Art Archives - ROBOPHILOSOPHY

July 3, 2026July 4, 2026

Goodbye, ICSR + Art 2026

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) took place in London from July 1–4, bringing together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from around the world to explore the latest advances in social robotics. Hosted by Hooman Samani and Saina Akhond from the University of the Arts London, the conference welcomed around 350 participants who presented their latest research in the main track and special sessions while engaging in lively discussions with both humans and robots in the Debate Room. Teams also competed in the Grand Challenge, showcasing innovative concepts and working prototypes that demonstrated the future potential of social robotics. A series of inspiring keynote presentations explored emerging technologies as well as important methodological questions shaping the field, while robot performances and a memorable robot dance featuring Silke Grabinger added an artistic dimension to the event. Throughout the conference, attendees had the opportunity to meet an impressive range of social robots, including Furhat, Ameca, Euclid, Lovot, and Mirumi. Furhat and Ameca represented highly expressive humanoid platforms capable of remarkably lifelike interactions, while Euclid attracted particular attention as an open-source humanoid robot built for only a few hundred dollars, proving that affordable hardware can compete with well-known androids such as Sophia and Erika. In contrast, Lovot and Mirumi showcased the softer side of social robotics. Mirumi, a small furry wearable companion robot, charmed visitors with its ability to cling to the handle of a handbag using its tiny arms and is expected to appear soon in pop-up stores, particularly targeting girls and women. On the third evening, after a thought-provoking panel discussion and another series of robot performances, enthusiastic participants left the illuminated Senate House inspired by several days of groundbreaking research, creative collaboration, and a shared vision of how humans and robots will shape the future together. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.

July 2, 2026July 4, 2026

Can MLLMs Distinguish Human Laughter?

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) is currently taking place in London from July 1–4, bringing together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from around the world to explore the latest developments in social robotics. The conference serves as an international platform for exchanging ideas on how intelligent systems can better understand, interact with, and support people in everyday life. On the second day of the conference, Sahan Hatemo, a student at the FHNW School of Computer Science, presented the paper “Reading Between the Laughs: A Human-Referenced Audio Evaluation of MLLMs for Social Robotics”, co-authored with Dr. Katharina Kühne (University of Potsdam) and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel (FHNW School of Business). The study investigates whether today’s leading multimodal large language models (MLLMs) can distinguish authentic from non-authentic laughter using audio signals alone. As laughter is an important social cue, the ability to recognize its authenticity could significantly improve how robots and AI systems communicate with people in social settings. The researchers found notable differences in how the evaluated AI models interpreted laughter. OpenAI models showed a clear tendency to classify most laughter as genuine, while Gemini models were generally more skeptical in their assessments. Despite these contrasting biases, several models performed significantly better than chance, with Gemini 2.5 Pro achieving the strongest overall performance. A closer analysis also revealed qualitative differences in the models’ decision-making. Less capable models appeared to rely on superficial acoustic features, such as pitch, and were more likely to classify higher-pitched laughter as less authentic. In contrast, the best-performing model seemed to focus on more sophisticated aspects of voice quality, indicating a deeper understanding of the characteristics that distinguish genuine from non-authentic laughter. The findings demonstrate the growing potential of multimodal AI for social robotics. As robots increasingly become part of everyday environments, the ability to accurately interpret subtle social signals such as laughter could play a crucial role in fostering trust, improving communication, and strengthening human-robot relationships. Further information is available at icsr2026.uk.

April 17, 2026April 17, 2026

There’s No Place Like Home

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) will take place in London, UK, from 1–4 July 2026. ICSR is the leading international forum that brings together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from across disciplines to advance the field of social robotics. As part of the conference programme, ICSR Industry Day will offer a dynamic platform connecting research and industry through a panel debate, a UKRI-led workshop, and a pitch session showcasing emerging robotics start-ups. A key highlight will be the panel discussion “There’s No Place Like Home: Exploring the Next Frontier for Social Robots”, taking place on Friday, 3 July from 2.30-4.00 pm. Bringing together leading voices from industry, the session will examine the growing interest in domestic environments as the next major market for social robotics. While companies increasingly envision robots supporting household tasks, personalised assistance, ageing-in-place, and companionship, the home presents unique challenges as a deeply personal and unpredictable setting where trust, privacy, and reliability are essential. Drawing on firsthand experience in deploying consumer robots, the panellists will discuss both the opportunities and the obstacles of integrating robots into everyday domestic life, addressing issues such as surveillance, dependency, social acceptance, and design limitations. The panel will feature Ira Renfrew, Co-Founder and Chief People Product Officer at Familiar Machines & Magic; Shunsuke Aoki, Founder of Yukai Engineering; Craig Allen, former Chief Creative Officer at Embodied (now Moxie Robots); and Samuel Ader, VP Growth & Supply at Cera (Genie Connect). The discussion will be moderated by Elizabeth Jochum. Together, the speakers will explore how thoughtful, human-centred innovation can help social robots earn a meaningful place in people’s homes and daily lives. Further information and registration details for the Industry Day panel are available at: icsr2026.uk/industry-day/.

April 15, 2026April 15, 2026

Keynote Speakers of ICSR + Art 2026

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) will take place in London, UK, from 1–4 July 2026. ICSR is the leading international forum that brings together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from across disciplines to advance the field of social robotics. This year’s conference will feature three distinguished keynote speakers whose work is shaping the future of artificial intelligence, robotics, and human-robot interaction. Hatice Gunes, Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Cambridge, is internationally recognised for her pioneering research on affective computing, multimodal intelligence, and socially aware AI systems, with a strong emphasis on ethics, fairness, and wellbeing in robotics. Jean Oh, Associate Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the roBot Intelligence Group, is known for her work on collaborative robots, social navigation, and creative physical AI, focusing on developing robots that learn, adapt, and work safely alongside humans in shared environments. Nicolas Heess, Research Scientist and Director at Google DeepMind, leads cutting-edge research on general-purpose robotics and embodied AI, exploring how advances in machine learning, perception, and motor control can bring intelligent robots into the physical world. Together, these keynote speakers represent the forefront of research and innovation driving the next generation of social robotics. Further information on the keynote programme is available at: icsr2026.uk/keynote/.

March 5, 2026March 5, 2026

Final Call for ICSR + Art 2026

The 18th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR + Art 2026) will take place in London, UK, from 1–4 July 2026. ICSR is the leading international forum that brings together researchers, academics, and industry professionals from across disciplines to advance the field of social robotics. For its 18th edition, the conference will present the special theme ICSR + Art, highlighting how robots can move beyond their conventional roles to become tools, partners, and co-creators within artistic and creative practices. At the same time, the conference remains open to the full breadth of social robotics research, including human–robot interaction, medical and assistive robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, ethics, design, education, and cultural applications. Accepted papers will be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series and indexed in major academic databases. Due to current extenuating circumstances worldwide and following requests from several authors, the submission deadlines have been extended by a few additional days to allow additional time for final submissions. No further extensions of the submission deadlines are planned, and all submissions must follow the updated schedule. All deadlines are based on Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time. Authors who have already submitted a paper may use the extension to update their submission; if any difficulty occurs when modifying the existing entry in the system, the previous submission may be withdrawn and replaced with a new version. Updated dates are available at icsr2026.uk/dates/ and submission instructions can be found at icsr2026.uk/submission/ (Photo: stevecadman/CC BY-SA 2.0).

February 20, 2026February 20, 2026

The ECHO Project has Come to an End

The project “ECHO: Explaining Composition, Harmony & Orchestration” was initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel and implemented by Lucas Chingis Marty. The final presentation took place on February 19, 2026, at the FHNW Campus Brugg-Windisch. The bachelor’s thesis “ECHO: Explaining Composition, Harmony & Orchestration – A Multimodal AI System for Music Analysis and Education” develops a local multimodal AI system for the analysis and accessible explanation of musical structures based on audio data. The objective is to bridge the gap between music information retrieval (MIR, an automatic audio analysis) and natural language explanation through large language models. The system combines multiple analysis components (tempo, key, chord, instrument, and melody recognition) with a locally operated language model (Llama 3.1-8B) that translates the extracted data into understandable explanations for beginners and intermediate users. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), guardrails to reduce hallucinations, and a feedback and evaluation system are employed as part of the approach. The implementation is realized as a desktop application without cloud dependency. The evaluation includes technical measurements on datasets comprising several hundred music tracks as well as a small user study. The thesis demonstrates that a locally operated system can in principle present musical analysis in an understandable way, although clear accuracy limitations of the applied MIR methods remain. Opportunities could open up not only for music education, but also for the preservation of endangered music.