Preface

Abstract

The 13th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2021) was held as a hybrid conference (onsite and online) in Singapore, during November 10–13, 2021, with the theme of “Robotics in our everyday lives”, emphasizing the increasing importance of robotics in human daily living. Marking the return of ICSR 11 years after it was first held in Singapore, this edition was jointly organized by the Chinese and Oriental Languages Information Processing Society (COLIPS), the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Singapore Chapter of IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society and the Teochew Doctorate Society, Singapore (TDSS). It was supported by the Robotics Horizontal Technology Programme Office (R-HTPO) of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore (A*STAR), and the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Department of the A*STAR Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R). The International Conference on Social Robotics brings together researchers and practitioners working on the interaction between humans and intelligent robots and on the integration of robots into the fabric of our society. Out of a record total of 129 submitted manuscripts reviewed by a dedicated international team of Senior Program Committee and Program Committee members, 64 full papers and 15 brief research reports were selected for inclusion in the proceedings and presented during the technical sessions of the conference. In addition to paper presentation sessions, ICSR 2021 also featured three keynote talks, five workshops, and a robot design competition. The keynote talks were delivered by three renowned researchers – Giorgio Metta of the Italian Institute of Technology, Italy, Oussama Khatib of Stanford University, USA, and Nadia M. Thalmann of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all members of the Steering Committee, International Advisory Committee, and Organizing Committee and to all volunteers for their dedication in making the conference a great success. We are also indebted to members of the Senior Program Committee and the Program Committee for their hard work in the rigorous review of the papers. Lastly and most importantly, we are grateful for the continued support of ICSR by the authors, participants, and sponsors, without which the conference would not be possible.