International Workshop on Emotion Representations and Modelling for Companion Technologies (ERM4CT 2015)
13 November 2015, Seattle (at ACM ICMI'15)

Scope:
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ERM4CT joins two past workshop series, “Emotion representations and modelling in Human-Computer-Interaction Systems” (ERM4HCI) and “Techniques Towards Companion Technologies” (T2CT), respectively.

The major goal in human computer interaction (HCI) research and applications is to improve the interaction between humans and computers. One way of achieving a better interaction is to allow the computer to recognise and respond to the user’s natural behaviour as shown during the interaction. As user behaviour is often very specific to an individual and generally of multi-modal nature, the current trend of multi-modal user-adaptable HCI systems arose over the past years. These systems are designed as companions capable of assisting their users based on the users’ needs, preferences, personality and affective state. These companion systems are dependent on reliable emotion recognition methods in order to provide natural, user-centred interactions. However, the adequate incorporation of emotions in these modern HCI systems has proved to be a challenging task.

Depending on the modalities used, the user model incorporated and the application scenario, varying difficulties in the emotion representations and modelling may arise. The ERM4CT Workshop is a joint-workshop of the 3rd ERM4HCI and the 2nd T2CT workshop aiming at highlighting the specific issues associated with the multi-modal emotion representations as needed in companion technologies.

The ERM4CT workshop focuses on emotion representations, signal characteristics used to describe and identify emotions as well as their influence on personality and user state models to be incorporated in companion systems. The combination of the 3rd ERM4HCI and the 2nd T2CT workshop allows the in-depth analysis of technical prerequisites and modelling aspects as well as application specific issues associated with the development of affective, multi-modal, user-adapted systems.

Researchers are encouraged to discuss possible interdependencies of characteristics on an intra- and inter-modality level. Such interdependencies may occur if two characteristics are influenced by the same physiological change in the observed user and are especially relevant to multi-modal affective systems. The workshop aims at identifying a minimal set of characteristics needed to express emotions in multi-modal corpora. Researchers discussing their feature selection from a multi-modal or physiological point of view are encouraged to submit to the workshop. Theoretical papers contributing to the understanding of emotions in order to aid in the technical modelling of emotions for companion systems are welcomed. The workshop supports discussions on the necessary prerequisites for consistent emotion representations in multi-modal companion systems.

The ERM4CT workshop complements the ICMI 2015 by offering a platform focusing on emotion representation and modelling in multi-modal companion systems. Providing a forum for discussions on emotion representations, models and implementations in modern companion technologies shall encourage researchers from all disciplines involved to exchange on the topic and improve their models and understanding of affective HCI through interdisciplinary discourse.

For further information refer to www.erm4ct.cogsy.de

Topics (suggested, but not limited to):
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Personality models and the incorporation of emotion models
Multi-modal aspects of emotion recognition, representation and identification
Physiological background of emotion representations
Feature selection for emotion recognition
Interdependencies of features used for emotion recognition
Minimal (multi-modal) feature sets
Timing in multi-modal emotion recognition scenarios
Confidence metrics for emotion recognition/classification
Prerequisites for the consistent modelling of emotions in companion systems
Relationship between general user states and emotion recognition features
User state specific emotion and disposition modelling
Aspects of multi-modal emotion and disposition recognition
Modality interactions and interdependencies in emotion recognition
System response pattern for companion technologies
System response perceptions within companions
Companion technology application scenarios

Organisers:
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Kim Hartmann, University Magdeburg,Germany
Ingo Siegert, University Magdeburg,Germany
Björn Schuller, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
Louis-Philippe Morency, Carnegie Mellon University, California, USA
Albert Ali Salah, Boğaziçi University, Turkey
Ronald Böck, University Magdeburg, Germany

Important Dates:
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Submission deadline: August 3, 2015
Notification of acceptance: August 20, 2015
Camera-ready deadline: September 5, 2015
Workshop date: November 13, 2015

Submissions:
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Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers (8 pages). All submissions should be anonymous and according to the specifications of the ICMI 2015 (http://icmi.acm.org/2015/index.php?id=authors). The reviewing will be double blind, so submissions should be anonymous: do not include the authors' names, affiliations or any clearly identifiable information in the paper. It is appropriate to cite past work of the authors if these citations are treated like any other (e.g., "Smith [5] approached this problem by....") - omit references only if it would be obviously identifying the authors.