[agents] CfP: 2nd Int Workshop on Human Aspects in Ambient Intelligence

[Tibor Bosse]

[Apologies for multiple copies]

SECOND INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON HUMAN ASPECTS IN AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE:

Agent Technology, Human-Oriented Knowledge and Applications

(HAI'08)

URL: http://www.few.vu.nl/~treur/HAI08wsCfP.htm


Sydney, Australia, December 9, 2008

(Financial support for travelling is available, see below)

Workshop at the International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology

(IAT'08)


Call for Papers


Background

Recent developments within Ambient Intelligence and Agent Technology
provide new possibilities to contribute to personal care. For example, an
intelligent ambient agent in our car may monitor us and warn us when we
are falling asleep while driving or take measures when we are too drunk to
drive. As another example, an elderly person may wear a device with an
ambient agent that monitors his or her wellbeing and generates an action
when a dangerous situation is noticed.

Such Ambient Intelligence applications  can be based on the one hand on
possibilities to acquire sensor information about humans and their
functioning, but on the other hand, more knowledgeable  applications
crucially depend on the availability of adequate knowledge for analysis of
such information about human functioning. If such knowledge about human
functioning is computationally available in intelligent software/hardware
devices in the environment, such ambient agents can show more human-like
understanding and contribute to personal care based on this understanding.

In recent years, scientific areas focusing on human functioning such as
cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience and biomedical sciences have
made substantial progress in providing an increased insight in the various
physical and mental aspects of human functioning. Although much work still
remains to be done, models have been developed for a variety of such
aspects and the way in which humans (try to) manage or regulate them. From
a more biomedical angle, examples of such aspects are (management of)
heart functioning, diabetes, eating regulation disorders, and
HIV-infection. From a more psychological and social angle, examples are
emotion regulation, attention regulation, addiction management, trust
management, stress management, and criminal behaviour management.

If models of human processes and their management are represented in a
formal and computational format, and incorporated in the human environment
monitoring the physical and mental state of the human, then such ambient
agents are able to perform a more in-depth analysis of the human?s
functioning. An ambience is created that has a human-like understanding of
humans, based on computationally formalised knowledge from the
human-directed disciplines, and that may more effectively affect the state
of humans by undertaking in a knowledgeable manner actions that improve
their wellbeing and performance.

This may concern elderly people and patients, but also humans in highly
demanding circumstances or tasks. For example, the workspaces of naval
officers may include systems that, among others, track their eye movements
and characteristics of incoming stimuli (e.g., airplanes on a radar
screen), and use this information in a computational model that is able to
estimate where their attention is focussed at. When it turns out that an
officer neglects parts of a radar screen, such a system can either
indicate this to the person, or arrange on the background that another
person or computer system takes care of this neglected part.


Aims

This workshop series addresses multidisciplinary aspects of Ambient
Intelligence and Agent Systems with human-directed disciplines such as
psychology, social science, neuroscience and biomedical sciences. The
first workshop in the series (HAI'07) took place at the European
Conference on Ambient Intelligence (AmI'07), in Darmstadt, Germany,
November 2007. The aim of the workshops is to get researchers together
from these human-directed disciplines or working on cross connections of
Ambient Intelligence with these disciplines. The focus is on the use of
knowledge from these disciplines in Ambient Intelligence applications, in
order to take care of and support in a knowledgeable manner humans in
their daily living in medical, psychological and social respects.

The workshop can play an important role, for example, to get modellers in
the psychological, neurological, social or biomedical disciplines
interested in Ambient Intelligence as a high-potential application area
for their models, and, for example, get inspiration for problem areas to
be addressed for further developments in their disciplines. From the other
side, the workshop may make researchers in Ambient Intelligence, Agent
Systems, and Artificial Intelligence more aware of the possibilities to
incorporate more substantial knowledge from the psychological,
neurological, social and biomedical disciplines in Ambient Intelligence
applications. As part of the interaction, specifications may be generated
for experiments to be addressed by the human-directed sciences.


Some of the areas of interest

* human-aware computing

* computational modelling of cognitive, neurological, social and
biomedical processes for Ambient Intelligence

* modelling emotion and mood and their regulation

* collecting and analysing histories of behaviour

* computational modelling of mindreading, theory of mind

* building profiles; user modelling in Ambient Intelligence

* sensoring; e.g., tracking physiological states, gaze, body movements,
gestures

* sensor information integration methods

* analysis of sensor information; e.g., voice and skin analysis with
respect to emotional states, gesture analysis, heart rate analysis

* environmental modelling

* situational awareness

* model-based reasoning and analysis techniques for Ambient Intelligence

* responsive and adaptive systems; machine learning

* cognitive agent models

* reflective ambient agent architectures

* multi-agent system architectures for Ambient Intelligence applications

* human interaction with devices

* wearable devices for ambient health and wellness monitoring

* brain-computer interfacing

* analysis and design of applications to care for humans in need of
support for physical and mental health; e.g., elderly or psychiatric care,
surveillance, penitentiary care, humans in need of strucural medical or
psychological care, support for psychotherapeutical/self-help communities

* analysis and design of applications to support humans in demanding
circumstances and tasks, such as warfare officers, air traffic
controllers, crisis and disaster managers, humans in space missions.

* evaluation studies

* handling aspects of privacy and security; philosophical and ethical
aspects


Submission and Proceedings

Papers can be submitted in the IEEE 2-column format (see the IEEE Computer
Society Press Proceedings Author Guidelines, as for the IAT'08
conference). Expected length is from 3 pages (short papers) to 7 pages
(regular papers). Double submission is allowed (for example, for papers
submitted to the main conference IAT'08), but inclusion in the proceedings
requires that the paper was and is not published elsewhere. The workshop
proceedings will be published by the IEEE Computer Society Press and will
be available at the workshop. More submission details will follow at the
workshop's Website:

http://www.few.vu.nl/~treur/HAI08wsCfP.htm


Financial Support for Travelling

For those presenters at the workshop for whom excessive travelling costs
may cause problems, financial support is available. This support may take
the form that for a flight ticket above 400 euro, maximally 75% of the
total costs of the ticket can be refunded by the workshop organisation
(assuming a ticket of reasonable price for the given distance). After
acceptance of a paper, this support can be requested for one author of the
paper.


Registration

For every accepted paper at least one author has to register for the WI /
IAT-2008 conference. There is no separate workshop registration fee (i.e.,
only one conference registration covers everything).


Important Dates

Submission deadline              July 30, 2008

Notification                     September 3, 2008

Camera ready papers              September 30, 2008

Workshop                         December 9, 2008


Coordination Commitee

Juan Carlos Augusto (University of Ulster, School of Computing and
Mathematics)

Tibor Bosse (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Agent Systems Research Group)

Cristiano Castelfranchi (CNR Rome, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and
Technologies)

Diane Cook (Washington State University, USA)

Mark Neerincx (TNO Human Factors; Technical University Delft,
Man-Machine Interaction)

Fariba Sadri (Imperial College, Department of Computing)

Jan Treur (contact person, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Agent Systems
Research Group)


Programme Committee

Juan Carlos Augusto (University of Ulster, School of Computing and
Mathematics)

Marc B”hlen (State University of New York, USA)

Tibor Bosse (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Agent Systems Research Group)

Antonio Camurri (University of Genoa, InfoMus Lab)

Cristiano Castelfranchi (CNR Rome, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and
Technologies)

Diane Cook (Washington State University, USA)

Hao-Hua Chu (National Taiwan University, Ubicomp Lab, Taiwan)

Rino Falcone (CNR Rome, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies)

Dirk Heylen (University of Twente, Human Media Interaction)

Anthony Jameson (DFKI, Human-Computer Interaction)

Judy Kay (University of Sydney, Computer Human Adaptive Interaction,
Australia)

Peter Leijdekkers (University of Technology Sydney, Mobile Ubiquitous
Services & Technologies Group, Australia)

Paul Lukowicz (Austrian University for Health Sciences, Medical
Informatics and Technology)

Silvia Miksch (Danube University Krems, Department of Information and
Knowledge Engineering)

Jose del Millan (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne EPFL,
Research Institute IDIAP, Martigny, Switzerland)

Neelam Naikar (Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Centre for
Cognitive Work and Safety Analysis, Australia)

Tatsuo Nakajima (Waseda University, Distributed and Ubiquitous Computing
Lab, Japan)

Mark Neerincx (TNO Human Factors; Technical University Delft, Man-Machine
Interaction)

Toyoaki Nishida (Kyoto University, Department of Intelligence Science and
Technology, Japan)

Maja Pantic (University of Twente, Human Media Interaction; Imperial
College, Department of Computing, Netherlands/UK)

Steffen Pauws (Philips Research Europe, Media Interaction Department,
Netherlands)

Christian Peter (Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Rostock,
Human-Centered Interaction Technologies, Germany)

Tomasz M. Rutkowski (RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Laboratory for
Advanced Brain Signal Processing, Japan)

Fariba Sadri (Imperial College, Department of Computing)

Maarten Sierhuis (NASA Ames Research Center, Human-Centered Computing,
USA)

Elizabeth Sklar (City University of New York, Brooklyn College, Dept of
Computer and Information Science)

Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cognitive Science Department)

Bruce H. Thomas (University of South Australia Mawson Lakes, Wearable
Computer Lab, Australia)

Jan Treur (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Agent Systems Research Group)