Abstract

In the last few years, the link between humans and technology has become particularly strong, especially thanks to the latest advancements in wearable and sensing technologies, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) models. The possibility of having an efficient interaction between users and devices has raised great interest in the field of Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), allowing the generation of new applications that can be employed in real, virtual, and augmented environments and thus opening new AI challenges.

The AIxHMI workshop aims to connect researchers and practitioners from different fields to collect multidisciplinary contributions on the topic of HMI and have a closer look on how AI influences the interaction between humans and machines. Contributions coming from universities, research institutes, and industries are very welcomed and are not limited to technological advancements in terms of hardware and software, but can also provide discussions on cognitive aspects, ethical and juridical concerns, ergonomic issues and user experience in a variety of application fields.

Description

The Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) field is particularly interested in providing a bidirectional way of communication between humans and machines in real,  virtual, and augmented environments.

The sought interaction is benefitting from the continuous advancement of technologies, which are designed to be centered on their users and thus with a human-centered perspective. This is especially true when considering the recent advances in wearable sensing technology, whose main aim is to provide more flexible, comfortable and personalized wearable HMI systems, that could be accepted with more ease by their users and provide reliable data collection and feedback.

It is then necessary to question whether these technologies could be really up to this challenge, having that besides the technological concerns regarding the development and design of such sensors and devices, it is necessary to consider how the interaction could be effectively made. This could be also translated into understanding how Artificial Intelligence (AI) influences the HMI system development and what kind of challenges arise when having to face wearable devices and sensing technologies in real-time, instead of wired ones that are usually handled off-line.

A practical example may be represented by wearable Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs). By collecting human-users’ brain activations through wearable sensors, they provide specific feedback according to specific brain responses. However, managing wireless data and on-line applications presents a series of issues that are different from the ones arising from the use of their wired and off-line counterparts, e.g., the data transmission could be less safer, the data may be of lower quality, and the feedback needs to be almost instantaneous and extremely reliable, especially when related to health and human-centered applications.

These issues can be expanded and translated to other control and sensing devices, by also considering their interaction. Open challenges are in fact present when considering the integration of heterogeneous data, especially the ones coming from multimodal sensing and the ones depending on the environment a HMI user lives in.

A key aspect may be also represented by the emotional involvement of the users when dealing with HMI systems, thus giving space to the fields of emotional intelligence and affective computing. In fact, having machines that are able to adapt to the emotional states of their users may provide better communication between them. For example, being able to detect frustration could allow the re-modeling of a specific control system to the necessities of a single user.

This observation highlights the tendency towards human centered computing and sensing to provide a better user experience. It is again necessary to provide a good data quality, organization and management, considering that these data come from multiple sources.

Therefore, the AIxHMI workshop is opened to multidisciplinary contributions that pertain but that are not limited to the fields of HMI, BCI, control systems, wearable sensing and devices, virtual and augmented reality, emotional intelligence, affective computing, human centered sensing and computing, human factors and ergonomics, user experience, interface and sensor design, and ethics and security in AI, having that the AI is a transversal discipline that influences all these aspects.

Topics of Interest

The AIxHMI workshop welcomes submissions including, but not limited to:

• Affective computing

• Artificial intelligence 

• Brain computer interface 

• Control devices 

• Ergonomics

• Ethics in artificial intelligence

• Human-centered computing 

• Human-centered sensing 

• Human-machine interaction 

• Interfaces

• Multimodal machine learning (sensors, information, environment)

• Neuropsychology and neuroscience in the HMI field

• Regulations and juridical aspects in the HMI field

• Sensors

• User experience

• Virtual and augmented reality

• Wearable sensing

Submission 

The workshop invites two types of submissions:

• Short papers (6 pages plus bibliography).

• Regular papers (12 pages plus bibliography).

Please, consider also sending abstracts, position papers, experimental protocols, ongoing research projects, and pilot studies.

All papers will be peer-reviewed (single-blind) by the program committee members and their camera ready versions will be included in the conference proceedings published on CEUR in the AI*IA Series (Scopus indexed).

Notice that papers with less than 25000 characters will be considered as short papers in the CEUR proceedings.

Manuscripts should be formatted using the 1-column CEUR-ART Style, which is available as:

• a volume template.

• an Overleaf template.

• a LaTeX and DOCX offline template.

Papers submission is electronic through EasyChair, at the link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aixhmi2023