About the Workshop

Communication in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) often focuses on linguistic exchanges, with spoken dialogue providing a natural way for people to interact with robots. While direct verbal interaction can reduce barriers compared to other forms of interaction (e.g., text- or touch-based interfaces), it may also exclude users with speech, language, or cognitive differences, and they may not generalize well across cultures and contexts. Non-linguistic forms of communication, including non-verbal voice interactions and extra-linguistic signals (e.g., gesture, gaze, facial expressions, posture), offer complementary pathways that can enable more inclusive, accessible, and universal interactions. This workshop explores how non-linguistic communication can shape effective human-robot communication and collaboration. We aim to bring together researchers from HRI, conversational AI, linguistics, psychology, and accessibility studies to discuss opportunities, challenges, and design practices for integrating such features. The workshop seeks to advance inclusive design principles, bridge disciplines, and highlight future research directions on communication strategies that empower diverse users in their interactions with robots.

Key Dates

Submissions Due:
February 5th, 2026 (AoE)

Notifications Sent:
February 12th, 2026 (AoE)

Workshop Date:
March 16th, 2026 (AoE)

Submissions

Papers should be should be sent to: zargham@uni-bremen.de

Organizers

Rachel Ringe

Rachel is a PhD student in the Digital Media Lab at the University of Bremen. Her research focuses on human-robot interaction in household settings, examining how appearance and behavior shape interaction.

Nima Zargham

Nima is a postdoctoral researcher in the Digital Media Lab at the University of Bremen. His research focuses on human-AI communication and collaboration. He has organized workshops at notable HCI conferences (e.g., CHI, CUI, HRI, IUI, and IVA), and serves on the steering committee of the ACM CUI conference series.

Mihai Pomarlan

Mihai is a postdoctoral researcher in the Digital Media Lab at the University of Bremen. His work focuses on knowledge engineering for robots and affordance-based situation understanding. He has co-organized workshops on ontologies applied to robotics at the FOIS/JOWO conferences and IEEE RO-MAN.

Benjamin Cowan

Benjamin is a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Conversational Informatics at University College Dublin, where he co-leads the HCI@UCD group. He is also the co-founder of the ACM Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) conference series. His research focuses on how psycholinguistic theory can inform the design of conversational AI interactions. He has previously organized several successful workshops at leading ACM venues (e.g., ACM CHI, CUI, IUI, and HRI).

Minha Lee

Minha is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology. She focuses on ethics of developing technologies like CUIs and robots, with a focus on cultivating moral emotions like compassion or gratitude via our conversations with artificial agents. She has started the HRI workshop series on robo-identity, broadening the community's research interest on the topic of artificial identity of robots and CUIs.

Donald McMillan

Donald is an Associate Professor at Stockholm University where he co-leads the Stockholm Technology Interaction Research (STIR) group. His research bridges HCI, robotics and extended reality with a focus on inter- and multi-diciplinary research approaches. He has previously organised successful workshops at ACM venues such as HRI, CHI, IMX and CUI.

Matthew Aylett

Matthew is a leading expert in speech synthesis and conversational interaction, a critical domain for non-linguistic communciation. He co-founded CereProc Ltd. in 2006, a successful international speech synthesis company specialised in expressive and emotional speech generation. He is currently an Associate Professor at Heriot Watt University - home of the Robotarium.

Workshop Activities

Session Details Duration
Welcome and Introduction Brief introductions from the organizers and participants, outline of workshop objectives, and an overview of the day's agenda. 30 min
Presentations Accepted position-paper authors present for 3–5 minutes each, followed by a short Q&A after each presentation. 45 min
Coffee Break Informal networking over coffee. 30 min
Group Activity Participants form small groups. Two members in each group complete a collaborative assembly task using only non-verbal communication; observers focus on specific interaction aspects. 30 min
Reflection and Discussion Groups report back on the activity. A moderated discussion synthesizes insights and connects them to workshop goals. 30 min
Closing Organizers summarise key outcomes, identify research questions and collaborations, and outline next steps for community-building. 15 min

Call For Papers

We aim to bring together researchers from HRI, HCI, linguistics, psychology, accessibility, and related fields to enable cross-disciplinary dialogue and help chart a path toward richer and more equitable forms of human–robot communication. The workshop will be held exclusively in person. Participants are invited to submit position papers (2–4 pages) presenting their research, innovative ideas, or perspectives on non-linguistic communication in HRI. We welcome submissions on ongoing research, preliminary results for discussion, methodological approaches, and design insights. Each submission will undergo independent review by at least two workshop organizers before acceptance. Additionally, we encourage expressions of interest from individuals who may not have formal papers but wish to contribute. These statements should outline relevant experience, perspectives, or ideas related to the workshop theme.