Workshop on Affect-aware Human-Computer and Human-Robot Interaction

Workshop on Affect-aware Human-Computer and Human-Robot Interaction
1st International Conference on
PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive environments (PETRA'08)
Conference website: http://www.petrae.org

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Recent research results in the area of multimodal interfaces have been 
focusing on the development of natural, adaptive and intelligent 
interfaces enabling machines and robots to communicate with humans in 
ways close to human-to-human interaction. Natural interfaces, catering 
for visual, speech, and gestural input and human-like interface agents 
and robots are the two main characteristics of the dominant approaches; 
in terms of theoretical definition, such interfaces are beginning to 
take into account emotion representation theories and definitions of 
virtual personalities. As a result, systems are developed which take 
into account user expressivity and have robust natural multimodal 
interaction capabilities. In addition to computer systems, affect-aware 
robotic platforms are currently emerging even into the consumer market. 
Not long ago, the social impact of these products in everyday life was 
largely unknown. However, with the advent of low-cost robots, able to 
receive, transmit and process visual, motion and sound information, 
interface agents and assistants have taken an embodied form as well. 
This workshop is based on themes from successfully completed and current 
European projects in the fields of interfaces and robotics, such as NoE 
Humaine, IP Callas, and STREP Feelix-Growing. 

WORKSHOP TOPICS
Topics include, but are not limited to:
• Affect-aware interfaces
• Ambient/natural interfaces
• Adaptive/cooperative interfaces
• Interfaces for attentive and intelligent environments
• Signal acquisition and processing for handicapped people
• Information/Sensor Fusion techniques and Architectures
• Machine Learning for human-computer and human-robot interaction
• Multimodal recognition of affect
• Affect recognition ‘in the wild’
• Theory of Emotion/Emotion Representation
• Cognitive modeling of users
• Virtual/augmented environments for handicapped people
• Affect-aware e-learning applications
• Applications of Affective Robots
• Emerging affect-aware Standards

WORKSHOP CHAIRS 
Elisabeth Andre, Univ. of Augsburg, Germany
Kostas Karpouzis, ICCS/NTUA, Greece
Maja Pantic, Imperial College, UK
Catherine Pelachaud, Universite de Paris 8, France 

PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Ilias Maglogiannis, Univ. of Aegean, Greece
Stefanos Kollias, National Technical Univ. of Athens, Greece
Lola Canamero, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Philippe Gaussier, Cergy-Pontoise University/ENSEA, France
John Soldatos, Athens Information Technology, Greece
Paolo Petta, OFAI, Austria 

IMPORTANT DATES 
Paper submission: March 30, 2008
Notification of acceptance: April 30, 2008
Camera ready papers due: May 20, 2008 

Prospective authors should submit their contribution through e-mail to 
hci-petra@image.ntua.gr, under the instructions described in 
http://www.petrae.org/proceedings.htm. At least one author of each 
accepted paper is required to register with the workshop and present the 
paper. Authors should use the ACM Word or LaTeX style templates to 
prepare their articles 
(http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html) Submitted papers 
should be up to 8 pages. Papers may be accepted either as full papers (8 
pages) or short papers (4 pages). Accepted papers will be presented at 
the conference and published in the Proceedings of the Conference. ACM 
will be the publisher of the proceedings of the PETRA conference and the 
conference proceedings will be a volume in the ACM International 
Conference Proceedings Series in the ACM Digital Library.