Awards – HRI 2026
Awards
Test of Time Awards
Common metrics for human-robot interaction
Aaron Steinfeld, Terrence Fong, David Kaber, Michael Lewis, Jean Scholtz, Alan Schultz, Michael Goodrich
Legibility and predictability of robot motion
Anca Dragan, Kenton Lee, Siddhartha Srinivasa
Full Papers
User Studies Track
Best Papers
Expensive, Limited, and Still Here: The Paradox of Weak Robots in Family Homes
Zhao Zhao
Fictional vs. Factual Robot Tutor Dialogue Can Shape Child Social-Emotional Learning
Lauren L. Wright, Kaitlyn Li, Hewitt Watkins, Kiljoong Kim, Sarah Sebo
Long-Term Integration of a Robot in an Inclusive Daycare: An Ethnographic Study Focused on Children and Caregivers
Jan Ole Rixen, Kathrin Gerling, Barbara Bruno
Honourable Mentions
Anticipating Disengagement: Physiology-Informed Adaptation for Child–Robot Reading Companions
Zhao Zhao
Cognitive Trust in HRI: “Pay Attention to Me and I’ll Trust You Even If You Are Wrong”
Adi Manor, Dan Cohen, Ziv Keidar, Avi Parush, and Hadas Erel
Fictional vs. Factual Robot Tutor Dialogue Can Shape Child Social-Emotional Learning
Lauren L. Wright, Kaitlyn Li, Hewitt Watkins, Kiljoong Kim, Sarah Sebo
From Metrics to Meaning: Insights from a Mixed-Methods Field Experiment on Retail Robot Deployment
Sichao Song, Yuki Okafuji, Takuya Iwamoto, Jun Baba, and Hiroshi Ishiguro
Generative Encounters with Robin: Design through Adaptation and Appropriation of a Social Robot in Four Eldercare Facilities
Nan Hu and Selma Šabanović
If It’s Safe, Don’t Ask: Decreasing Frustration through User Involvement for Risky Robot Behaviors
Jan Leusmann, Sarah Schömbs, Maximilian Diedrich, and Florian Müller
What Is a Robot? Understanding Baseball’s “Robot Umpire” through the Lens of Fluid Technology
Waki Kamino, Andrea W. Wen-Yi, Guy Hoffman, Selma Šabanović, and Malte F. Jung
Design Track
Best Paper
Robot-Mediated Mutual Gaze: How a Mobile Robot with Actuated Mirrors Facilitates Encounters between Strangers
Serena Ge Guo, Jenny J. Yu, Wenqian Niu, Yifei Gao, Guy Hoffman, Gilly Leshed, and Keith Evan Green
Honourable Mentions
Designing Care-fully: Robots for Acute Cancer Care
Sandhya Jayaraman, Pratyusha Ghosh, Soyon Kim, Soham Satyadharma, Angelique Taylor, Christopher Coyne, and Laurel D. Riek
Plant-Inspired Robot Design Metaphors for Ambient HRI
Victor Nikhil Antony, Adithya R N, Sarah Derrick, Zhili Gong, Peter M. Donley, and Chien-Ming Huang
Pluriversal Approach to Co-designing Delivery Robots with People with Disabilities
Abena Boadi-Agyemang, Sanika Moharana, Cynthia L. Bennett, Elizabeth J. Carter, Patrick Carrington, and Aaron Steinfeld
Systems Track
Best Paper
WAFFLE: A Wearable Approach to Bite Timing Estimation in Robot-Assisted Feeding
Akhil Padmanabha, Jessie Yuan, Tanisha S. Mehta, Rajat Kumar Jenamani, Eric Hu, Victoria de León, Anthony Wertz, Janavi Gupta, Ben Dodson, Yunting Yan, Carmel Majidi, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, and Zackory Erickson
Honourable Mentions
Bidirectional Human-Robot Communication for Physical Human-Robot Interaction
Junxiang Wang, Cindy Wang, Rana Soltani Zarrin, and Zackory Erickson
GuideNav: User-Informed Development of a Vision-Only Robotic Navigation Assistant for Blind Travelers
Hochul Hwang, Soowan Yang, Jahir Sadik Monon, Nicholas A. Giudice, Sunghoon Ivan Lee, Joydeep Biswas, and Donghyun Kim
Technical Track
Best Paper
Context-Aware Generation and Modulation of Expressive Motion Behavior using Multimodal Foundation Models
Till Hielscher, Fabio Scaparro, and Kai O. Arras
Honourable Mention
RoboCritics: Enabling Reliable End-to-End LLM Robot Programming through Expert-Informed Critics
Callie Y. Kim, Nathan Thomas White, Evan He, Frederic Sala, and Bilge Mutlu
Theory Track
Best Paper
Can VR Robots Stand in for the Real Thing? Comparing a Physical Cobot and Its Virtual Twin for User Perceptions, Experimental Effects, and Study Costs
Martina Mara, Andreas Winklbauer, Sandra Maria Siedl, and Benedikt Leichtmann
Honourable Mention
The RUSH Checklist: A Standardized Framework for Reporting User Studies in Human-Robot Interaction
Shruti Chandra, Katie Seaborn, Giulia Barbareschi, Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie, Shelly Bagchi, Sara Cooper, Zhao Han, and Daniel Tozadore
Late-Breaking Reports
Best Late Breaking Report
Beyond Justification: Command Rejections That Include Constructive Elaborations May Improve Evaluations of Trustworthiness
Gordon Briggs and Christina Wasylyshyn
Best Late Breaking Report Runners-up
Robots in the Room: A Qualitative Exploration of Democratic Agency and AI-Augmented Deliberations
Damith Herath, Hans Asenbaum, Janie Busby Grant, Maleen Jayasuriya, Emanuela Savini, and Harshith Ghanta
Dynamic Pedestrian Flow Guidance through Multi-robot Interaction along Human Crowd Boundaries
Ryusei Shigemoto, Hiroki Kimura, and Ryosuke Tasaki
Honourable Mentions
Can Vision Language Models Zero-Shot Thermal Images for Private and Robust Human Robot Interaction?
Han Hu, He Chen
A Systematic Validation and Review of the Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale (NARS)
Pawinee Pithayarungsarit, Neha Kannan, Paige Williamson, Paul Vallejo, Laura Saad, Greg Trafton, and Eileen Roesler
Making Robot Ecologies Visible: Toward a Taxonomy for Gibsonian Human-Robot Interface Design
Riccardo Spagnuolo, William Hagman, Erik Lagerstedt, Matthew Rueben, and Sam Thellman
RoSIP: A Scale for Measuring Appearance-Based Social Interaction Potential in Robots
Xucong Hu, Qinyi Hu, Tianya Yu, Mowei Shen, and Jifan Zhou
Examining the Effectiveness of Obfuscatory Planning Strategies through Human Observation
Dakota Sullivan, David Porfirio, Bilge Mutlu, and Laura M. Hiatt
Real-Time Speech Adaptation to Human and Robot Audiences
Hande Sodacı and Aylin C. Küntay
The Nudging Machine: Exploring Expressive Touch-Based Movement for Abstract Robots
Nataliia Kaminskaia, Rob Saunders, Kim Baraka, and Somaya Ben Allouch
Short Contributions
Best Short Contribution
Quest2ROS2: A ROS 2 Framework for Bi-manual VR Teleoperation
Jialong Li, Zhenguo Wang, Tianci Wang, Maj Stenmark and Volker Krueger
Honourable Mention
Seeing Eye to Eye Again: In-the-Wild Replication Study with an Expressive Eye Display for the Stretch Mobile Manipulator
Antara Shah and Naomi T. Fitter
Student Design Competition
Exceptional Student Design
Bickering Benches: Exploring Playful Interaction in Post-Anthropocentric HRI
Ann-Sophie L. Schenk, Martin Schymiczek Larangeira de Almeida, Ilknur Sitil and Xiying Li
Exceptional Student Design Runners-up
Beckoning Bowl: Using Social Robots to Counteract Loneliness in One-Person Households
Mie Grøftehave Nielsen, Andreas Juul Jespersen and Louise Brønderup Frederiksen
Circuit Breaker: A Tangible Intervention for Mitigating Digital Violence
Hanyu Zhang, Xinyue Xdu, Xinran She, Jie Deng and Yuanrong Tang
Honourable Mentions
Data Chase: A Robot-Supported Collaborative Museum Experience
Claire Lewis, Melody Goldanloo, Matthew Murray, Zachary Kaufman and Tom Williams
Nose Knows: A Human-Centered Robotic Air Quality Monitor
JP Tiger, Paige Williamson, Neha Kannan, Jacob Henley, Eileen Roesler and David Porfirio
Peoples’ Choice Awards (Tie)
Seesoil: Mitigating Negative Emotions through a Desktop Robot for Oil Splash Incidents
Weijie Qin, Qiyao Wang, Bingcen Gong and Yijia Luo
Designing Intuitive Human-Drone Interfaces for Post‑disaster Response
Nishi Shishir, Aulia Nadila, Aly Magassouba and Nikhil Deshpande
Interactivity
Best Demo
A Replicable, Autonomous System for In-the-Wild Mental Health Applications with the Ommie Robot
Kayla Matheus, Debasmita Ghose, Jirachaya (Fern) Limprayoon, Michal A. Lewkowicz and Brian Scassellati
Best Video
Remembering the Future with IRIS: Robotics Purpose Aiding Those Living with Dementia and Offering Empowerment
Jack Bassett, Long-Jing Hsu, Stephen Taylor, Janice Bays, Weslie Khoo, Katherine M. Tsui, David J. Crandall and Selma Šabanović
Sustainability Recognitions
Theme Recognition
Kept Alive, Bricked, Revived: Community Articulation Work and Value Renegotiation Beyond A Robot’s Commercial Failure
Waki Kamino, Bengisu Cagiltay, Bilge Mutlu, Malte F. Jung, Selma Šabanović
Method Recognition
Towards Intelligible Human-Robot Interaction: An Active Inference Approach to Occluded Pedestrian Scenarios
Kai Chen, Yuyao Huang, Guang Chen
Demonstration Recognition
Demonstrating Lantern and Its Variants: A Set of Minimal Robots
Victor Nikhil Antony, Kai-Chieh Liang and Chien-Ming Huang
Alt.HRI
Best Paper and Presentation Award
We Cannot Outsource What We Value Most: Toward Deployable Research Products in HRI
Kayla Matheus, Brian Scassellati