Posts

Posted on

ICSR 2026 is Ready for Submissions

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. The conference has now opened its submission system, and full details can be found on the official ICSR 2026 submission page (icsr2026.uk/submission). Authors are invited to submit to a range of categories. Regular Papers for the Main Track should follow the guidelines provided on the conference website and be submitted by 15 February 2026. Special Session submissions follow the same Regular Paper instructions but are directed to individual sessions listed on the Special Sessions page. Short Papers follow their own dedicated instructions and are submitted through the same system. Competitions and Debates each have their own portals, with submissions due by 1 March 2026. Additional tracks such as the Robot Fringe and Travel Grants will be announced soon. All submission links and instructions are clearly detailed on the ICSR 2026 submission page, ensuring authors have everything they need to prepare their contributions for this major event in social robotics.

Posted on

Sexuality and Generative AI

The upcoming “SAGA: Sexuality and Generative AI” symposium, taking place on April 30, 2026 at the Université du Québec à Montréal, explores how generative AI is reshaping intimacy, desire, relationships, and sexual expression. As AI systems increasingly create images, stories, and even interactive romantic companions, they raise new ethical, legal, and social questions that researchers, practitioners, and industry voices will tackle together. The hybrid, bilingual event is free and open to all, offering live translation and captioning. In its first block on social impacts, the symposium features talks such as Brian Willoughby’s exploration of how romantic AI affects young adults’ relationships, Arnaud Anciaux’s analysis of ownership and consent around AI-generated sexual content, Beáta Bőthe’s work on AI-generated pornography and problematic use, and Oliver Bendel’s look at erotic chatbot interactions. With discussions ranging from the regulation of AI-generated pornography to digital intimacy and AI-supported therapeutic interventions, the event promises a rich and essential conversation. Full details and submissions are available at https://event.fourwaves.com/sexualiteia/pages.

Posted on

ACI Conference in Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel will host the next ACI Conference, marking the first time the event comes to continental Europe as it convenes on the FHNW campus in Brugg-Windisch, Switzerland, from 2-5 December 2026. Building on a tradition that has taken the community from Glasgow to North Carolina, Newcastle, Bloomington, Milton Keynes, Haifa and Atlanta, this edition continues the conference’s role as the premier venue for advancing Animal-Computer Interaction. As the field grows, researchers and practitioners explore how technology shapes animals’ lives, wellbeing, cognition and social dynamics while developing animal-centered systems and methods that embrace multispecies perspectives. The conference maintains its commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration across biology, technology and cultural studies, supporting work that seeks to design ethically grounded, welfare-enhancing and inclusive technological futures for all animals, humans included. Proceedings will be published in the ACM Digital Library, and the official conference website will go live in January 2026. Information on previous ACI conferences is available at www.aciconf.org.

Posted on

Nature, Robots, and Society

The Robophilosophy Conference 2026 will take place August 11–14 at University College Dublin in a hybrid format and centers on the theme “Connected Futures: Nature, Robots, and Society”. As robotics and AI become deeply embedded in human life, the conference invites researchers across disciplines to explore how autonomous systems shape society, ecology, law, labor, and human self-understanding. It raises questions about responsible design, accountability, environmental impact, social justice, cultural perspectives, and the ethics of coexistence with artificial agents. Workshop proposals are due January 16, session papers and posters February 6, with notifications in February and April and proceedings pre-submission on June 15. RP2026 aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue that advances both technological insight and collective wisdom for a future in which humans and autonomous systems share social and ecological worlds. Further information is available at cas.au.dk/en/rpc2026.

Posted on

ICSR – Call for Debates

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 this edition, ICSR 2026 will host a series of live debates in the Debate Room (Senate Room), addressing pressing questions about social robots in society and culture. Debate proposals may focus on conceptual, ethical, scientific, artistic, practical, or societal aspects of social robotics and should connect broadly to the conference topics listed at icsr2026.uk/topics/. Submissions are open to contributors from social robotics, HRI, the arts, design, engineering, the humanities, and related areas, with interdisciplinary proposals particularly encouraged. Formats may include two-sided or multi-position debates, panel discussions, performative debates, or audience-engaged formats. In a nod to British debating traditions, participants are encouraged to wear academic gowns. Proposals are submitted via icsr2026.uk/debate-proposal, with a submission deadline of 1 March 2026 and notification of acceptance by 15 April 2026.

Posted on

Communicating with Fellow Beings and Extraterrestrials

As part of the ToBIT event series at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), four students working with Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel are addressing four topics within his research area: “The Decoding of Symbolic Languages of Animals”, “The Decoding of Animal Body Language”, “The Decoding of Animal Facial Expressions and Behavior”, and “The Decoding of Extraterrestrial Languages”. The first three topics are also being explored – or have already been explored – in dedicated projects. DEEP VOICE focuses on whale communication. The Animal Whisperer Project comprised three apps that analyzed and evaluated the body language of cows, horses, and dogs, while VISUAL provided blind and visually impaired individuals with audio descriptions of images from wildlife webcams. In ANIFACE, a system was designed to identify individual bears in the Alps using facial recognition. Projects involving the reception of extraterrestrial signals and communication with alien life forms were discussed in the book “300 Keywords Weltraum“. The students presented their interim results on November 26, 2025. The final ToBIT event will take place in January 2026.

Posted on

ICSR – Call for Competition Entries

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 this edition, the ICSR 2026 Competition invites visionary concepts and prototypes for social robots that collaborate, care, and connect with people beyond the laboratory. Designers, engineers, artists, researchers, and pupils or students (school, college, and university) are invited to submit projects ranging from functional solutions to artistic or hybrid works. The competition features two categories: the Robot Design Competition, focusing on innovation in functionality, interaction, and application; and the Robot Art Competition, highlighting creative fusions of fashion, art, performance, and robotics. Hybrid projects may apply to both awards. Each entry must be described in a summary of up to two pages (preferably following Springer LNAI formatting), including an abstract of no more than 50 words and sufficient detail to judge novelty and impact. A single optional video link (maximum three minutes) and images or renderings are encouraged. Submissions should indicate whether they apply for the Design Award, the Art Award, or both, and be uploaded via the competition form at: icsr2026.uk/competition/. The competition submission deadline is 1 March 2026; finalists will be notified on 15 April 2026, and winners will be announced on 3 July 2026 during the closing ceremony of ICSR 2026.

Posted on

AI Systems Harm the German Language

Users who translate texts from English or another language into German and are not native speakers of the target language should be cautious when using services such as DeepL and ChatGPT. 1. For both, the default setting is not the standard language, as one might assume, but a special language that is rejected by the majority of the language community and does not follow the official rules. These are determined for all German-speaking countries by the Rechtschreibrat. DeepL and ChatGPT follow their own rules or the inconsistent ideas of activists. The German language generated by DeepL and ChatGPT is often dysfunctional, incorrect, and imprecise. Formal inaccuracies can lead to inaccuracies in content. 2. If AI systems do not know words, they may simply replace them with completely different ones. In one test, DeepL translated “Animal-Computer Interaction” as “Mensch-Computer-Interaktion” (“Human-Computer Interaction”). This made the text factually incorrect. 3. Overall, especially with ChatGPT, English language structures are transferred to German. This results in unnatural-sounding lists, unlinked compounds (“Deep Learning Modelle” or “Deep Learning-Modelle” instead of “Deep-Learning-Modelle”), and unnecessary or incorrect hyphens (“nicht-amtliche Regeln” instead of “nichtamtliche Regeln”).

Posted on

About Authentic Laughter

From November 2025 to February 2026, Sahan Hatemo of the FHNW School of Computer Science, Dr. Katharina Kühne of the University of Potsdam, and Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel of the FHNW School of Business are conducting a research study. As part of this project, they are launching a sub-study that includes a short computer-based task and a brief questionnaire. Participants are asked to listen to a series of laughter samples and evaluate whether each one sounds authentic or not. The task involves 50 samples in total and typically takes about ten minutes to complete. Participation is possible via PC, laptop, or smartphone. Before starting, participants should ensure that their device’s sound is turned on and that they are in a quiet, distraction-free environment. The computer-based task and the brief questionnaire can be accessed at research.sc/participant/login/dynamic/3BE7321C-B5FD-4C4B-AF29-9A435EC39944.

Posted on

Fundamentals of Animal-Machine Interaction

“Just.Us + Animal Welfare” is a lecture series organized by Department 10 Veterinary Medicine to promote animal welfare at Justus Liebig University Giessen. On November 12, 2025, Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel gave a lecture on “Bao meets Pluto: Grundlagen und Beispiele der Tier-Maschine-Interaktion” (“Bao meets Pluto: Fundamentals and examples of animal-machine interaction”). Animal-machine interaction deals with the encounter and coexistence of animals and machines – from classic devices to vehicles, aircraft, and agricultural machinery to networked, autonomous robots and AI systems. The focus is on perception through sensors and senses, interaction and communication between animals and machines, and the question of how these encounters can be designed technically, organizationally, and ethically in such a way that risks for animals are reduced and potential for them and for humans is tapped. In his lecture, Oliver Bendel laid out the fundamentals of animal-machine interaction and described prototypes and projects. He also outlined what is possible and to be expected in this field of research in the coming years, for example in connection with robotic quadrupeds and bipeds. The online lecture was followed by 660 listeners. Further information is available at www.uni-giessen.de/de/fbz/zentren/icar3r/akademie/justus.