Abstract

Swarm Robotics brings robustness, scalability and adaptability to self-organising systems but its applications are mainly limited to research platforms. Human-swarm interaction facilitates the integration of human supervision into swarm systems, opening up opportunities for real-world applications. However, interfacing, transparency, and trust present significant challenges that need to be addressed. The complexity of this issue requires a joint effort from researchers across different disciplines including human factors, ethics, software engineering, machine learning, hardware design, regulation and policy. This one-day workshop aims to bring together researchers to discuss the potential of relying on human-swarm interaction for real-world applications and present the challenges that could inform future research in this area. Besides the keynote talks from world-leading researchers, the event will foster interaction through focus groups including senior and junior researchers, two-panel discussions and poster sessions. Through these discussions and interactive presentations, we hope to encourage discussion among a diverse set of experts and facilitate future interdisciplinary collaborations that could present research directions with viable industry applications.

We welcome submissions in the following areas:

• Gesture-based human-swarm interaction
• Virtual and Augmented Reality in Interaction with Swarms
• Modelling Human Behaviour in Interaction with Swarms
• Visualization of Swarm Behaviour
• Cognitive Load and Complexity in Operating Swarms
• Verification of Swarm Systems
• Control and Coordination of Swarms
• Measuring Performance in Human Swarm Systems
• Novel Interaction Design in Human Swarm Systems
• Transparency of Swarms
• Ethical, Societal, and Privacy Considerations in Designing Swarms
• Safety and Security of Swarms
• Machine Learning Applications to Human-Swarm Interaction
• Applications of Swarms in Critical Environments
• Real-world Applications of Swarm Systems
• Mixed-initiative for Human-swarm Interaction
• Levels of Autonomy in Swarms
• Swarm State Estimation

Invited Speakers

Call for Contributions

Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions of previously published or unpublished works as extended abstracts (up to 2 pages) in IEEE conference format. All submissions will undergo a peer-review process by the workshop's program committee and accepted papers will be invited to present their posteres at the workshop. All accepted submissions that have not been previously published will receive an invitation to submit a full paper for consideration in the special issue on Human-swarm Interaction in the Swarm Intelligence Journal.

Best Paper

The best paper will be awarded a mini drone package (i.e., Lighthouse Explorer Bundle) and will be invited to give a presentation during the workshop.

Important Dates

*All deadlines are at 23:59 AoE

• Submission Deadline: (Round I) August 19th & (Round II) September 19th
• Notification of Acceptance (Round I) August 26th & (Round II) September 26th
• Camera-Ready Paper Deadline: October 1st
• Workshop Date & Time: October 14th (14:00 - 18:00 GMT+4)

Submission Instructions

Please submit your paper electronically via the workshop's EasyChair submission system: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=thus24

Please format your paper using the IEEE conference paper sytle.

• Latex template: https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php
• Word template: https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php

Schedule

Time	Speaker	Details
14:00	Organisers	Welcome
14:10	Prof Eliseo Ferrante*,† *Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam †Dubai Future Foundation (Dubai Future Labs)	Human-Swarm Interaction through Implicit Leaders
14:30	Prof Katia Sycara Carnegie Mellon University	Models of Trust in Human Interaction with Swarms
14:50	Prof Giovanni Beltrame Polytechnique Montreal	Field Operation of Robot Swarms: are we there yet?
15:10	Prof Heiko Hamann University of Konstanz	Time Perception in Human-swarm Interaction
15:30	Coffee break
16:00	Dr Amro Najjar Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology	XAI for Remote Robots and Swarms: Challenges, Perspectives, and Lessons learned from user studies
16:20	Prof Horia Maior University of Nottingham	Interactive Session: Responsible, Research Innovation (RRI) on different aspects of Human-Swarm partnership (based on https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597512.3599721)
16:40	Poster Session
17:20	Best Poster Awardee(s)	Presentation of the Award Winning Poster
17:25	Panel discussion	Theme: Trust in Swarms Panelists: In-person: Invited Speaker Online: Prof Luis Sentis (University of Texas at Austin) and Prof Gopal Ramchurn, CEO of Responsible AI UK Chair: Prof Mohammad Soorati (University of Southampton)
18:00	End of Workshop

Organisers

Sponsors