We are excited to announce the preliminary programme for the 14th annual We Robot Conference to be held on April 24 and 25, 2026, with a pre-conference workshop on April 23, 2026. The final conference programme will be available on March 19, 2026, following the final paper submission deadline. Click here to get your ticket.
Pre-Conference Workshop – 23rd April 2026 (Thursday)
Location: Wikimedia Deutschland
09:00-10:30 | Interdisciplinary Work in Action | A Panel on AI Companion
Chair: Martin Ebers, RAILS
· Claire Boine, European University Institute
· Cristina Poncibò, University of Turin
· Sue Anne Teo, Lund University
· Fumio Shimpo, Keio University
10:30-11:00 | Break and "Academic Speed-Dating
11:00-12:00 | Robot Literacy - Interactive workshop
Gizem Gültekin-Várkonyi, University of Szeged
12:00-13.30 | Lunch
13.30-15.00 | Intro to Robot Ethics
Institute for Ethics in Technology, Hamburg University of Technology
16.00 | Guided tour at Deutsches Technikmuseum
Main Conference – 24th and 25th April 2026 (Friday & Saturday)
Location: bUm – Place for Solidarity
Across two enriching days, the conference programme is structured around individual paper presentations and panel discussions, designed to facilitate meaningful dialogue and foster engagement across disciplinary boundaries. And because the best conversations don’t always happen in the conference room, join us for the conference dinner on the 24th where the energy, ideas, and good company keep flowing long into the evening.
Day 1 – 24th April 2026
09:00-09:30 | Welcome
09:30-10:30 | Paper Session
- From Limited Risk to Prohibited Use: Mapping the EU AI Act’s Risk Framework onto Robotic Public Safety Systems
- Author: Irmak Erdogan (KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law)
Discussant: Hannah Ruschemeier (University of Osnabrueck)
10:30-11:00 | Break
11:00-13:00 | Panel: Reimagining Accountability: Who Answers When Systems Fail?
Discussant: Stanisław Tosza (University of Luxembourg)
- Intention, But Hybrid: A New Test for Posthuman Agents
Author: Janko Munjić (Appellate Court in Kragujevac; Faculty of Law, University of Kragujevac - AI Risk Bonds: A Market-Based Mechanism for Governing Liability
Authors: Gleb Papyshev (Lingnan University), Sara Migliorini (University of Macau) and Keith Jin Deng Chan (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) - Curated Information Frameworks: Contextual Transparency and Governance for Dynamic AI
Author: Emily LaRosa (Michigan State University)
13:00-14:00 | Lunch
14:00-15:00 | Paper Session
- The New Three Laws of Robotics: Field-Derived Ethics for Human-Robot Coexistence
- Authors: Tomomi Ota (Shiga University) and Rikiya Yamamoto (Robot Friendly Project)
Discussant: AJung Moon (McGill University)
15:00-15:30 | Break
15:30-17:30 | Panel: Building Systems That Last: Law, Technology, and Long-Term Thinking
Discussant: Helena Webb (University of Nottingham)
- The Charge of Green Robots: From Environmental Robot Ethics to an Environmental Rule of Law for Robotics
Authors: Jacopo Ciani, Ugo Pagallo, Massimo Durante and Ludovica Paseri (Department of Law, University of Turin) - When Right to Repair Meets AI: Reinterpreting the Right to Repair through Individuation
Author: Ryota Akasaka (The University of Osaka) - Robotic Imposters with Human Helpers: An anthropologically informed study of sociotechnical imaginaries around social robots in staged and unstaged settings in Japan
Authors: Elsa Concas (Stockholm University), Laetitia Tanqueray (Department of Technology and Society, Lund University) and Stefan Larsson (Department of Technology and Society, Lund University)
19:00 | Conference Dinner and Robot Trivia | Art & Seele, Donaustraße 106, 12043 Berlin
2 Day – 25th April 2026
09:30-10:30 | Paper Session
- Rethinking Robot Ownership: Comparing Public, Corporate, and Private Ownership Models
Authors: Isaac Sheidlower, Tomo Lazovich, Harini Suresh, and Serena Booth (Brown University)
10:30-11:00 | Break
11:00-13:00 | Panel: AI Safety and assurance: Technological foundations, standards and audits
- Shadows Work & Protocols: A Contingent Case for Negligence in Agentic AI
Authors: Veronica Paternolli (University of Verona) and Ryan Calo (University of Washington) - Revealing AI’s Latent Rulebook
Authors: David Atkinson (Georgetown) and Paul Ohm (Georgetown Law) - A Scoping Review of System Integration Audits: Towards a New Class of Artificial Intelligence Evaluation
Authors: Leah Davis (McGill University), Ajung Moon (McGill University) and Dominic Martin (Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM))
13:00-14:00 | Lunch
14:00-15:00 | Paper Session
- From Rejection to Regulation: Mapping the Landscape of AI Resistance
Authors: Ayse Gizem Yasar (École normale supérieure Paris) and Can Simsek (Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society)
15:00-15:30 | Break
15:30-17:30 | Panel: Deep Fakes and Deeper Problems: AI’s Problem with Nuances
- LLMs and the Collapse of Legal Indeterminacy
Author: Shira Gur-Arieh (Harvard Law School) - How Much Is My Voice Worth to an Algorithm? Synthetic Voices, Embodied Agents, and the Right to Freedom from Vocal Identity Confusion
Author: Maddalena Castellani (Attorney-at-law and Independent Researcher)
15:30-17:30 | Best Paper Award and End of Conference
19:00 | Informal Get-Together after the conference, location TBC.
