ENHANCE 2015

First International Workshop on ENgagement in HumAN Computer IntEraction

ENHANCE 2015

The First International Workshop on ENgagement in HumAN Computer IntEraction  @ACII 2015           

Research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction is taking an ascending curve in the conception of machines, like robots or virtual agents, endowed with social and emotional intelligence. Conceiving social robots or agents means that they should be able to interact naturally with humans. Thus, they should be equipped with capabilities that enable them to understand the user’s actions, behaviours, and mental and emotional states just like a human naturally does. Engagement is an important aspect to be considered in the design of such machines. However, despite the growing number of papers on it, rigorous definitions of engagement compatible with computational models are still needed.

The ENHANCE workshop focuses on engagement modeling and recognition. It will cover theory, computational models, algorithms and techniques for the automatic analysis of engagement in human-human and human-machine in dyadic and multiparty interaction scenarios. This workshop addresses, for example, the following research questions: How to establish a generally accepted definition of engagement? How to take into account context in engagement models? How to engage more than one user at a time? What are the minimal sets of non-verbal features that are needed to perform an accurate recognition of engagement? How to establish a general model of engagement that takes into account all the components of engagement?

This workshop is partially supported by the Laboratory of Excellence SMART (http://www.smart-labex.fr) and the A1:1 project.