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It is interesting to observe, from a roboticist point of view, that human-human joint action is a topic of intense research in cognitive psychology and philosophy. This observation led us to implement a multi-disciplinary initiative to create a unique opportunity for scientific exchange through a series of workshops called "toward a Framework for Joint Action" (fja.sciencesconf.org). Psychologists and philosophers can present recent developments in joint action research, while roboticists are able to discuss the challenges they face with regard to human-robot interaction and more precisely human-robot joint activity. 

Robots are becoming increasingly flexible agents, able to perform a broader range of actions in diverse contexts, and to adapt their actions to coordinate with human co-actors. This increasing flexibility brings with it new challenges: the more flexible a robot agent is, the more uncertainty a human agent may have about how the robot is going to act. Moreover, robots have to identify and keep track of various action options, and to prioritize some action options. In meeting this challenge, roboticists have been developing various capacities and features that facilitate predictability and communication, from eye gaze and kinematics, to emotional expressions and responsiveness to human emotional expression. In addition, some researchers have worked on higher-level cognitive features, such as the sense of commitment, which may lead robots to resist distraction or alternative action options, and may lead humans also to expect robots to do so, and thus to be willing to rely upon robots.  

RSS2018 workshop 

This year, we propose a workshop at RSS: towards a framework for Joint Action: What about theory of mind? 

How do people share their attention, intention, task, goal in a collaborative task? Could theory of mind and underlying models help to get some expectations about them? How this is or can be applied to our domain of human-robot interaction?
What should contain or not a theory of mind model, what is part of norms that we follow could help us to understand other's mind without the need to explicitly model it?

This workshop wants to gather answers for these questions and to raise interesting discussion and exchange around them.
This workshop is part of "toward a framework for Joint Action" series (fja.sciencesconf.org) that aims to give philosophers, psychologists and roboticists a venue to discuss and share their knowledge and questions.

Invited Speakers

Laura Hiatt (confirmed), Research Scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.

Séverin Lemaignan (confirmed), Senior Researcher, Bristol Robotics Lab, University of the West of England, UK. 

Tadeusz W. Zawidzki (confirmed), Department Chair, Associate Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, DC.