The main topic of this workshop is affective robotics for well-being, which aligns strongly with the ACII 2022 main theme of affective computing for mental and physical well-being that invites research work that "utilises Affective Computing to address the negative consequences on mental and physical well-being brought about by the current challenging circumstances". During the last decade, an increasing number of people with well-being related concerns has been observed. In addition, the current COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this growth leading to societal changes (such as social isolation and work-from-home arrangements) that have severely impacted mental and physical well-being. This has resulted in a more urgent need to support people’s well-being. Robotics has been employed in growing applications, such as, among others, logistics, medical treatments, transportation, and clinical contexts, and they have been playing an even greater role in socially assistive settings.

The workshop aims to:

• include the advances in affective computing and machine learning into a social robotics context

• investigate the crucial topic of well-being in clinical and non-clinical contexts during a post-pandemic era

• advance the field of affective computing applied to social robotics focusing on open challenges

Submission Guidelines

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from the fields of Social Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Affective Computing, Well-being, Design, Adaptive Machine Learning, Ethics, Social Sciences, etc. to discuss topics related to the use of robots as assistants/companions/coaches for well-being

We invite authors to submit their contributions either as regular paper (6-8 pages long) or position papers (2-4 pages long), using the format provided by ACII (https://acii-conf.net/2022/calls/). All papers are to be submitted via the EasyChair submission system (link to come) and will be included in the ACII proceedings.

In addition to this workshop, we have prepared a Special Issue for the International Journal of Social Robotics. Selected papers from the workshop will be considered for this special issue, in addition to an open call. Submissions to the special issue will go through a separate peer review process.

Committees

Organizing committee

• Micol Spitale, University of Cambridge

• Angelica Lim, Simon Fraser University

• Katie Winkle, Uppsala University

• Hatice Gunes, University of Cambridge

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to ms2871@cam.ac.uk