[agents] IWEC - 2014: 5th International Workshop on Empathic Computing (Co-located with PRICAI/PRIMA in GoldCoast, Australia)

[Tony Savarimuthu]

5th International Workshop on Empathic Computing (IWEC-14)
December 1-5, 2014, Gold Coast, Australia
Website: http://www.ai.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp/IWEC2014/

Description of the Workshop:
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Technology has made strides investigating how computational models of emotions can be built. In recent years, Computer Science researchers  have realized that emotion models cannot be effectively used in real-world applications by themselves. They need to be analyzed in light of human interactions, and treated with other non-verbal cues as social signals to extract meaning from the data.
Right now, there is a need for human-centered systems, i.e. systems that are seamlessly integrated into everyday life, easy to use, multimodal, and anticipatory. These systems widen the breadth of users of computing systems, from the very young to the elderly, as well as to the physically challenged. Empathic systems are human-centered systems.

Empathic computing systems are software or physical context-aware computing systems capable of building user models and provide richer, naturalistic, system-initiated empathic responses with the objective of providing intelligent assistance and support. We view empathy as a cognitive act that involves the perception of the user's thought, affect (i.e., emotional feeling or mood), intention or goal, activity, and/or situation and a response due to this perception that is supportive of the user. An empathic computing system is ambient intelligent, i.e., it consists of seamlessly integrated ubiquitous networked sensors, microprocessors and software for it to perceive the various user behavioral patterns from multimodal inputs.

Empathic computing systems may be applied to various areas such as e-health, geriatric domestic support, empathic home/space, productivity systems, entertainment and e-learning. Lastly, this approach shall draw upon the expertise in, and theories of, ubiquitous sensor-rich computing, embedded systems, affective computing, user adaptive interfaces, image processing, digital signal processing and machine learning in artificial intelligence.

On its fourth year, IWEC-14 focuses on the role of emotion and its analysis, recognition and synthesis in human-machine interactions, including the use of Artificial Intelligence in solving issues brought about by scientists' desire to create meaningful human-machine interactions. While primarily data-driven, the workshop this year will investigate how domain knowledge and contextual information can be used to reduce the complexity of emotion analysis and synthesis, as well as empathic response modeling.

We are inviting new and unpublished papers on, but not limited to, the following topics:
*    Emotion and mood recognition
*    Intention Recognition
*    Behavior/Activity Recognition
*    Motion/Gesture Detection
*    Multimodal Communication
*    Sensor Networks for Human Tracking
*    Social Signal Processing
*    Wearable or Implantable Sensor Integration
*    Sensor Networks for Intelligent Interfaces
*    Data fusion in Intelligent Ambient Spaces
*    Multimodal Approaches for Improved Decision-making
*    Motivational Aids in Intelligent Education Systems
*    Advanced Home Automation Systems
*    e-Health and Geriatrics Care
*    Social Agents
*    Machine Learning and Data mining for Empathy

The workshop will be of interest to researchers working on affective computing, ambient intelligent systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning, including statistical modelling, and digital signal processing. IWEC-14 aims to serve as venue for these researchers to discuss and share ideas, raise concerns and technical issues, and form research relationships for future collaboration.

Review Process

Each submission will undergo a blind review with 3 assigned reviewers.

Important Dates

Workshop Papers due:            September 22, 2014
Notification of Acceptance:           October 16, 2014
Workshop Proceedings due:          November 19, 2014
Workshop Dates:                    December 1 or 2, 2014