FEER DATES PROGRAM KEYNOTES SIGN UP ORGANIZERS

FEER: Establishing a Foundation for Engineering true Empathetic Robots

A workshop @RO-MAN 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The adage “it is not what you say but how you say it”, is very much true, not only for human-human communication; but, also for human-robot communication. Part of the equation to achieve natural communication lays in empathy, which enables interpersonal and human-robot connections. Although often claimed otherwise, this is far beyond mere emotion recognition.

Empathic machines have been envisioned for decades. However, despite science’s progress, they have not been realized. Often it is intertwined with affective computing, most noteworthy emotion recognition. We propose to take a step back and study human empathy, instead of mere expression and recognition of emotions. We aim to gather expertise on the relation between empathy and nonverbal communication (e.g., bodily expressions and the tone of the voice) and enable its measurement via human-robot communication.

Theoretical frameworks from linguistics and psychology on empathy, sensors and signals to measure empathy, and models to process the signals and reason about them will be identified. Subsequently, these elements will be connected and a first blueprint for true empathic robots will be outlined in the workshop.

DATES

Reminder for the following important dates!


  • June 20 Speakers Online
  • August 20 Closing Sign Up
  • August 25 Workshop

PROGRAM

Morning (09:00 - 12:30), August 25, 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

KEYNOTES

Abstract

Experiences in translating social intelligence to physical robots: The talk will present different experiences in the development of robots endowed with social intelligence, focusing on aspects like systems architectures, hardware issues and real deployments.

Bio

Luis Merino is Full Professor of Robotics at Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO) in Seville, Spain, where he is the current Dean of the Higher Polytechnic School of Engineering. Professor Merino also leads the Service Robotics Laboratory (more information). In this group, he conducts basic research in robotics, including social and service robotics, as well as into the application of robotics to various economic sectors, from the industrial sector to the healthcare the education sectors.

Luis Merino

Luis Merino

Gloria Álvarez-Benito

Gloria Álvarez-Benito

Abstract

Drawing from deep experience in pediatric oncology, this contribution identifies essential clinical, emotional, and environmental needs for designing truly empathic robots. We highlight constraints and opportunities shaped by children’s routines, professionals’ workflows, and hospital realities—laying the groundwork for meaningful, context-aware robot-child interactions beyond assessment, play, or education.

Bio

Gloria combines her expertise as a linguist and discourse analyst—Professor and Honorary Researcher at the University of Seville—with her experience in pediatric oncology as President of AEetc, mother of a childhood cancer survivor, and member of the Neurocognitive Unit in Pediatric Oncology at Virgen del Rocío Hospital.

Luis Merino

Yannick Benezeth

Abstract

This presentation covers stress estimation from multimodal data. It explores contact vs. contactless physiological signals, multimodal analysis using the Biometric Attachment Test , personalized federated learning, and stress estimation from large physiological datasets.

Bio

Yannick Benezeth is a full professor of computer science at Université Bourgogne Europe. He leads the CORES research team (20+ faculty/PhD students) at IMVIA. His research focuses on biomedical engineering, image/signal analysis, and AI. He coordinates an ANR biomedical imaging project and has published extensively in international journals and conferences.

SIGN UP

If you are interested in joining our workshop on empathetic robotics, we kindly ask you to fill out the following form here. There is no need to submit a paper or abstract. We simply ask you to sign up and provide some information on your background so we can have a better understanding of who will be attending. This helps us shape effective group discussions. We hope we can bring together a diverse group of participants resulting in fruitful conversations about the future of empathetic robotics and work toward a strong proposal for future research. We are looking forward to hosting you at FEER!

ORGANIZERS

Egon van den Broek

Egon van den Broek

Utrecht University,
The Netherlands

Randy Gomez

Randy Gomez

Honda Research Institute, Japan

Julie Pivin-Bachler

Julie Pivin-Bachler

Utrecht University,
The Netherlands

Anneloes Meijer

Anneloes Meijer

Utrecht University,
The Netherlands

Any questions about the workshop, feel free to send us an email!

Email Egon van den Broek: e.l.vandenbroek@uu.nl
Email Anneloes Meijer: a.l.meijer@uu.nl