The personal-drone movement has resulted in a diffusion of flying robots into domains such as emergency response, manufacturing and delivery, and health and fitness, yet these robots are the least well studied in the human-robot interaction (HRI) literature; this full-day workshop will explore emerging HRI research directions for small and personal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The workshop will provide an interdisciplinary forum to discuss current and needed advances for both field and social robotics theory and applications focused specifically on small and personal UAVs, and is expected to address topics including, but not limited to: human-robot interfaces, object and environmental manipulation, proxemics, and natural language and gesture understanding. The novelty of this workshop lay in the integration of four distinct areas of HRI for UAVs: i) teleoperation research, ii) collocated interactions, iii) experimental development, and iv) regulatory agencies. In the HRI, and even in the greater unmanned systems community, there are vertical silos that focus on only one or two of these four areas, typically teleoperation or collocated interactions (e.g., social proxemics), with only passing reference to the remaining areas. The primary goal of the workshop is to produce an integrative understanding of the current state and future directions of HRI for small and personal UAVs. Participants from industry, field robotics, and fundamental UAV research are encouraged to apply and will bring a broader understanding from all stakeholders in this emerging field, as well as to discuss regulatory concerns with each other during the future directions discussions.

Confirmed: Dr. Julie A. Adams, Vanderbilt University