HFC3D 2012 - Workshop on Human-Focused Communications in the 3D Continuum

While hardware improvement, machine learning and artificial intelligence have been helping to speed up and replace tedious manual procedures and, to a certain extent, automate human analysis and decision making, human intentions and responses remain the central command in many applications. For example, Affective Computing attempts to understand human reactions, Quality of Experience focuses on understanding human satisfaction, and Visual Analytics aims at analyzing visual information based on human perception. HCI studies human computer interaction. In social web and games, human is often embodied as a virtual character (avatar) either explicitly or implicitly, interacting with the virtual world. Interaction is a mean to reflect the current mood or thinking of the human participant. With the advancement of 3DTV technology, e.g., stereoscopic display, multi-view video and 3D immersion either virtually or augmented, further enhanced by multi-dimensional and multi-modal space, many non-traditional human-centered communication concepts, e.g., gesture-based, or touch and feel via haptic devices, have been introduced. However, there are still a lot challenges before these concepts can be fully implemented in real-time applications.
In order to explore this emerging area, the goal of this workshop will be on discussing how novel techniques in the 3D continuum can improve the modeling of user intentions and responses so that digital technology can be deployed effectively. A major focus will be on how emerging 3DTV techniques, e.g., stereoscopic display, multi-view augmented videos, glasses-free viewing, and so on, can facilitate human-machine dialog, in a temporal-spatial constrained multimedia environment. We anticipate experts from various research areas, including computer vision, computer graphics & visualization, and multimedia communications, contributing to this workshop, which will provide a forum to identify critical issues, possible solutions and future trends.
Authors of the selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version for a special issue in Advances in Multimedia Journal.
Topics
Key topics include, but are not limited to:
3D acquisition and modeling of human affect
Human-centered interactions in virtual and augmented multimedia environments
Coordination of human interactions in a collaborative real-time environment
Visualization and analysis of human affect using 3DTV technology
Surveillance of human affect using 3DTV technology
Tracking of human affect using 3D depth and multimedia information
Real-time transmission of human activities over the Internet Compression, quality assessment and optimization of human activities data in the 3D multimedia processing pipeline
Human-centered multimedia communication interfaces, tools and applications.
Applications of human-centered 3D techniques in healthcare, rehabilitation, games and education