Welcome to our RO-MAN 2023 workshop on Human-like computing for safe collaborative robots in manufacturing and healthcare, where we will bring together professionals from different disciplines and backgrounds interested in creating safer collaborative environments for humans and robots in both manufacturing and healthcare.

Current industrial robots cannot be programmed or taught in a way equivalent to how human-to-human teaching happens. When a human is teaching another human, the human demonstrates a task via actions and gestures which act on objects towards completing a task. This is unlike current approaches in robotics where robot arms are normally kinaesthetically taught. Moreover, after being taught, it is currently difficult for robots to deal with various variations in their environment after they have been programmed to do a task. The aim is that this workshop will prompt discussion and provide different viewpoints on how to approach the journey to build the next generation of cognitive robots while highlighting the gaps in current approaches. 

The workshop is open to all professionals interested in the topic, at various stages of their career including PhD students, Post-doctoral Researchers and Academics, as well as industry, general public and gubernamental or public body representatives. 

You don't need to submit a contribution to attend the workshop, but we will welcome submissions from anybody interested in the topic. 

We invite submissions of 1 to 2-page extended abstracts documenting, describing or theorising how the journey towards the next generation of cognitive robotics may be approached, with a special interest in healthcare and manufacturing. If you have a peer-reviewed published paper on the topic, your extended abstract can be based on it.

Authors of accepted extended abstracts will be expected to present their work during the lighting talks session, were presentations can happen either online or in-person.

More generally, we welcome submissions that fall into these areas:– Human-like cognition for manufacturing– Human-like cognition for healthcare and social care robotics– Human-Robot Collaboration– Brain inspired algorithms and optimisation for robotics– Multi-modality for Human-Robot Interaction– Multi-modal AI in robotics

If you are interested in contributing but you are not sure if your contribution would fall within the scope of the workshop, feel free to contact the organising team.