Call for Proposals of Special Session and Papers of Special Sessions Dear colleagues, We are very pleased to invite you to submit your proposals for Special Sessions at the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, which will take place at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California, USA, from August 26th to 30th, 2024. The theme of the IEEE RO-MAN 2024 is “Embracing Human-Centered HRI”. The annual conference serves as a platform for researchers to showcase cutting-edge innovations and present state-of-the-art findings across a diverse spectrum of topics related to Robot and Human Interactive Communication. Please visit the office website www.ro-man2024.org for more information. The format of RO-MAN 2024 will be either "hybrid" or in-person only. The committee will make a decision in early 2024. ***Important Dates*** Proposal Submission Deadline: January 19, 2024 Notification of Proposal Acceptance: February 2, 2024 Special Session Paper Submission Deadline: March 10, 2024 Notification of Paper Acceptance: May 10, 2024 Camera-ready Paper Deadline: June 7, 2024 The goal of the special sessions is to provide a forum for focused oral presentations highlighting emerging topics or innovative applications of established approaches. A typical special session consists of four to six papers, which, for example, addresses a particular theme or consists of collaborative work done in an international project or network. It is expected for each special session to be run for 80 minutes ~ 2 hours approximately. TEMPLATES AND SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Prospective special session organisers are invited to submit a proposal via the main conference's submission system <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/start.pl>. The organisers of the accepted special sessions will be responsible for the high-quality peer-review of the submitted papers according to IEEE standards (i.e. at least 2 anonymous peer-reviews). The organisers will be Associate Editors (AE) for the proposed session, and they will be responsible for assigning reviewers and evaluating the submitted paper for their special session. All submitted special session papers will be subject to the same peer-review process as for regular papers and will be included in the main conference proceedings (IEEE Xplore Digital Library). Proposals should include the following information: - Title: Please propose a title that shows the relevance of the session for the RO-MAN community and the innovativeness of the proposed topic. - Aims and scope of the Special Session: Please explain why the chosen topic is novel, relevant and can potentially contribute to the RO-MAN community, and how it’s well suited within the conference theme or other new emerging themes with a potential impact. - Organisers and biographies: Please provide a short bio-sketch for each session organiser including name, title, affiliation, country, email, phone, their experience related to the topic of the Special Session. - Tentative speakers: Please provide a list of prospective contributing authors and tentative titles. Special Sessions are normally expected to have 4 to 6 papers. Invited speakers or session-related demonstrations (such as renowned speakers or industrial talks) could be a part of the Special Session. Proposals should not exceed a maximum of 5 pages. Templates are availables for LaTeX <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php> and MS Word <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php>. The primary criteria in the evaluation of special session proposals will be the timeliness of the topics, the quality, track record, and diversity of the proposers and speakers, the coherence of the proposal, the novelty or creativity, and the expected value added to the overall conference. Aspects of diversity that will be considered include the age, gender, national origin, background, and workplace of the proposers and speakers. We will give priority to proposals that fully follow these requirements. Moreover, we encourage the submission of special sessions organized by communities that are under-represented within the RO-MAN activities. For any questions and further information about the Special Session proposal, please email submission@ro-man2024.org IEEE RO-MAN 2024 Organizing Committee ***Special Session Chairs*** Alessandra Rossi and Lantao Liu