• IWEC-14 website is up!
• Paper submission guidelines updated.
• Paper submission deadline extended to October 3, 2014!
• Acceptance results will be released on October 26, 2014
• Workshop program of activities is now available!

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 fifth 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.

1. To be a gathering of researchers working on embedded systems and sensor networks, digital signal processing, affective computing and adaptive user interfaces as applied to the problem of developing empathic computing systems;
2. To be a venue to disseminate forefront research results on the area of empathic computing; and
3. To generate further interest in the area and its real-world novel application areas.

• 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.

Papers must be formatted in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) camera-ready style template; see the Springer’s author instructions page for details. Papers (submitted and final) cannot exceed 12 pages (excluding references). Please do not include acknowledgements in submissions due to blind review. Papers must be in trouble-free, high-resolution PDF format, using Type 1 or TrueType fonts. Please only use the author-year system for your references.

Each submission will undergo a blind review with 3 assigned reviewers. Qualified reviewers for submissions will be assigned based on the submitted information about the papers (title, keywords, and abstract).

All papers should be submitted electronically using the EasyChair paper submission site in PDF format and formatted using the workshop submission guidelines outlined above. All submitted papers should not be under review or submitted for publication elsewhere during the review period.