Important Dates
- Submission deadline: October 17, 2025, 23:59 pm AoE
- Notification of acceptance: November 21, 2025
- Camera ready deadline: TBD
alt.HRI invites high-quality, thought-provoking, original work that pushes the boundaries of human-robot interaction research. Submissions are expected to challenge or re-imagine human-robot interaction research and design. The goal for alt.HRI is to broaden the scope of research and present submissions that prove difficult to assess through the main papers track. alt.HRI invites submissions that are bold, compelling, critical, and innovative. We particularly aim to reach colleagues who use those “ways of knowing” that are not yet part of mainstream HRI research and ask for the unexpected, the controversial, the creative, and the diverse. With this in mind, alt.HRI aims to be inclusive of perspectives, epistemologies, and methodologies relevant to HRI that may be less commonly included in the main track. High-quality submissions can come in the form of (but are not limited to) papers, videos, and pictorials.
All submissions will be rigorously reviewed by a cohort of HRI experts from the most diverse backgrounds. alt.HRI review criteria include:
- How well does the work embody alt.HRI’s values of creativity, criticality, reflection, and originality?
- Is the work compelling and relevant to an open-minded HRI audience?
- How coherent is the work conceptually, philosophically, and methodologically?
- To what extent does the work express a voice and argument that is unlikely to be heard in the main track?
- Is there potential for impact, controversy, or thought-provoking discussion, even if the work seems unusual or unorthodox?
Papers
The vast majority of typical HRI Papers are inherently not suitable for submission to alt.HRI. alt.HRI 2026 should be viewed as an opportunity to shape the conversation by introducing creative and controversial research questions; novel, subversive, and/or unorthodox research methods; and explorations of novel methods through which to present HRI research – both in the submission and through the conference presentation. We also encourage diverse submissions, including HRI and art, critical HRI, and speculative HRI. Feel free to have a look at accepted papers in alt.HRI in the previous conference programs. Submissions will be rigorously peer-reviewed in a double-blind fashion. The acceptance rate for the alt.HRI track is typically lower than that of the main track.
Pictorials and Videos
Apart from papers alt.HRI invites two other submission types: alt.HRI pictorials submissions and alt.HRI video submissions. The pictorial and video submission options provide an opportunity to present artworks and/or performances that introduce different ways of researching within HRI. We also encourage authors who are interested in other formats to contact the alt.HRI chairs for more information.
All alt.HRI prospective authors with a paper submission will be expected to review at least one paper submitted to alt.HRI during the review period. alt.HRI follows the double-blind review process of the annual HRI conference; every aspect of all submissions must be appropriately anonymized. Please see the anonymization guidelines.
Guidelines
alt.HRI Paper Submissions
Papers must be submitted via the online submission system (submission link will be shared at a later date). Accepted papers will be orally presented at the conference. Papers can be up to eight camera-ready pages, including figures but excluding references. Accepted papers will be published in the conference companion proceedings and presented in an oral session. All papers for the conference must be submitted in PDF format and conform to ACM Proceedings specifications. Templates are available at this link (US letter). In addition, ACM has partnered with Overleaf, where you can start writing using this link directly (note that this Overleaf document uses the new ACM workflow by default, which is not what HRI is using; to fix this, make sure the document uses the “sigconf” document class, rather than the “manuscript,screen,review” document class that is enabled in the Overleaf document by default).
alt.HRI Video Submissions
We invite short videos related to creative or nontraditional approaches to HRI research. The videos must be self-explanatory for the audience, of relevance to the alt.HRI call, and engaging to watch. The videos will be reviewed based on the following criteria: the novelty of approach/creativity, transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches, thought-provoking impact, and suitability for the alt.HRI audience, and contributions that do not readily lend themselves to the traditional paper format. Video submissions should be anonymized as much as possible. Accepted videos will be published in the conference companion proceedings and archived in the IEEE Digital Library.
Videos are limited to 3 minutes in length and should be accompanied by a short paper (3 pages max, including references). All papers for the conference must be submitted in PDF format and conform to ACM Proceedings specifications.
Please follow the same submission guidelines as for the main track video submissions.
alt.HRI Pictorial Submissions
Pictorials published will be part of the companion proceedings and will be accessible through the ACM Digital Library. They will undergo double-blind peer review, similar to technical program papers, and will be considered valuable contributions. A good Pictorial should be precise and provide context, aiming to present a concise argument rather than a full paper. Pictorials aim to contribute to knowledge instead of documenting known concepts, methods, and processes. Visual components can contribute to design knowledge on their own, but they should be accompanied by a narrative that helps the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) audience understand the contribution being made. This narrative is crucial in transforming a Pictorial into research and ensuring it can be treated as a valid argument in research discussions. However, the textual narrative should primarily serve as a support structure for the visual content. Pictorials are an excellent format for reporting design work, especially for designers who often question the effectiveness of words in capturing design accurately.
Pictorials must be submitted using the pictorials templates (below), they should not exceed 12 pages, excluding references. Please keep the first page of the submission following the template (see below) to include the submission’s title, author(s) and their affiliation(s) (leave blank for double-blind review), and a written abstract of no more than 150 words succinctly describing the background and context of the pictorial as well as its contribution to the HRI community. Further written parts known from other conference formats such as Introduction, Conclusion, Discussion, Acknowledgements, and References are optional. The main part of the submission should be an annotated visual composition, and we encourage submissions to use the format creatively.
PCS allows file sizes up to about 150 MB, but we suggest that you keep reviewers in mind and experiment with lower resolution to make the submission considerably smaller. We strongly advise you to use the InDesign template to compose your Pictorial. If you do not have access to InDesign, please use the Word or Powerpoint templates (credits to DIS conference).
Here are some examples for inspiration:
- Winkle, K. (2025, March). Robots from Nowhere: A Case Study in Speculative Sociotechnical Design and Design Fiction for Human-Robot Interaction. In 2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (pp. 1152-1165). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI61500.2025.10974123.
- Gabrielle Benabdallah et al. 2022. Slanted Speculations: Material Encounters with Algorithmic Bias. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 85–99. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533449.
- Dianya Mia Hua, Rhys Jones, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2022. The Hidden Language of Vibrators: A Politico-Ontological Reading. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 400–414. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533448.
Contacts
alt.HRI chairs: Frank Broz and Tony Belpaeme (Ghent University)