HRI 2026

• Dates: Mar 16 – 19, 2026
• Place: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
• Venue: Edinburgh International Conference Centre (Main) & Heriot-Watt University (Workshops)
• Organiser: ACM / IEEE

HRI 2026, the 21st ACM/IEEE Human-Robot Interaction conference, ran 16-19 March 2026 in Edinburgh under the theme 'HRI Empowering Society'. Seven full papers won Best Paper across five tracks. Quest2ROS2, an open-source ROS 2 VR teleoperation framework, won Best Short Contribution. No attendance figures or talk recordings were published. The papers are in the ACM Digital Library.

Key facts

• Where and when: The 21st ACM/IEEE HRI conference ran 16-19 March 2026 in Edinburgh, with workshops at Heriot-Watt University on 16 March and the main programme at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
• Best papers: Seven full papers won Best Paper across five tracks, including WAFFLE (Systems), expressive motion from multimodal foundation models (Technical) and a physical-vs-VR cobot comparison (Theory).
• Best short contribution: Quest2ROS2, an open-source ROS 2 framework for bi-manual VR teleoperation from Lund University, won Best Short Contribution.
• Test of Time: Two papers received Test of Time awards: 'Common metrics for human-robot interaction' (Steinfeld et al.) and 'Legibility and predictability of robot motion' (Dragan, Lee, Srinivasa).
• Keynotes: Four keynotes were given by Yukie Nagai, Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, Benjamin Rosman and Benjamin R. Cowan, with abstracts in the ACM companion proceedings.

Keynote speakers

• Yukie Nagai (International Research Center for Neurointelligence, University of Tokyo): Predictive Brain in Robots and Children: Toward Social Intelligence
• Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas (Animal-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Glasgow): More Than Human-Robot Interaction
• Benjamin Rosman (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa): Who Gets Represented in Robot Intelligence? Human-Robot Interaction, Societal Context, and the Future of Autonomy
• Benjamin R. Cowan (University College Dublin): Collaborating with Conversational Agents: Perspective Taking, Partner Modelling and the Division of Communicative Labour

Workshops

• Designing Transparent and Understandable Robots (D-TUR), Monday March 16 (Morning): https://dtur-hri.github.io/workshop2026/
• Methodological Innovation in Designing Sensations and Sentiments from Robot Touch, Monday March 16 (Morning): https://sites.google.com/view/touchwellhri2026workshop/home
• Unpacking Lived Experiences of Wizards of Oz, Monday March 16 (Morning): https://sites.google.com/view/wozhri/
• 3rd Workshop on Designerly HRI: Articulating the Value of Design Research for HRI, Monday March 16 (Morning): https://designerlyhri.org
• Robots for Care: Exploring Downstream Socio-Ethical Effects and Upstream Interventions, Monday March 16 (Morning): https://healthrobotsworkshop.github.io/HRI-workshop2026/
• Robots for Communities, Monday March 16 (Morning): https://sites.google.com/view/robots-for-communities/home
• Errors, Mistakes and Failures in Humans and Robots (EMF-HRI), Monday March 16 (Morning): https://sites.google.com/view/emfhri26/home
• InterAI: Interactive AI for Human-Centered Robotics (2nd edition), Monday March 16 (Morning): https://sites.google.com/view/interaiworkshophri2026/home
• Expressive Robot Faces with Vizij: A Workshop/Tutorial Hybrid, Monday March 16 (Full Day): https://vizij.ai/events/hri-2026-tutorial
• Roboticist's Guide to Working with Children: A Playful by Design Workshop, Monday March 16 (Full Day): https://sites.google.com/iu.edu/hri26-roboticist-guide-child/call-for-participation
• ROOTS-HRI: Responsible Outcomes and Operational Tools for Sustainability in HRI (2nd edition), Monday March 16 (Full Day): https://sites.google.com/view/roots-hri-2026/
• Workshop YOUR Study Design 2026 (6th edition), Monday March 16 (Full Day): https://sites.google.com/view/wysd-2026-at-hri
• Failing Forward: Design and Deployment Lessons from Real-World HRI, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://sites.google.com/monash.edu/failfowardhri2026
• BPM-HRI: Best Practices and Methods in HRI Research, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://www.uk-hri.org/events/bpm-hri-2026
• LEAP-HRI: Lifelong Learning and Personalization in Long-Term HRI (6th edition), Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://leap-hri.github.io/
• Cruel Optimism, Lucid Despair, and Precarious Hope in HRI, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://sites.google.com/view/hriworkshop2026/home
• MAgicS-HRI: Multi-Agentic Systems in HRI, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://sites.google.com/view/magics-hri/home
• Equitable Robotics for Wellbeing (EqRoW), Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://sites.google.com/cam.ac.uk/eq-rw/
• A Tutorial for Finding and Evaluating HRI Scales, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://hri.lab.gmu.edu/workshops/hri-2026-workshop/
• Third International Workshop on Worker-Robot Relations: Futuring Worker Empowerment, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://sites.google.com/view/wwrworkshop3/home
• HuRoCo: Empowering Human-Robot Communication Through Non-Linguistic Pathways, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://dml.uni-bremen.de/huroco/HRI2026/
• Exploring the Safety, Trust, Psychosocial, Legal and Economic Impact of Cyber Attacks on Social Robots, Monday March 16 (Afternoon): https://securerobotics.net/

Official links

• Website: https://humanrobotinteraction.org/