Title and abstracts due: 18 August 2020 (email pvc2-2021@computer.org)
Full manuscripts due: 1 September 2020 (via mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pc-cs)
Publication: April-June 2021

For a long time, cameras and microphones have been studied to give machines the ability to see and hear the world around them. The remarkable progress in artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years has pushed this perception ability to a new high. AI-enabled cameras and microphones are now able to replicate human-like reasoning and cognition, be it detecting cancers better than a human doctor, identifying people’s sexual orientation, or understanding human speech. Naturally, this interminable possibilities across a wide range of verticals ranging from public safety, infrastructure efficiency, entertainment, education, and health have led to the deployment of billions of cameras and microphones around us–in our homes, workplaces, and cities.

As this pervasiveness keeps disrupting a multitude of business dynamics, it also uncovers myriad challenges–some are technical, some are political, and some are ethical. For instance, how should these systems be architected? What are the new applications enabled? How can we design a low-latency network for these systems? What are the required training and signal-processing algorithms? What processor architecture and OS support are required for a QoS guarantee? What are the challenges in deploying this technology? And, how can they be secured against cyber-attacks?

In this special issue, we seek to reflect on some of these challenges and catalyse new research in pervasive video and audio. The guest editors invite original and high-quality submissions addressing any aspect of this exciting field, as long as the connection to pervasive computing is clear and central to the paper. Review or summary articles—for example, critical evaluations of the state of the art or insightful analysis of established and upcoming technologies—may be accepted if they demonstrate academic rigor and relevance. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

Intelligent camera and microphone design for pervasive video and audio applications
Efficient hardware and processor architecture for video and audio processing
Low-power and battery-less camera and microphone design for pervasive video and audio applications
New AI/ML algorithms (training, inferences) for pervasive video and audio analytics
Novel dataset description for pervasive video and audio analytics
New signal-processing techniques for pervasive video and audio analytics
Edge or hybrid cloud analytics solution for pervasive video and audio
New architecture for pervasive video and audio applications
Operating system support for novel pervasive video and audio analytics
Low latency network design for pervasive video and audio applications
Secure processing of pervasive video and audio streams
Privacy-preserving processing of pervasive video and audio streams
Experience report on the deployment of pervasive video and audio infrastructure and applications
Interaction and UX design for pervasive video and audio applications
Emerging applications for pervasive video and audio