RO-MAN 2026 Workshop

Interactive Agents for Behavior Change:
Designing Trustworthy Nudges with Robots and AI

A full-day workshop at the 35th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2026)

August 24 or 28, 2026
Kitakyushu International Conference Center, Japan
On-site (hybrid option subject to approval)
About the workshop

Robots and AI agents are increasingly deployed as everyday companions, assistants, and coaches in homes, workplaces, education, and healthcare. Yet interaction design that reliably supports sustained human behavior change remains underdeveloped.

We lack shared design principles across embodied robots, smartphone agents, and XR/virtual agents, and agreed-upon evaluation metrics and ethical safeguards for influence. Aligned with the RO-MAN 2026 theme "Realizing Human-Robot Symbiosis with AI," IA4BC brings together researchers and practitioners to build an interdisciplinary forum connecting HRI/HAI research with behavioral science, cognitive neuroscience, and ethics.

Our goal is to leave RO-MAN 2026 with a concrete research agenda and an initial set of practical guidelines — spanning design, evaluation, and ethics — for behavior-change-oriented interactive agents.

Key topics
Behavior change & habit formation Persuasive robotics & nudge computing Trust, empathy & long-term interaction Personalization & user modeling LLM/GenAI-based HRI & safety Ethical & legal implications (ELSI) Evaluation & longitudinal studies Multimodal interaction design Social, assistive & XR/virtual agents
Workshop at a glance
FormatFull-day workshop (~7 hours), on-site at RO-MAN 2026
Invited talks6–8 talks (25–30 min each + Q&A)
Short papersOpen call · 2–4 pages · non-archival · ~10 posters accepted
Expected attendance40–60 participants
Supported byJST CREST Symbiotic AI program
Important dates
Paper submission
July 3, 2026
Acceptance notification
July 24, 2026
Camera-ready deadline
August 10, 2026
Workshop
Aug. 24 or 28, 2026
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