IWEC 2016 - 7th International Workshop on Empathic Computing (IWEC-16)

Technology has made strides investigating how computational models of emotions can be built. In recent years, Computer Science researchers have realized that emotion models cann ot 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.
Currently, 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.
On its seventh year, IWEC-16 aims to gather researchers interested in the deployment of agents in real-world scenarios, such as tele-health and therapy systems, education (in tutoring systems) and edutainment such as games. The design of such agents' interactions with humans is an interesting study, as it will need to consider performance issues (i.e. the ability to understand input and respond in real-time), interaction design (considering factors such as culture, profile, and context, including the goal of the interaction), and usability among others. Specifically, the workshop aims to bring together a variety of researchers from Computer Science, Psychology, Education, and User Experience to help solve these complex issues. We are inviting new and unpublished papers on, but not limited to, the following topics:
Sensor Networks/Wearable Sensors for Intelligent Interfaces
Human-Robot Interactions
Emotion-aware Embodied Conversational Agents
Emotion and mood recognition
Intention Recognition/Behavior/Activity Recognition
MultimodalCommunication
Social Signal Processing
Social Agents
Data fusion in Intelligent Ambient Spaces
Multimodal Approaches for Improved Decision-making
Motivational Aids in Intelligent Education Systems
e-Health and Geriatrics Care
Machine Learning and Data mining for Empathy