Publications

Last updates: February 2026

Journal Papers

  • Jiaee Cheong, Micol Spitale, Hatice Gunes. (2025). Small but Fair! Fairness for Multimodal Human-Human and Robot-Human Mental Wellbeing Coaching. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. 10.1109/TAFFC.2025.3582074
  • Giulio Antonio Abbo, Tony Belpeame, Micol Spitale (2025) Ethical Concerns and Values in Human-Robot Interactions: A Focus on Social Robotics. International Journal on Social Robotics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-025-01351-1
  • Micol Spitale, Minja Axelsson, Sooyeon Jeong, Paige Tuttosi, Caitlin A. Stamatis, Guy Laban, Angelica Lim, Hatice Gunes. (2025) Past, Present, and Future: A Survey of The Evolution of Affective Robotics For Well-being. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 10.1109/TAFFC.2025.3567740
  • Micol Spitale, Minja Axelsson and Hatice Gunes (2025). VITA: A Multi-modal LLM-based System for Longitudinal, Autonomous, and Adaptive Robotic Mental Well-being Coaching. ACM Transactions in Human-Robot Interaction, doi: http://dl.acm.org/doi.org/10.1145/3712265.
  • Cheng Luo, Siyang Song, Weicheng Xie, Micol Spitale, Zongyuan Ge, Linlin Shen and Hatice Gunes. “ReactFace: Online Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation in Dyadic Interactions,” in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2024.3490613
  • Nida Abbasi, Micol Spitale, Joanna Anderson, Tamsin Ford, Peter Jones, and Hatice Gunes. 2023. Analysing Children’s Responses from Multiple Modalities During Robot-Assisted Assessment of Mental Wellbeing. International Journal of Social Robotics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-024-01137-x
  • Minja Axelsson, Micol Spitale, and Hatice Gunes. 2022. Robots as Mental Well-being Coaches: Design and Ethical Recommendations. ACM Transactions in Human-Robot Interaction
  • Micol Spitale, Silvia Silleresi, Franca Garzotto, and Maja J. Matarić. 2022. Using Socially Assistive Robots In Speech-Language Therapy For Children With Language Impairments. International Journal of Social Robotics (2023) https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-01028-7
  • Nida Itrat Abbasi, Micol Spitale, Peter Jones, and Hatice Gunes. 2022. Measuring Mental Wellbeing of Children via Human-Robot Interaction: Challenges and Opportunities. Journal in Interaction Studies
  • Fabio Catania*, Micol Spitale*, Franca Garzotto. 2022. Conversational Agents in Therapeutic Interventions for Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Survey. ACM Comput. Surv.. https://doi.org/10.1145/3564269
  • Micol Spitale, Sarah Okamoto, Mahima Gupta, Hao Xi, and Maja J Matarić. 2022. Socially Assistive Robots as Storytellers That Elicit Empathy. J. Hum.-Robot Interact. Just Accepted (April 2022). https://doi.org/10.1145/3538409 
  • Mirko Gelsomini*, Micol Spitale*, and Franca Garzotto. 2021. Phygital interfaces for people with intellectual disability: an exploratory study at a social care center. Multimedia Tools Appl. 80, 26–27 (Nov 2021), 34843–34874. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-021-11164-9 

Conference Proceedings

  • [Just Accepted] Giulia Huang, Maristella Matera, and Micol Spitale.  Inclusive AI for Group Interactions: Predicting Gaze-Direction Behaviors in People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, IEEE FG2026
  • Massimiliano Nigro, Andrea Righini, and Micol Spitale.  Exploring the Use of Social Robots to Prepare Children for Radiological Procedures: A Focus Group Study, RO-MAN25
  • Micol Spitale, Srikar Babu, Serhan Cakmak, Jiaee Cheong, and Hatice Gunes. Exploring Causality for HRI: A Case Study on Robotic Mental Well-being Coaching, RO-MAN25
  • Francesca Ciardo, Francesca Foini, and Micol Spitale. “Storytelling and Self-other Integration with Robots: Creation and Validation of Storytelling Stimuli that Induce Social Identification with the QT Robot.” In International Conference on Social Robotics, pp. 181-191. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, 2025.
  • Giulio Antonio Abbo, Gloria Desideri, Tony Belpaeme, and Micol Spitale. “Can you be my mum?”: Manipulating Social Robots in the Large Language Models Era. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’25). IEEE Press, 1181–1185. doi: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3721488.3721642
  • Massimiliano Nigro, Emmanuel Akinrintoyo, Nicole Salomons, and Micol Spitale. Group Human-Robot Interaction: A Scoping Review of Computational Challenges. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’25). IEEE Press, 468–478. doi: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3721488.3721548
  • Joseph Cameron, Jiaee Cheong, Micol Spitale, Hatice Gunes. Multimodal Gender Fairness in Depression Prediction: Insights on Data from the USA & China. 2024 12th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW), 2024
  • Micol Spitale, Maria Teresa Parreira, Maia Stiber, Minja Axelsson, Neval Kara, Garima Kankariya, Chien-Ming Huang, Wendy Ju, Malte Jung, Hatice Gunes. ERR@HRI 2024 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Failures in Human-Robot Interactions. In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’24), pp. 652-656. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3678957.3689030
  • Micol Spitale, Fabio Catania, Francesca Panzeri. Understanding Non-Verbal Irony Markers: Machine Learning Insights Versus Human Judgment.In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’24). pp 164–172. https://doi.org/10.1145/3678957.3685723
  • Micol Spitale, Minja Axelsson, and Hatice Gunes. “Appropriateness of LLM-equipped Robotic Well-being Coach Language in the Workplace: A Qualitative Evaluation” In 2024 33th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). pp. 1571-1578, doi: 10.1109/RO-MAN60168.2024.10731269
  • Micol Spitale, Rebecca Stower, Maria Teresa Parreira, Elmira Yadollahi, Iolanda Leite, and Hatice Gunes. “A Call to Action for Responsible HRI Research” In 2024 33th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). pp. 696-702, doi: 10.1109/RO-MAN60168.2024.10731210
  • Siyang Song, Micol Spitale, Cheng Luo, Germán Barquero, Cristina Palmero, Sergio Escalera, Michel Valstar et al. “REACT 2024: the Second Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation Challenge,” 2024 IEEE 18th International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG), Istanbul, Turkiye, 2024, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/FG59268.2024.10581935.
  • Maia Stiber, Micol Spitale, Hatice Gunes, and Chien-Ming Huang. “Social Signal Modeling in Human-Robot Interaction.” In Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 1358-1360. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610978.3638163
  • Minja Axelsson, Micol Spitale, and Hatice Gunes. 2024. “Oh, Sorry, I Think I Interrupted You”: Designing Repair Strategies. In 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA
  • Jiaee Cheong*, Micol Spitale*, and Hatice Gunes. (2023). “It’s not Fair!” Fairness for a Small Dataset of Multi-Modal Dyadic Mental Well-being Coaching. 2023 11th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII), 2023 – Best Paper Award in Responsible Affective Computing
  • Nida Abbasi, Micol Spitale, Joanna Anderson, Tamsin Ford, Peter B Jones, and Hatice Gunes. (2023). Humanoid Robots for Wellbeing Assessment in Children: How Does Anxiety towards the Robot Affect Perceptions of Robot Role, Behaviour and Capabilities? In 2023 32th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). IEEE, 2023
  • Micol Spitale*, Minja Axelsson*, Neval Kara, and Hatice Gunes. (2023). Longitudinal Evolution of Coachees’ Behavioural Responses to Interaction Ruptures in Robotic Positive Psychology Coaching. in 2023 32th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). IEEE, 2023
  • Minja Axelsson, Micol Spitale, and Hatice Gunes. 2023. Adaptive Robotic Mental Well-being Coaches. In Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 733–735. https://doi.org/10.1145/3568294.3579968
  • Minja Axelsson, Micol Spitale, and Hatice Gunes. 2023. Robotic Coaches Delivering Group Mindfulness Practice at a Public Cafe. In Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 86–90. https://doi.org/10.1145/3568294.3580048
  • Micol Spitale, Minja Axelsson, and Hatice Gunes. 2023. Robotic Mental Well-being Coaches for the Workplace: An In-the-Wild Study on Form. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 301–310. https://doi.org/10.1145/3568162.3577003
  • Nida Abbasi*, Micol Spitale*, Joanna Anderson, Tamsin Ford, Peter Jones, and Hatice Gunes. 2022. Computational Audio Modelling for Robot-Assisted Assessment of Children’s Mental Wellbeing. International Conference in Social Robotics. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24670-8_3
  • Micol Spitale, and Hatice Gunes. and Hatice Gunes. Affective Robotics For Wellbeing: A Scoping Review. 10th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW), Nara, Japan, 2022, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/ACIIW57231.2022.10085995
  • Nida Abbasi, Micol Spitale, Joanna Anderson, Tamsin Ford, Peter Jones, and Hatice Gunes. «Can robots help in the evaluation of mental wellbeing in children? An empirical study.» (2022). https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/338405
  • Corrado Pacelli, Tharushi Kinkini De Silva Pallimulla Hewa Geeganage, Micol Spitale, Eleonora Beccaluva, Franca Garzotto.» How Would You Communicate With a Robot?» People with Neourodevelopmental Disorder’s Perspective. Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction – Best LBR Award
  • Eleonora Toscano, Micol Spitale, Franca Garzotto. Socially Assistive Robots in Smart Homes: Design Factors that Influence the User Perception. Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
  • Leena Marthur*, Micol Spitale*, Hao Xi, Jieyun Li, and Maja J Matarić. 2021. Modeling User Empathy Elicited by a Robot Storyteller. In 2021 International Conference ACII Springer.
  • Micol Spitale*, Chris Birmingham*, R. Michael Swan, and Maja J Matarić. 2021. Composing HARMONI: An Open-source Tool For Human And Robot Modular OpeN Interaction. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2021
  • Fabio Catania, Micol Spitale, and Franca Garzotto. 2021. Toward the Introduction of Google Assistant in Therapy for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: An Exploratory Study. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’21).
  • Micol Spitale*, Silvia Silleresi*, Giulia Leonardi, Fabrizio Arosio, Beatrice Giustolisi, Maria Teresa Guasti and Franca Garzotto. 2021. Design Patterns of Technology-based Therapeutic Activities for Children with Language Impairments: A Psycholinguistic-Driven Approach In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’21).
  • Fabio Catania, Micol Spitale, Giulia Cosentino, and Franca Garzotto. 2020. What is the Best Action for Children to «Wake Up» and «Put to Sleep» a Conversational Agent? A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Approach. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 4, 1–10. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3405755.3406129
  • Claudia Maria Cutrupi, Salvatore Fadda, Giovanni Valcarenghi, Giulia Cosentino, Fabio Catania, Micol Spitale, and Franca Garzotto. 2020. Smemo: a Multi-modal Interface Promoting Children’s Creation of Personal Conversational Agents. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 36, 1–3. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3405755.3406162
  • Micol Spitale and Franca Garzotto. 2020. Towards Empathic Conversational Interaction. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 41, 1–4. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3405755.3406146
  • Pietro Crovari, Fabio Catania, Micol Spitale, Franca Garzotto. 2020. Ecological Momentary Assessment Tools: Lessons Learned from an HCI Perspective – HCI20
  • Micol Spitale, Silvia Silleresi, Giulia Cosentino, Francesca Panzeri, and Franca Garzotto. 2020. «Whom would you like to talk with?»: exploring conversational agents for children’s linguistic assessment. In Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 262–272. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3392063.3394421
  • Fabio Catania, Pietro Crovari, Micol Spitale, Franca Garzotto 2019. Automatic Speech Recognition: Do Emotions Matter? In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Conversational Data And Knowledge Engineering (CDKE) (pp. 9-16). IEEE
  • Micol Spitale, Fabio Catania, Pietro Crovari, Franca Garzotto. 2020. Multicriteria Decision Analysis and Conversational Agents for children with autism. Submitted to IEEE Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICCS) 2020. IEEE – Best Paper Award
  • Micol Spitale, Agnese Piselli, Barbara Del Curto, Franca Garzotto 2019. Designing phygital activities in a smart multisensorial room: a collaborative cognitive environment for children with and without disabilities.
  • Micol Spitale, Mirko Gelsomini, Eleonora Beccaluva, Leonardo Viola, and Franca Garzotto. 2019. Meeting the needs of people with Neuro-Developmental Disorder through a phygital approach. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3351995.3352055
  • Mirko Gelsomini, Giulia Cosentino, Micol Spitale, Mattia Gianotti, Davide Fisicaro, Giulia Leonardi, Fabiano Riccardi, Agnese Piselli, Eleonora Beccaluva, Barbara Bonadies, Lucia Di Terlizzi, Martino Zinzone, Shanti Alberti, Christelle Rebourg, Marina Carulli, Franca Garzotto, Venanzio Arquilla, Mario Bisson, Barbara Del Curto, and Monica Bordegoni. 2019. Magika, a Multisensory Environment for Play, Education and Inclusion. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on uman Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper LBW0277, 6 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312753
  • Micol Spitale. 2019. Training self-sufficiency and social skills with embodied conversational agent for children with autism. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion (IUI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 151-152. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3308557.3308722
  • Mirko Gelsomini, Micol Spitale, Eleonora Beccaluva, Leonardo Viola, and Franca Garzotto. 2019. Reflex: adaptive learning beyond the screen. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion (IUI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 29-30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3308557.3308689
  • Amirreza Rouhi, Micol Spitale, Fabio Catania, Giulia Cosentino, Mirko Gelsomini, and Franca Garzotto. 2019. Emotify: emotional game for children with autism spectrum disorder based-on machine learning. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion (IUI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 31-32. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3308557.3308688
  • Giulia Cosentino, Giulia Leonardi, Mirko Gelsomini, Micol Spitale, Mattia Gianotti, Franca Garzotto, and Venanzio Arquilla. 2019. GENIEL: an auto-generative intelligent interface to empower learning in a multi-sensory environment. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion (IUI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 27-28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3308557.3308685 – Best Poster Award
  • Micol Spitale, Fabio Catania, Giulia Cosentino, Mirko Gelsomini, and Franca Garzotto. 2019. WIYE: building a corpus of children’s audio and video recordings with a story-based app. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: Companion (IUI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 33-34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3308557.3308684

Worshop Papers

  • Micol Spitale, and Maja J Matarić. 2021. Toward Automated Generation of Affective Gestures from Text:A Theory-Driven Approach – non-verbal Human Robot Interaction workshop
  • Fabio Catania, Micol Spitale, Franca Garzotto. Conversational Agents to Promote Children’s Verbal Communication Skills
  • Fabio Catania, Daniele Occhiuto, Micol Spitale, Franca Garzotto 2019. Convesational Technologies Supporting Social Inclusion
  • Fabio Catania, Micol Spitale, Davide Fisicaro, Franca Garzotto 2019. CORK: A COnversational agent framewoRK exploiting both rational and emotional intelligence.

Peer-reviewed Conference Presentations (not in Proceedings)

  • Silvia Silleresi, Fabrizio Arosio, Beatrice Giustolisi, Maria Luisa Lorusso, Eleonora Pasqua, Daniela Sarti, Micol Spitale, Franca Garzotto, and Maria Teresa Guasti. (May 2021) «Digital assessment and training of children with language disorders». Oral presentation at the XI Edition of the Giornate CLASTA, Urbino (Italy), 14-15 May 2021.
  • Micol Spitale, Silvia Silleresi, Francesca Panzeri, and Franca Garzotto (April 2021). «Tecnologie a supporto della terapia linguistica: robot vs tablet ”. In IRB21, Oral presentation: 14-15 April 2021, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.