Workshop on Elderly Care Robotics – Technology and Ethics (WELCARO)
ICRA 2018, 21-25 May, Brisbane, Australia
Workshop Web page: https://sites.google.com/site/icra2018welcaro

The authors of the accepted full paper will be invited to submit an extended version for inclusion in a special issue of Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems (Springer, impact factor 1.5).

IMPORTANT DATES:
March 16th: Submission deadline
April 16th: Notification of acceptance
April 30nd: Camera ready paper
May 21st: Workshop (full-day)

OVERVIEW:
The number of elderly people living at home is increasing, and this trend is expected to continue in the coming years. In countries like Japan, the number of elderly people is beginning to surpass the number of young people due to the low birth rate and long life expectancy. Thus, there is a need for technology, in term of software and hardware, that can support the elderly in independent living. A part of this is to help their family as well as make caregivers work effectively.

A number of mobile robot companions have been developed, providing advanced sensing, reasoning and control. However, despite the available technology seems promising, it poses several challenges when used in real scenarios that range from how to handle complex and different environments to adequately address possible ethical issues that can arise from its use. For instance, technology can easily be seen as a threat to privacy, daily interpersonal contact and citizens' control over their own lives. It can even give rise to the elderly’s feeling being treated like an object rather than a human. Thus, it is important to address how robots and systems are going to be designed and used to avoid any negative impact and improve the elderly's quality of life. In addition to robot control and mechanics, ambient sensing and human-robot interaction are important topics in research on elderly care technology. This workshop is intended to share knowledge about technological opportunities and challenges regarding robots and systems for assistive care as well as open a dialogue within the scientific society about the ethical issues to be considered.

FORMAT:
Authors are required to submit a 2 pages extended abstract, 4 pages short paper or 6 pages full paper as PDF in the standard ICRA conference format.

SUBMISSIONS:
Submissions will be judged based on relevance to the workshop topics, technical quality, and novelty. Authors of accepted papers are expected to give a lightning talk (2-3 minutes) and to present a poster at the workshop. A number of full papers will be selected for longer 20 minutes oral presentation. The authors of the accepted full paper will be invited to submit an extended version for inclusion in a special issue of Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems (Springer, impact factor 1.5).

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=welcaro2018 (submit as pdf in ICRA2018 format as described under ICRA2018 here: https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/start.pl )


SCOPE AND TOPICS:
The aim of the ICRA2018 workshop is to provide a forum to disseminate and discuss recent and significant research within elderly care robotics related to both technology and ethics. We invite interested authors to submit their original and unpublished work to this workshop.

Topics of interest within the given application domain for the workshop include (but are not limited to):
• Ambient assisted living
• Ambient sensor systems
• Emotion detection
• Human-robot interaction
• Medical state classification and forecasting
• Mental disorders state classification and forecasting
• Mobile sensing
• Multi-sensor fusion
• On-body sensor systems
• Privacy in human monitoring
• Remote sensing and monitoring
• Responsible robotics
• Robot companion sensing
• Robot companion control
• Robotics ethics
• Sensitive data collection and storage
• Sensor networks
• Smart home technologies
• Social robots
• Temporal data analysis
• Time series modeling and forecasting

ORGANIZERS:
Jim Torresen, University of Oslo, Norway
Ryo Kurazume, Kyushu University, Japan
Edson Prestes, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil


Best regards,
Jim

Jim Torresen
Professor
Department of Informatics
University of Oslo
PO Box 1080 Blindern
N-0316 Oslo
====================
E-mail: jimtoer@ifi.uio.no
Phone: +47 2285 2454
http://people.uio.no/jimtoer