HRI

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI 2021. HRI is a premier, highly-selective meeting presenting the latest advances in the field, with broad participation from a range of scholars, including roboticists, social scientists, designers, engineers, and many others. HRI presents the latest advancements in technical, design, behavioral, theoretical, and methodological ideas in HRI.

Although initially planned to be held in Boulder, CO, USA, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a change to an online virtual format. This format has its challenges for meeting and presenting across different time zones, but it also offers opportunities to reach a wider audience who could not normally attend. Talks are recorded but also live question and answer sessions and booths are included in the schedule.

The theme of this year's conference is 'Bolder HRI," reflecting recent worldwide events and the need for real-world solutions to meet health and societal challenges. This year papers on reproducibility for HRI have been incorporated into our four theme areas, 'Human-Robot Interaction User Studies," 'Technical Advances in Human-Robot Interaction," 'Human-Robot Interaction Design," and 'Theory and Methods in Human-Robot Interaction."

The call for papers attracted 184 submissions from across the word, including Asia, Pacific, Europe, Africa, and North America. Each submission was overseen by a dedicated theme chair and reviewed by an expert group of program committee members, who worked together with the program chairs to define and apply review criteria appropriate to each of the four contribution types. All papers were reviewed by a strict double-blind review process, followed by a rebuttal period, and shepherding if deemed appropriate by the program committee. Ultimately the committee selected 42 papers (23%) for presentation as full papers at the conference. As the conference is jointly sponsored by ACM and IEEE, papers are archived in the ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore.