I am excited to be leading the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025 Montreal Satellite Event, bringing together our local robotics community to connect with the global ICRA conference. This event welcomes everyone interested in robotics—students, researchers, and enthusiasts alike. Whether you’d like to network, watch live conference sessions, or share your own work, I invite you to join us in Montreal from May 20–22. Feel free to stop by and be part of the conversation!

For more event details and the full schedule, please visit the event webpage .

The performance of human-robot teams depends on human-robot trust, which in turn depends on appropriate robot-to-human transparency. A key way for robots to build trust through transparency is by providing appropriate explanations for their actions. While most previous work on robot explanation generation has focused on robots’ ability to provide post-hoc explanations upon request, in this paper we instead examine proactive explanations generated before actions are taken, and the effect this has on human-robot trust. Our results suggest a positive relationship between proactive explanations and human-robot trust, and reveal fundamental new questions into the effects of proactive explanations on the nature of humans’ mental models and the fundamental nature of human-robot trust.