Introduction

The Workshop on Human-Robot Contact and Manipulation (HRCM 2025) at RSS 2025 aims to to unite expertise across control theory, shared autonomy, physical modeling, and human understanding to have robots operate in direct or indirect physical contact with people. The workshop topics include (but are not limited to):

• Compliant and/or soft robot hardware design
• Compliant control and physical safety
• Collaborative manipulation and shared control
• Contact modeling and simulation for rigid and soft bodies
• Tactile sensing and haptic interfaces
• Planning, control, and/or learning in contact-rich environments
• Applications involving direct human-robot contact, such as:
  • Assisted Activities for Daily Living (ADLs), e.g., feeding, bathing, walking
  • Exoskeletons and active prostheses
  • Medicine, e.g., patient transfer and surgery
• Benchmarks and metrics for HRCM applications

Workshop Format

This half-day workshop will be divided into two sections with the following themes:

• Session 1: Contact-Rich Modeling and Control
• Enabling the safe operation of robots in direct contact with their environment or other agents by (1) developing algorithms and hardware for planning and control and (2) developing and using rigid, deformable, and soft-body contact models and simulations, sim-to-real transfer, and tactile sensing.
• Breakout Discussion Topic: Create a wish list of models, simulations, datasets, algorithms, etc. that will yield improvements (e.g. more robust, more tractable) in the compliant control settings defined in Session 1.
• Session 2: pHRI — Shared Manipulation and Compliance
• Discussing all human-centric use cases of the themes in Session 1, such as human augmentation, rehabilitation, and medical devices.
• Breakout Discussion Topic: With consideration of the pHRI applications discussed in Session 2, what standardized benchmarks and metrics can be used to measure the success of the algorithms, hardware, models, and simulations etc. discussed in Session 1?

Tentative Workshop Schedule (Saturday 21 June 2025)

Time in PDT	Start Time in UTC* (your time zone)	Item
8:00am - 8:15am	21 June 2025 08:00:00 PDT	Opening & Introductions
Session 1: Contact-Rich Modeling and Control
8:15am - 8:30am	21 June 2025 08:15:00 PDT	Speaker 1 OR Panel
8:30am - 8:45am	21 June 2025 08:30:00 PDT	Speaker 2 OR Panel
8:45am - 9:00am	21 June 2025 08:45:00 PDT	Speaker 3 OR Panel
9:00am - 9:30am	21 June 2025 9:00:00 PDT	Breakout Discussion 1
9:30am - 9:45am	21 June 2025 09:30:00 PDT	Debrief + Roundtable
9:45am - 10:00am	21 June 2025 9:45:00 PDT	Poster Lightning Talks
10:00am - 10:30am	21 June 2025 10:00:00 PDT	Coffee break
Session 2: pHRI — Shared Manipulation and Compliance
10:30am - 11:00am	21 June 2025 10:30:00 PDT	Poster Session
11:00am - 11:15am	21 June 2025 11:00:00 PDT	Speaker 4 OR Panel
11:15am - 11:30am	21 June 2025 11:15:00 PDT	Speaker 5 OR Panel
11:30am - 11:45am	21 June 2025 11:30:00 PDT	Speaker 6 OR Panel
11:45am - 12:15pm	21 June 2025 11:45:00 PDT	Breakout Discussion 2
12:15pm - 12:30pm	21 June 2025 12:15:00 PDT	Debrief + Roundtable / Conclusion

* This time is calculated to be in your computer's reported time zone.
For example, those in Los Angeles may see UTC-7,
while those in Berlin may see UTC+2.

Please note that there may be differences to your actual time zone.

Invited In-Person Speakers and Panelists

Speaker	Affiliation	Topic
Wanxin Jin	Arizona State University	Contact-Rich Manipulation and Control
Diego Romeres	Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab (MERL)	Physical Model Learning
Michael Posa	University of Pennsylvania	Contact Modeling and Simulation
Sylvain Calinon	Idiap Research Institute	Human-Centered Applications and Optimal Control
Luka Peternel	Delft University of Technology	Physical Human-Robot Collaboration, Tele-impedance and Robotic Physiotherapy
Katsu Yamane	Path Robotics	Industry Applications and Human Modeling
Vy Nguyen	Hello Robot	Assistive Robotics Applications
Laurel Riek *	UC San Diego	Healthcare Robotics and Shared Control
Roberto Calandra *	Technische Universität Dresden	Model-Based Control and Touch Sensing
Ayse Kucukyilmaz *	University of Nottingham	Shared Control for pHRI
Sachiko Matsumoto	UC San Diego	Adaptive Human-robot Teaming

* Tentative in-person availability.

Organizers

Website Chairs

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