The development of robots capable of interacting with humans has made tremendous progress in the last decade, leading to an expectation that in the near future, robots will be increasingly deployed in public spaces, for example as receptionists, shop assistants, waiters, or bartenders. In these scenarios, robots must necessarily deal with situations that require socially appropriate human-robot interactions of a specific nature: interactions that are short and dynamic, and where the robot has to be able to deal with multiple people at once. In order to do so, robots typically require specific skills, including robust video and audio processing, fast reasoning and decision making mechanisms, and natural and safe output path planning algorithms. As a result, research on public space robots is often fundamentally different from other work in social robotics and HRI that focuses on long-term, robot companions who interact with humans in one-on-one interactions.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines, in order to explore this research area from different perspectives. To allow for a full and productive discussion among all participants, the workshop will include an extended session organised using the Open Space meeting format.

This workshop is the fourth in a series of meetings (and the third workshop) organised around the theme of public space human-robot interaction. Details of previous events can be found on the PubRob website.