There are multiple ways to participate in our workshop.

Written Contributions

We invite contributions on the social, ethical, and practical implications of robots used in clinical or assistive contexts. These can examine both both downstream effects of such robots (such as shifts in labor, and care disruption) and upstream interventions that aim to anticipate or mitigate these effects through design, research, and policy decisions.

Submissions may draw from HRI, HCI, robotics, disability studies, STS, philosophy, policy, and related fields, and may be empirical, conceptual, methodological, or practice-oriented.

All submissions will be reviewed by the workshop organizers for relevance, and we are aiming for an inclusive program.

Accepted submissions will be presented as posters during the workshop poster session, and posted on the workshop website. There will also be opportunities to contribute to a follow-up journal special issue.

Topics of interest

Topics of interest for this workshop include, but are not limited to:

  • Ethical, legal, and social implications of robots in clinical or assistive contexts
  • Critical reflections on mis/alignments between design goals and impacts of robots on disabled communities.
  • Upstream interventions at the meso or macro level (e.g., community programs, participatory research, policies)
  • Community-based research practices
  • Experience reports or deployment insights from key contexts, including:
    • Socially assistive robots
    • Cognitively assistive robots
    • Physically assistive robots
    • Hospital deployed robots (e.g., delivery, sanitation, surgery)
    • Rehabilitation robotics
  • We particularly encourage submissions that surface lived experiences, or cross-disciplinary insights that may be underrepresented in traditional academic venues.

Submission Guidelines

  • We invite short contributions up to 4 pages, excluding references. Contributions may report on completed work, work-in-progress, or reflective accounts from practice.
  • Please upload submissions in PDF format and follow the ACM Proceedings specification.
  • Submissions need not be anonymized.

Important Dates

🗓 Submission deadline: 9th February, 2026 AoE
📣 Notification of acceptance: 16th February, 2026
📸 Camera-ready deadline: 26th February, 2026

General participation (without written contributions)

We highly encourage academics, non-academics, and people with/without affiliations to participate.

Here, we only ask that you complete a form to express your interest, so we can better plan for workshop activities, and accommodate the access needs of workshop attendees.