Special Issue "Group-Robot Interaction"

Following the series of workshops GROUND (advancing GROup UNderstanding and robots' aDaptive behavior), this special issue aims to attract the latest research on group dynamics when interacting with artificial agents.
As collaborative and assistive robots are increasingly integrated into our daily lives and participate in multi-party scenarios, it is crucial to ensure that their behavior considers the complex dynamics of these contexts. Robots have proven to be effective tools for studying social and physical interactions within groups, providing valuable insights on how human group dynamics can be modeled, enhanced, and ultimately predicted. The exploration of group dynamics in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) presents inherent challenges from both a technical (e.g., simultaneous tracking of multiple users) and a theoretical point of view (e.g., modeling multiple agents whose behavior dynamically influences those of others during decision making tasks).
We aim to collect a cutting-edge perspective on group interactions, with a particular interest for applications in the HRI domain. Our objective is to gather contributions focused on comprehending, modeling, and describing human behavior when engaging in groups with artificial agents, such as virtual avatars or robots. Topics of interest also include solutions for autonomous agents’ behavior, to promote adaptation to different groups' needs, contexts, and long-term interactions.
We identified two main research pillars: (1) using social agents for understanding group dynamics; (2) designing agents able to interact with groups. We also encourage contributions exploring the ethical implications of group dynamics research, such as potential negative outcomes and biases towards group members. We look forward to novel interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of social psychology, cognitive science and machine learning with the final objective of developing intelligent and ethical group-aware robot behaviors. 

Topics of interests include but are not limited to:

Designing agents able to interact with groups. 
Learning strategies for autonomous behaviors of agents in groups. 
Adaptation and personalization to groups. 
Understanding group dynamics by using social agents. 
Modelling, understanding and predicting group behaviors. 
Novel experimental designs for conducting group-robot interaction research. 
Promoting natural communication, mutual understanding and trust in human-agent mixed groups. 
Gamification in multiparty human-agent interactions. 
Exploring different agent’s roles (e.g., peer, teacher, helper or friend) in group interactions. 
Ethical considerations in researching group dynamics and potential biases or negative consequences.

These topics are meant to be suggestive and not exhaustive, contributions to other relevant topics will also be taken into consideration, as long as they fit with the general theme of the workshop.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: 15th December 2024
First notification to the authors: 15th March 2025
Deadline for revised papers submission: 15th April 2025
Final notification for authors: 15th June 2025
Submission of camera-ready manuscripts: 15th July 2025

Submission Procedure

Please refer to https://benjamins.com/catalog/is/submission. The option “Special Issue: Group-Robot Interaction” can be selected during the submission process from the drop-down menu on the "General Information" section.
Each submission will be evaluated by at least two reviewers chosen from experts in the field. The guest editors will evaluate and discuss the reviews to make a final decision regarding each submission. 