This year's HRI 2012: 7th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction is being held in Boston, MA from March 5-8. This year's theme is "Robots in the Loop." There will be presentations of full papers, a poster session of late-breaking reports, a showcase of accepted videos, keynote speakers, panel discussions, workshops, and tutorials. The main conference will take place at the Hilton Back Bay while the poster session for late-breaking papers will take place at the Microsoft NERD Center.

"Robotics is growing increasingly multidisciplinary as it moves towards realizing capable and collaborative robots that meet both human needs of society and technical challenges inherent in real world settings. A joining of the disciplines is essential for enabling robots to help people in their efforts to be more productive and enjoy a high quality of life. In particular, human-robot interaction (HRI) requires advancement of the state-of-the-art in the empirical, algorithmic, mathematical, social, and engineering aspects of robotics in an integrated manner. The Seventh Annual Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2012) is dedicated to “Robots in the Loop,” which highlights the importance of autonomously capable robots in enhancing the experiences of human users in everyday life and work activities. HRI 2012 will emphasize embodied robotic systems that operate, collaborate with, learn from, and meet the needs of human users in real-world environments. The HRI Conference is a highly selective annual international conference that aims to showcase the very best interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in human-robot interaction with roots in robotics, social psychology, cognitive science, HCI, human factors, artificial intelligence, engineering, andmany more. We invite broad participation."

For more information visit http://hri2012.org/