the current context.
Although the conference is now virtual,
we invite the community
to actively support the conference in
its new form and
play a vital role in engaging with
authors by watching their video presentations
carefully prepared by them,
asking questions, and providing comments.
The resources that will
enable this process are
already available
through the trie proceedings,
which are available on
on the ACM digital library,
as well as through I IEEE explore.
And the video presentations with
subtitles will be available
on the ACM YouTube channel.
>> HRI presents
the latest advancements in
technical, design, behavioral, theoretical,
methodological,
and meteorological ideas in HRI.
The theme of this year's conference
is real-world human robot interaction,
reflecting on recent trends in
our community toward creating and
deploying systems that can
facilitate real-world, long-term interaction.
This theme also reflects
a new theme area that we
introduced at HRI I this year,
reproducibility for human-robot interaction,
which is key to realizing this vision and
helping further our scientific endeavors.
>> The conference attracted
280 full paper submissions
from all over the world,
including Asia,
Australia, the Middle East,
North America, South America, and Europe.
Each submission was overseen by
a dedicated theme chair and reviewed by
an expert group of
program committee members who worked
together with the program chairs to define and
apply review criteria appropriate
for each of the five submission types.
We hosted a wonderful
program committee meeting together
in San Diego in November with
PC members from over six continents in
attendance who worked tirelessly
to provide an excellent set
of reviews for the community.
All papers were reviewed by
a strict double blind review process
followed by rebuttal period and
shepherding if deemed appropriate
by the program committee.
Ultimately, the committee selected
66 or 23.6% acceptance rate.
papers for presentation as
full papers at the conference.
>> This year, we have an exciting set of keynote speakers.
Dr. Ayana Howard, the Linda J.
And Mark C. Smith professor and chair of
the School of Interactive Computing at
the Georgia Institute of Technology will
speak about "Are We Trusting HRI too much,
examining human-robot
interactions in the real-world."
>> Professor Stephanie Jenkins,
faculty at Stony Brook University
and artist-in-residence at
the Stanford Institute for
Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
will share insights into HRI
as trans-media artist who
creates platforms for dialogue
about artificial intelligence as
it intersects with race,
gender, aging, and our future histories.
>> Is Dr. Lola Cañamero,
Reader in Adaptive Systems,
and head of the Embodied Emotion,
Cognition, and Interaction Lab
in the School of Computer Science at
the University of Herfordshire in
the UK, will talk
about "Embodying affect for real-world HRI."
>> We greatly appreciate
the significant volunteer efforts
of the Program Committee,
the Organizing Committee,
the reviewers, and the Steering Committee.
for making all this possible. We're thankful to
all of the people that made
this virtual space possible,
including the virtal
human robot interaction community.
>> And finally, we would like to thank
the local Organizing Committee that have been
working for almost two years to
secure the venues, to interact
behind the scenes with
all the other people for
making HRI a true success
and quickly now adapting to
these changing circumstances in
the virtual space. So thank you.
>> Thank you.