HRCM 2025: Human-Robot Contact and Manipulation

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

Call for Contributions

Extended Abstracts

Submission: We invite authors to submit extended abstracts for posters. Each accepted abstract will be allotted a brief (1-2min) lightningh talk in which to advertise their poster.

Workshop Format

This full-day workshop will be divided into three sections with the following themes:

Session 1: Compliance and Control Through Contact includes the development of both algorithms and hardware that enable planning, control, and safe operation of robots in direct contact with their environment or other agents.

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: Contact Modeling and Simulation covers the development and use of rigid, deformable, and soft-body contact models and simulations, as well as sim-to-real transfer and tactile sensing.

Breakout Discussion Topic: How can the models and simulations discussed in Session 2 (or modifications thereof) address the wish list created in Session 1?

Session 3: Applications in pHRI encompass all human-centric use cases of the above themes, such as human augmentation, rehabilitation, and medical devices.

Breakout Discussion Topic: With consideration of the pHRI applications discussed in Session 3, what standardized benchmarks and metrics can be used to measure the success of the algorithms, hardware, etc. discussed in Sessions 1 and 2?

Tentative Workshop Schedule (25 June 2025)

Time in PDT	Start Time in UTC* (your time zone)	Item
8:15am - 8:30am	25 June 2025 08:15:00 PDT	Opening & Introductions
Morning Session (1): Compliance and Control Through Contact
8:30am - 9:00am	25 June 2025 08:30:00 PDT	Speaker 1 OR Panel
9:00am - 9:30am	25 June 2025 09:00:00 PDT	Speaker 2 OR Panel
9:30am - 9:45am	25 June 2025 9:30:00 PDT	Poster Session 1 Lightning Talks
9:45am - 10:45am	25 June 2025 09:45:00 PDT	Coffee Break + Poster Session 1
10:45am - 11:15am	25 June 2025 10:45:00 PDT	Speaker 3
11:15am - 12:00pm	25 June 2025 11:15:00 PDT	Breakout Discussion 1 + Round Table
Afternoon Session (2): Contact Modeling and Simulation
12:00pm - 12:30pm	25 June 2025 12:00:00 PDT	Speaker 4
12:30pm - 2:00pm	25 June 2025 12:30:00 PDT	Lunch Break
2:00pm - 2:15pm	25 June 2025 14:00:00 PDT	Midday Feedback
2:15pm - 2:45pm	25 June 2025 14:15:00 PDT	Speaker 5
2:45pm - 3:00pm	25 June 2025 14:45:00 PDT	Poster Session 2 Lightning Talks
3:00pm - 4:00pm	25 June 2025 15:00:00 PDT	Coffee Break + Poster Session 2
4:00pm - 4:45pm	25 June 2025 16:00:00 PDT	Breakout Discussion 2 + Round Table
Evening Session (3): Applications in pHRI
4:45pm - 5:15pm	25 June 2025 16:45:00 PDT	Speaker 6 OR Panel
5:15pm - 5:45pm	25 June 2025 17:15:00 PDT	Speaker 7 OR Panel
5:45pm - 6:30pm	25 June 2025 17:45:00 PDT	Breakout Session 3 + Closing Round Table

* 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
Ed Colgate *	Northwestern University	Haptic Interfaces and Cobots
Ayse Kucukyilmaz *	University of Nottingham	Shared Control for pHRI
Sachiko Matsumoto	UC San Diego	Adaptive Human-robot Teaming