Robots for Care: Exploring Downstream Socio-Ethical Effects & Upstream Interventions

Datum
16. März 2026 

Hybrid and inter­ac­tive workshop

Call for papers: Robots for Care: Explor­ing Down­stream Socio-Eth­i­cal Effects & Upstream Inter­ven­tions, Work­shop @ HRI 2026

🗓️ Sub­mis­sion dead­line: Feb­ru­ary 9, 2026 (AoE)
🗓️ Work­shop date: March 16, 2026, Morn­ing GMT
🙌 Work­shop for­mat: Hybrid and interactive
🔗 Work­shop web­site: https://healthrobotsworkshop.github.io

This is an invi­ta­tion for con­tri­bu­tions to the work­shop „Robots for Care: Explor­ing Down­stream Socio-Eth­i­cal Effects and Upstream Inter­ven­tions” held in con­junc­tion with the ACM/IEEE Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Human–Robot Inter­ac­tion (HRI 2026).

The con­text: Robots hold poten­tial to expand acces­si­bil­i­ty to dis­abled com­mu­ni­ties, such as by pro­vid­ing phys­i­cal or cog­ni­tive assis­tance, and enabling new ways of par­tic­i­pat­ing in social activ­i­ties. They also can sup­port health­care work­ers with ancil­lary tasks and care deliv­ery, to sup­port them work­ing at the top of their license. How­ev­er, the real-world deploy­ment of robots across these con­texts can cre­ate social, eth­i­cal, and orga­ni­za­tion­al chal­lenges (e.g., down­stream effects). They may under­mine the agency of dis­abled peo­ple, dis­rupt care deliv­ery, shift roles, and dis­place labor.

Our aim: Bring togeth­er mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary stake­hold­ers to exam­ine these down­stream effects and explore how they might be mit­i­gat­ed through upstream inter­ven­tions of design, research, and policy.

How to con­tribute: We wel­come short con­tri­bu­tions dis­cussing top­ics rel­e­vant to the work­shop. Top­ics include, but are not lim­it­ed to:

Eth­i­cal, legal, and social impli­ca­tions of robots in clin­i­cal or assis­tive contexts
Crit­i­cal reflec­tions on mis/alignments between design goals and impacts of robots on dis­abled communities
Upstream inter­ven­tions at the meso or macro lev­el (e.g., com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry research, policies)
Com­mu­ni­ty-based research practices
Expe­ri­ence reports or deploy­ment insights from con­texts including:

Social­ly assis­tive robots

Cog­ni­tive­ly assis­tive robots
Phys­i­cal­ly assis­tive robots
Hos­pi­tal deployed robots (e.g., deliv­ery, san­i­ta­tion, surgery)
Reha­bil­i­ta­tion robotics

We par­tic­u­lar­ly encour­age sub­mis­sions that sur­face lived expe­ri­ences, or cross-dis­ci­pli­nary insights that may be under­rep­re­sent­ed in tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic venues.

Writ­ten sub­mis­sions will be post­ed on our web­site, and pre­sent­ed inter­ac­tive­ly dur­ing a poster ses­sion. There will also be oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­tribute to a fol­low-up jour­nal spe­cial issue.

Poten­tial Atten­dees: We encour­age aca­d­e­mics, non-aca­d­e­mics, and peo­ple with/without affil­i­a­tions to par­tic­i­pate in the work­shop. Sub­mit­ting a paper is not manda­to­ry to attend. The work­shop is designed to be inter­ac­tive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, and we are inter­est­ed in wel­com­ing peo­ple from many back­grounds. The work­shop will be hybrid to sup­port accessibility.

We appre­ci­ate your help in shar­ing this work­shop with rel­e­vant parties.

✉️ Con­tact: healthrobotsworkshop@gmail.com