Humanoids in Action: Real-World Interaction, Expectations, and Challenges
2nd Workshop on Real-World Physical and Social Human-Robot Interaction in the 2025 IEEE-RAS 24th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2nd October 2025, Seoul, South Korea.
The website for the first edition of this workshop at IEEE-Humanoids 2024, featuring proceedings, accepted papers, and a picture gallery, can be accessed at: https://rwhri.github.io/Humanoids2024_workshop/
With the rise of humanoid robots, human-robot interaction (HRI) is undergoing a significant transformation.Unlike traditional robots, humanoids mimic human form and behavior, making natural and high-quality interaction essential. As these robots move from research labs into real-world settings—such as homes, hospitals, and workplaces—HRI must adapt accordingly. Humanoids must not only perceive a wide array of human cues—visual, auditory, tactile, and even emotional—but also respond in socially intelligent, context-aware ways, despite the unpredictability and variability of real environments and human behaviours. Academia and industry approach these challenges differently: the former emphasizes foundational research, while the latter focuses on scalable, deployable solutions. Bridging these perspectives is crucial for the development of humanoids that are not only effective but also accepted in everyday life. This workshop—now in its second edition—aims to bring together leading researchers, practitioners, and industry stakeholders to critically examine the expectations and challenges of interacting with humanoid robots in real-world settings. We will explore the recent advancements in the integration of physical and social HRI for and the design of user-centred interfaces that can flexibly adapt to diverse users and scenarios. Discussion will involve multimodal perception, adaptive human-robot communication, tactile and gestural feedback, sensor fusion, and context-awareness. Building on the success of our inaugural workshop at IEEE Humanoids last year, this year’s event will feature keynote talks by established researchers from academia and industry followed by interactive panel discussions. We will also invite short contributions covering theoretical frameworks, empirical studies, design case studies, and innovative applications, particularly those that highlight the interplay between physical embodiment and social engagement. By fostering dialogue across academia, industry, and physical and social HRI enthusiasts, this workshop seeks to catalyse new collaborations and chart a path towards humanoids capable of seamless, safe, and meaningful human interaction in the real world. To maximize the impact and visibility of the workshop outcomes, we will make all accepted short papers publicly available on this website. Furthermore, we also plan to propose a dedicated special issue in a related RAS journal, inviting authors to extend the short paper contributions or to submit other relevant works inspired by the discussions initiated at the workshop.
- Social Interaction with Humanoid Robots.
- Physical Interaction with Humanoid Robots.
- Real-world applications and case studies of embodied intelligence in Physical/Social HRI
- Advances in Physical/Social HRI in industry and academia.
- Bridging the gap between physical and social human-robot interaction
- Machine learning for multimodal human-robot interaction
- Multimodal sensing and sensor fusion.
- Ethics, Safety, and transparency of interacting with robots physically and socially
This workshop is organized by:
- Dr. Parag Khanna, KTH, Sweden.
- Dr. Davide Torielli, IIT, Italy.
- Prof. Ziwei Wang, Lancaster University, UK.
- Dr. Angela Faragasso, Fingervision, Japan.
- Dr. Nikos Tsagarakis, IIT, Italy.
- Prof. Christian Smith, KTH, Sweden.
We acknolwedge the financial support by:
Digital Futures,KTH, Sweden
European Project H2020 Haria (GA No. 101070292)
