Student Design Challenge

Important Dates

  • Initial Submission (draft paper + video due): 8 December 2025, 11:59 pm AoE
  • Acceptance Notification: 12 January 2026
  • Camera Ready Paper and Video Presentations Due: 19 January 2026, 11:59 pm AoE

Accepted contributions will have a chance to showcase/demonstrate their design during the conference. Video submissions will be showcased throughout the conference, and award winners will be announced at the conference award ceremony. 

Student Design Challenge Summary

Consider submitting to the 2026 HRI Student Design Challenge (SDC)!  The SDC is designed to provide student teams (of any level/discipline) with an opportunity to design and develop a human-robot interaction.  The challenge requires student teams to submit a short written paper (1-4 pages including references) and a video presentation/demonstration detailing their work.  After a review of all submissions, accepted projects will be invited for a showcase at the main HRI conference. These projects will also be included in the conference companion proceedings (listed with a DOI in the ACM digital library/IEEE Xplore that can be referenced).  

There are three main goals of the Student Design Challenge: 

  1. To provide students with an enjoyable, hands-on introduction to the interdisciplinary world of HRI through a team-based design project.
  2. To engage and convene students of diverse backgrounds working in technical, cultural, design, humanist, or social science disciplines.
  3. To communicate HRI core ideals/designs to a wide, broad global audience

We encourage student teams to utilize whatever resources are at their disposal (submission constraints included below). We also suggest that the Student Design Competition might serve as an inspiration for group projects in university courses related to HRI, design, robotics and mechatronics, etc. 

The Design Challenge

The conference theme for HRI 2026 is Empowering Society.  We are looking for submissions that build on this theme, in which the human-robot interaction has an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia.

What constitutes an HRI design project?

We aren’t looking exclusively for perfectly polished work, fully implemented and fully functional prototypes, or any particular level of “doneness” – what constitutes a complete project is very approach- and team-dependent. If you will be working on the project during the timeline of this competition (rather than submitting something that had already been completed for, say, a spring 2025 course), then we suggest that you define your goals and criteria for “success” clearly from the outset so that you will know whether/if you’ve made enough progress to submit your work by the deadline. You’re welcome to submit a proposal related to a class project you’re working on. Just as for class projects that have proposals and final deliverables, your initial submission can discuss your plans and what you’ve done so far, but your final submission for the camera-ready deadline (and what you’ll present at the conference) needs to describe a completed design project.

Constraints – Robots

There are two main types of projects that can be completed: those using existing robot platforms and those building a prototype from scratch (some projects might fall in between, or combine, these two categories). For projects that use existing/commercial robot platforms, the novel design contribution might be a modification, a new kind of interaction, software-based, etc.  

We are not looking for full-fidelity prototypes nor any particular level of autonomy. We encourage you to play to your team’s strengths and/or engage with design and development work you find most interesting.  It is totally fine for your robot to be lo-fi and/or “puppeted” during the demonstration.  

Regardless of the choice you make, the important thing is for your team to highlight the originality and innovativeness of your project, whether that be through the design of the robot itself, the interaction, or some combination of the two!

Design Inspiration

Here are some questions to help you start your design process.   

  • In what setting(s) will the robot exist?  Do you have enough knowledge to predict how the robot will function in this space?  
  • Who are the stakeholders?  
  • Are you imagining a robot supporting existing activities, or are you aiming to create a novel, standalone experience?  
  • What are the potential impacts of introducing a robot to the interaction you focus on?  Are there risks to consider?  
  • How does your robot impact a broader society?

Additionally, we encourage you to consider what skills your team members have that you may want to highlight.  Below are some questions that can help you identify some of your team’s strengths. This isn’t an exhaustive list—these are just some examples to try and demonstrate the breadth of talents that can be highlighted in this competition!   

  • Are you highlighting your design skills? (Showcase your background in graphic design, engineering design, interaction design, etc.)
  • Does your design have visual appeal? (Showcase your artistry)
  • Is your design based on a strong understanding of existing HRI work? (Showcase your knowledge of HRI literature, research experience)
  • Are you demonstrating your coding experience?  (Showcase your technical chops on the software side)
  • Are you demonstrating your hardware experience? (Showcase your technical chops on the hardware side)
  • Are you identifying an under-explored problem? (Showcase your eye for novelty)
  • Is your system mechanically feasible?  (Showcase your understanding of relevance and extensibility)

Examples – Previous Submissions

These are some examples of (1) successful Student Design Competition submissions from previous years and (2) non-SDC projects of a similar flavor that may serve as inspiration.  You can also reference the HRI ’25: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction to see all of last year’s accepted submissions!   

What Happens If My Team Is Accepted?

Video and in-person demonstrations and poster presentations from accepted teams will be showcased one day during the main conference.  We strongly encourage you to bring your physical robot to the conference if it is feasible to do so!   Participation in the SDC is also an opportunity to get to know the HRI conference, and you are encouraged to attend the presentations and networking events on the main conference program.

Award-worthy challenge submissions will receive a special recognition.

Challenge Logistics and Guidelines

Information

Procedure

Teams will work on designing, building, and documenting their projects ahead of the submission deadline.  It is okay if  some elements of the project are still being finalized at the time of submission, but everything must be completed by the camera ready deadline. Additionally, the maturity of the project will be taken into account by the judges who determine whether projects are accepted. We encourage teams to photograph and/or video record their design and development process for possible inclusion with their submissions.

Participants

Students at all stages of their curriculum, from pre-university to postgraduate (including PhD), and from any discipline, are eligible to submit.  While not required, multidisciplinary teams  are encouraged.

Team Size

Teams must have at least 2 members and may not exceed 10 members. Typically, teams consist of 3-6 members.  Your team members can be spread out across the globe.  If you don’t have the ability to put together a team but still want to participate, please contact the chairs.  If we have multiple individuals express interest, we will do our best to provide those students the opportunity to form teams with each other.

Registration

At least one member of each team must register to attend the HRI 2026 conference in-person. That team member will be expected to present in-person on the day of the Student Design Challenge showcase.  Other teammates are encouraged to also come in person, or participate virtually, as they are able.

Teams

There is no limit to the number of entries per institution (university, school, or organization). However, to foster participant diversity, we will prioritize inviting teams from many different institutions to showcase their work at the conference. Students are not permitted to join more than one team.

Expenses, Subsidies, and Scholarships

We are not yet sure whether the Student Design Competition will be able to financially support its participants. We encourage students to consider low-cost methods of prototyping – either by using existing university resources or using low-cost materials, including by recycling.  Please check out the Student Volunteers page, which in return for volunteering has free registration for the entire conference (and is a great opportunity to network with other HRI students!).  Also check out the HRI Pioneers Workshop for undergraduate students, which may also be able to offer additional support options and is another excellent HRI opportunity.  We also encourage students to check if their home institution has scholarships for conference and/or educational opportunities.

Deliverables

Initial Submissions

Though you will have the opportunity to edit and revise before the camera-ready deadline, the initial submissions are what will determine whether your project is  accepted!

Paper

Initial submissions should include a short (1-4 page) paper. Papers should use the same template as the main conference full paper submissions, i.e. ACM SIG format (“sigconf”, double column format). 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).

This paper must include: 

  • Project title and authors (names, affiliations, and email addresses)
  • An abstract of 100 words or fewer
  • A brief description of the design context (technical and/or behavioral):
    • Who is the human in the human-robot interaction?  
    • What are the key characteristics and details about the robot? 
    • What is the activity that the human and robot are engaged in?  
  • A section detailing how the work currently or may in the future empower society.
  • One or more representative images of the interactive robot, which can include:
    • Hand-drawn sketches
    • Digital renderings
    • CAD models
    • Photographs
Video

The draft video presentation should be no more than three minutes. It does not need to feature the final prototype, but it should showcase something that is close to your final design.  We are looking for something that gives us a sense of who you are (as a team), what your team’s work is about, and what robot interaction you are designing.  It’s also okay if your draft video is rough and unpolished – you will have the opportunity to edit, refine, and add content to your video for the camera-ready deadline.

Camera-Ready Submissions 

Teams whose submissions are accepted will be asked to submit a final, 1-4 pages camera-ready version of their written short paper for inclusion in the ACM digital library and IEEE Xplore. Teams will also be asked to upload a video showcasing their robot artifacts/interactions for archive with their paper and for showcase at the main conference.

Conference Showcase

The conference will be an opportunity for your team to talk about your project and network with other people interested in HRI!  All teams will be required to bring something physical to the conference to serve as a basis for discussion about their work.  We understand that traveling with a robot/prototype can be difficult, so if necessary, your “something physical” can be a poster about your project. (You can also bring a poster in addition to your tangible project.) More details will be shared with accepted teams.

Contacts

Do you have any questions? Contact us!

Student Design Competition Chairs: Sonya S. Kwak (Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Korea), Daniel Hernández García (Heriot-Watt University, UK), Jamison Heard (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)

Email: competition2026@humanrobotinteraction.org