AAATE 2023 – 17h International Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe (AAATE)

28 August- 1 September 2023, Paris, France

One major concern in the development of assistive technologies lies in the claim for responsible research and the consideration of ethical, legal and social implications of technology development. At a time in which technology developments – fostered by the huge and tremendously fast-evolving innovations through modern information and communication technologies – enter private spheres and come into close contact with individual, private, and intimate activities, it is a mandatory claim that any technology development should be carefully developed and balanced within societal, cultural and individual values, and norms.

Assistive technologies based on computer vision, multimedia data processing and understanding, and machine intelligence present several advantages in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, camera sensors are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance that other wearable sensors may cause to people’s activities. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring activities, movements, and overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters (e.g., heart rate, respiratory rate). However, cameras are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information that this technology conveys and the intimate setting where it may be deployed in. Therefore, solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and design as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand.

This STS aims to give forum for contributions presenting and discussing image- and video-based AAL applications, projects and research as well as initiatives proposing ethical and privacy-aware solutions.

This STS is supported by the visuAAL Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (https://www.visuaal-itn.eu) and the GoodBrother COST Action (https://goodbrother.eu). The aim of these projects is to bridge the knowledge gap between users’ requirements and the appropriate and secure use of video-based AAL technologies to deliver effective and supportive care to older adults managing their health and wellbeing. They seek to increase awareness and understanding of the context-specific ethical, legal, privacy and societal issues necessary to implement visual system across hospital, home and community settings, in a manner that protects and reassures users; outputs will stimulate the development of a new research perspective for constructively addressing privacy-aware video-based working solutions for assisted living.

Topics

We seek contributions that include, but are not limited to:

• Video-based assistive technologies:
  • Lifelogging and self-monitoring
  • Human activity and behaviour recognition
  • Personal and daily-life assistance
  • Remote monitoring of vital signs
  • Gesture recognition
  • Fall detection and prevention
  • Emotional state recognition
  • Food intake monitoring
  • Mobility assessment and frailty recognition
  • Cognitive and motor rehabilitation•
• User acceptance
• Awareness and understanding of context-specific ethical, legal, privacy and societal
  issues
• Privacy-aware technologies
• GDPR requirements of AAL solutions
• Responsible research for older people
• Fair systems
• Best practices for interdisciplinary collaborations between law, IT, care and/or
  sociology

Submission guidelines

Information for authors at the conference website. 

Important dates

• Paper Submission Deadline: March 5, 2023
• Notification of acceptance: April 23, 2023
• Camera ready: May 21, 2023
• Conference date: August 28 – September 1, 2023

Organising committee

• Francisco Florez-Revuelta, University of Alicante, Spain
• Sara Colantonio, Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy, Italy
• Martin Kampel, Computer Vision Lab, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

More information

More information about this Special Thematic Session and the AAATE Conference at the conference website.

28 June 2022, Zagreb, Croatia

The current pandemic has, even more, increased the need to invest in Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies. Thanks to their high potential in enabling remote care and support, AAL has the potential to improve the European healthcare system. However, the success of such technologies highly depends on their trustworthiness and ability to process information in a privacy-friendly manner. 

The conference on ‘Privacy-friendly and trustworthy technology for society’, aims to advance the knowledge on critical ethical concepts such as privacy, trust, and transparency of (AAL) technologies, contributing particularly by extending emerging concepts and themes such as privacy-by-design, overtrust, transparency-by-design, and personalized transparency. Moreover, it explores links, overlaps, and solutions between current proposed regulations such as the AI Act and other enforced regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation and the Medical Device Regulation. We invite interdisciplinary approaches spanning the social sciences, legal scholarship, ethics, and research in computing and engineering.

The conference will select extended abstracts to be presented in sessions organized by topics. We welcome and encourage interdisciplinary research and collaborations among researchers active in different working groups. The presentations will be short (10-15 min), followed by a brief Q&A. The focus will rest on the discussions among participants and establishing potential links among ongoing research activities within the COST Action and beyond. The conference will end with a workshop session where participants will be encouraged to draft research agendas for important topics that are currently not well explored. Please note that the conference will take place in a hybrid format, with participants and keynote speakers on-site and online – the organizers will ensure that remote participants will be able to ask questions and provide inputs during the workshop session.

This workshop is organised by the GoodBrother COST Action (CA19121) on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living.

Topics

How can we design technology that is privacy-friendly and trustworthy and benefits society? 

The topic of the conference is: “Privacy-friendly and trustworthy technology for society”. We encourage you to submit your contributions that combine different perspectives on privacy (enhancement), trust, and automation, which can be applied to different sectors, such as healthcare, education, leisure, or work. 

We are interested in contributions that focus on how privacy and trust are challenged and conceptualized through the increased reliance on automated systems and its implications on design approaches. A particular focus can be made on emerging automated systems applied to vulnerable groups such as seniors and children, with AAL technologies (i.e., audio-based and video-based applications to monitor elderly or frail people).

The call for papers includes but not limited to the following areas of interest:

• Research on system trust (i.e., trust between humans and automation) and link to privacy
• Ethical, legal, and societal aspects of trustworthy and privacy-friendly automation
• Empirical studies of privacy and trust of interactive systems
• Design approaches to support system trust and trustworthy design
• Personalization of privacy and transparency requirements and its impact on system trust
• Design for privacy and transparency 
• Usable privacy and security and their implications for systems trust
• Overtrust in automation and its implications
• Issues of unequal access to and benefits from privacy-friendly and trustworthy automation among different population groups

Submission guidelines

The extended abstract (max. 1000 words excl. references) must be sent in the PDF format to privacy-conference@goodbrother.eu by 12 of April 2022. The submissions should not be anonymous. You will be notified if the abstract was accepted and if you can present by 30 April 2022. 

The submissions will be peer-reviewed by the program committee and will be rated according to the fit with the conference theme and the overall scholarly quality.

Please use the following MS Word template for your extended abstracts. With the permission of the authors, the selected abstracts will be published before the conference on the COST Action website. 

Special Issue at Digital Society

The conference organizers will co-edit a special issue called ‘Privacy-friendly and trustworthy technology for society’ that has been accepted at the journal Digital Society from Springer. 

Please note: 

• Submitting a full paper to the special issue is optional. In your extended abstract submission email, please indicate if you are interested in submitting a full paper to the special issue.  
• If you submit the paper to the special issue, the paper will follow a peer-review process and the acceptance will depend on the results of such a process.
• Presentation at the conference does not require submitting a full paper for the special issue and not participating in the conference does not preclude submitting to the special issue.

Important dates

• Paper Submission Deadline: April 12, 2022, 23:59 AoE
• Notification of acceptance: April 30, 2022
• Camera ready: June 1, 2022
• Conference date: June 28, 2022

(optional) Special Issue dates:

• Full Paper: February 28, 2023 (deadline extended)

Invited speakers

• Opening Keynote on Trust by Esther Keymolen, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
• Closing Keynote on Privacy by Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Organising committee

• Anton Fedosov, University of Zurich, Switzerland
• Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Leiden University, the Netherlands
• Christoph Lutz, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
• Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
• Anto Čartolovni, Catholic University of Croatia, Croatia

Programme

The programme of the conference is available here in PDF and PNG.

Conference proceedings

The complete conference proceedings are available here.

Individual papers are available in the list below:

1. Liane Colonna (Stockholm University, Sweden). Addressing the Responsibility Gap in Data Protection by Design: Towards a More Future-oriented, Relational, and Distributed Approach. 
2. Zaira Zihlmann, Kimberly Garcia, Simon Mayer, and Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux (University of Lucerne, Switzerland, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, Maastricht University, The Netherlands) A right to repair privacy-invasive services: Is a new, more holistic European approach emerging? 
3. He Zhicheng (Stockholm University, Sweden) Bridging Law and Technology: Seeing Through Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Assisted Living from the Perspective of EU Data Protection Law. 
4. Naomi Lintvedt  (University of Oslo, Norway) Thermal Imaging in Robotics as a Privacy Enhancing or Privacy Invasive Measure? The Necessity of a Holistic Approach to Privacy in Human-Robot Interaction.
5. Zoltán Alexin (University of Szeged, Hungary) Entropy based approach to personal data.
6. Adrian Palmer, Rodrigo Perez-Vega, Ruby Zhang and Alex Scher-Smith (University of Reading, UK, University of Kent, UK) Service Robotics Beyond Privacy Concerns: An Investigation of the Role of Learning Abilities on Technological Adoption.
7. Ross Cheung; Shreshtha Jolly; Manoj Vimal; Hie Lim Kim & Ian McGonigle (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) Who’s afraid of genetic tests?: An assessment of Singapore’s public attitudes and changes in attitudes after taking a genetic test. 
8. Jessica Megarry, Yu Kao, Peta Mitchell, and Markus Rittenbruch (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) Probing for Privacy: A Digital Cultural Probe to Support Reflection on Situated Geoprivacy and Trust.
9. Alain Sandoz & Léa Stiefel (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, University of Lausanne, Switzerland) Trust vs. control: the dilemma between data distribution and centralization.
10. Carina Dantas & Karolina Mackiewicz (European Connected Health Alliance, SHINE 2Europe) Are we ensuring a citizen empowerment approach for health data sharing? 
11. Anton Fedosov, Liudmila Zavolokina, Sina Krumhard, Elaine Huang (University of Zurich, Switzerland) Toward unpacking trust in a local sharing economy community in Switzerland. 
12. Renata Mekovec & Dijana Oreški (University of Zagreb, Croatia) Competencies for professionals in the fields of privacy and security.
13. Suay Melisa Özkula (University of Trento, Italy) The visibility paradox: empowerment and vulnerability in inclusivity processes. 
14. Anna Leschanowsky, Birgit Popp & Nils Peters (International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany, Fraunhofer IIS, Germany, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany) Adapting Debiasing Strategies for Conversational AI. 
15. William Dutton, Grant Blank, Eglė Karpauskaitė (University of Oxford, UK) Who Cares About Privacy Online? 
16. Hrvoje Belani, Kristina Fišter, Petar Šolić (Ministry of Health, Croatia, University of Zagreb, Croatia, University of Split, Croatia) Acceptability of m-Health Solutions and its Relationship with Public Trust.

Registration

Participants wishing to attend the conference, please contact us by email at digit-heal@unicath.hr. Please register via our registration form on Eventbrite for attendees wanting to participate online. No registration fees will be charged for the conference participation.

Venue PDF PNG

Catholic University of Croatia

The conference host is the Digital healthcare ethics laboratory (Digit-HeaL) –  a research unit of the Catholic University of Croatia engaged in analyzing  the ethical, social, and legal aspects of digital technologies (e.g., Big data, Artificial intelligence, etc.) used in healthcare.

Catholic University of Croatia is located in the western part of Zagreb at the address Ilica 242, about 15 km from Zagreb airport Dr. Franjo Tuđman. The entrance to the campus is from Domobranska street.

Public transportation

By public transport, it is a 50-minute ride from the Franjo Tuđman airport to Catholic University of Croatia.

An airport shuttle operating between the airport and the Zagreb Bus Station departs every 30 minutes. A single ticket costs 30 kunas. More at https://plesoprijevoz.hr/zagreb/

From the Zagreb Bus Station (croat. Autobusni kolodvor) – 9 tram stops. lines 6 or 2, destination Črnomerec, get off at Sveti Duh

From the Zagreb Central train station (croat. Zagreb Glavni kolodvor) – 8 tram stops lines 6 or 2, destination Črnomerec, get off at stop Sveti Duh.

From the central square – Ban Jelačić square – 6 tram stops, lines 6 or 11, destination Črnomerec, get off at stop Sveti Duh.

In addition to regular taxi services such as – Taxi Cammeo, Eko taxi, Radio Taksi Zagreb – Uber, Bolt  services are also available in Zagreb

Parking at the Campus

At the Campus (entrance from Domobranska street) visitors can use the outdoor parking facility, for 4 HRK per hour. Outside the Campus, there is roadside parking with hourly parking rates determined by Zagrebparking (Zone III).

Accommodation and restaurants

Here you can find all information on accommodation options PDF ZIP , and restaurants PDF PNG.

Zagreb

Zagreb – city with a million hearts

“The city of Zagreb, capital of Croatia, on the historic and political threshold between East and West, illustrates both the continental and Mediterranean spirit of the nation it spearheads. Zagreb is the cultural, scientific, economic, political and administrative centre of the Republic of Croatia, and is home to the Croatian Parliament, Government and President. Its favourable location between the Pannonian plain, the edge of the Alps and the Dinaric range has allowed it to become a crossing point for mass international communication. Over the centuries, the city was inhabited by people coming from all over Europe; and, in recent years, by people coming from different parts of Croatia, ensuring a rich cultural life.

Zagreb is a safe city whose doors are always open; a city with a tumultuous history teeming with interesting personalities; a city that warmly invites all those who wish to get to know it, and a city that will surely fulfill your expectations. In this city, you can easily meet remarkable people, make new friends and enjoy special moments. The façades of Zagreb’s buildings reflect the ebb and flow of history, while its streets and squares bear witness to the coming together of the many cultures that have shaped the identity of this laid-back capital. The best thing to do is when you first arrive is to take in Zagreb’s wonderful atmosphere, which, as many claim, is only surpassed by the legendary beauty of the local womenfolk.”

From: https://www.infozagreb.hr/about-zagreb/basic-facts.

PETRA 2022 – The 15th PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments Conference

Corfu, Greece

One major concern in any development for Active Assisted Living (AAL) lies in the claim for responsible research and the consideration of ethical, legal and social implications of technology development. At a time in which technology developments – fostered by the huge and tremendously fast-evolving innovations through modern information and communication technologies – enter private spheres and come into close contact with individual, private, and intimate activities, it is a mandatory claim that any technology development should be carefully developed and balanced within societal, cultural and individual values, and norms.

The aim of PrivAw is to bridge the knowledge gap between users’ requirements and the appropriate and secure use of AAL technologies to deliver effective and supportive care to older adults managing their health and wellbeing. PrivAw will seek to increase awareness and understanding of the context-specific ethical, legal, privacy and societal issues necessary to implement AAL systems across hospital, home and community settings, in a manner that protects and reassures users; outputs will stimulate the development of a new research perspective for constructively addressing privacy-aware AAL solutions for assisted living.

This workshop is organised by the GoodBrother COST Action (CA19121) on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living.

Topics

This workshop aims at collecting and discussing AAL solutions, projects and research. We seek contributions that include, but are not limited to:

• Privacy-aware technologies
• Responsible Research for the elderly
• Fair systems
• Legal requirements and privacy issues for data collection and processing in care
• Privacy by Design and by Context
• User acceptance criteria for AAL
• GDPR requirements of AAL solutions
• Best practices for interdisciplinary collaborations between law, IT, care and/or sociology
• Awareness and understanding of context-specific ethical, legal, privacy and societal issues

Submission guidelines

Accepted papers will be presented at the conference and will appear in the conference proceedings. For the accepted papers, at least one author must register as the presenter by the early registration deadline to be included in the proceedings.

Please follow the guidelines provided by the conference when preparing your contribution. The expected length of the paper is 3 -10 pages, including references. Each contribution will be reviewed on the basis of originality, significance, clarity, soundness, relevance and technical content.

All authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to MDPI Technologies Journal’s Topical Collection for free of charge.

For inquiries about paper submission please write to petra-workshop@goodbrother.eu.

Important dates

• Paper Submission Deadline: March 21, 2022
• Notification of acceptance: April 18, 2022
• Camera ready: April 29, 2022
• Workshop date: To be determined (conference dates are June 29 – July 1, 2022)

Invited speakers

To be confirmed

Organising committee

• Martin Kampel, Computer Vision Lab, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• Sara Colantonio, Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy, Italy
• Francisco Florez-Revuelta, University of Alicante, Spain
• Irene Ballester, Computer Vision Lab, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Program committee

• Blerim Rexha, University of Pristina, Kosovo
• Markus Gall: Cogvis Gmbh, Austria
• Hilda Tellioglu, Technical University Vienna, Austria

Registration

For the accepted papers, at least one author must register as the presenter by the early registration deadline to be included in the proceedings. More information can be found on the main conference website.

Venue

Corfu Holiday Palace

Corfu Holiday Palace will be the conference venue and the official PETRA 2022 hotel. The 5-star Hotel Corfu Holiday Palace, is the only hotel in Corfu island with a direct view to the famous landmark of the island, Pontikonissi, and the monastery of Mary of Vlachernes, just 4km away from the old town of Corfu (UNESCO historical monument), built in Kanoni, in a 45,000 square meters area, on a peninsula which has been characterized as one of particular natural beauty with pine trees, cypresses, eucalyptuses and a magical beach with green-blue waters.

Corfu

Corfu (also known as Kerkyra) is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, and it is the second largest of the Ionian Islands. Corfu is among the most beautiful and popular islands of the country. Due to its strong historical connection with Europe, this was among the first Greek islands to open to tourism. Located on the north western side of the country, Corfu Island has a cosmopolitan feeling combined with a special traditional character.

21st International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing

24 May 2022, Lecce, Italy

It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and current economic context. The current COVID-19 pandemic is stressing out this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. In this respect, AAL applications based on computer cision, multimedia data processing and understanding, and machine intelligence present several advantages in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, camera sensors are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance that other wearable sensors may cause to people’s activities. In addition to that, a single camera can monitor most of the activities performed in aroom, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring activities, movements, and overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters (e.g., heart rate, respiratory rate). Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information that this technology conveys and the intimate setting where it may be deployed in. Therefore, solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and design as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. This workshop aims to give forum for contributions presenting and discussing image- and video-based AAL applications, projects and research as well as initiatives proposing ethical and privacy-aware solutions.

This workshop is organised by the GoodBrother COST Action (CA19121) on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living.

Topics

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, unobtrusive and user-friendly image- and video-based AAL solutions for:

• Lifelogging and self-monitoring
• Remote monitoring of vital signs
• Emotional state recognition
• Food intake monitoring
• Human activity and behaviour recognition
• Personal and daily-life assistance
• Gesture recognition
• Fall detection and prevention
• Mobility assessment and frailty recognition
• Cognitive and motor rehabilitation

Submission guidelines

Accepted papers will be included in the ICIAP 2021 proceedings, which will be published by Springer as Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Please follow the guidelines provided by Springer when preparing your contribution. The maximum number of pages is 10 + 2 pages for references. Each contribution will be reviewed on the basis of originality, significance, clarity, soundness, relevance and technical content.

For inquiries about paper submission please write to iciap-workshop@goodbrother.eu.

Once accepted, the presence of at least one author at the event and the oral presentation of the paper are expected.

Important dates

• Paper Submission Deadline: March 31, 2022 (Deadline extended)
• Notification of acceptance: April 08, 2022
• Camera ready: April 21, 2022
• Workshop date: May 24, 2022

Invited speakers

To be confirmed

Organising committee

• Sara Colantonio, Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy, Italy
• Francisco Florez-Revuelta, University of Alicante, Spain
• Martin Kampel, Computer Vision Lab, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• Peter Pocta, Department of Multimedia and Information-Communication Technology, University of Zilina, Slovakia

Program committee

• Slavisa Aleksic, Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, Germany
• Kenneth Camilleri, Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Systems and Control Engineering, Malta
• Pau Climent-Pérez, Universidad de Alicante, Spain
• Stefania Cristina, University of Malta
• Galidiya Petrova, TU Sofia, Bulgaria
• Nina Hosseini Kivanani, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
• Maria Jose Santofimia, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
• Eftim Zdravevski, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia

Registration

Each accepted paper must be covered by at least one author registered.

Registration can be for:

• the FULL event (5 days) at a REGULAR rate (whether the attending author is a student or not); or
• just for Workshops/Tutorials (2 days) depending on the willingness of the registrant to also attend the main conference or not.

More information can be found on the main conference website.

Venue

Convitto Palmieri

The former Convitto Palmieri hosts once again the Bernardini Provincial Library, as a partial result of a general recovery project that aims to create a large cultural hub serving the city of Lecce. The Convitto, as it appears today, is the result of demolitions and reconstructions carried out in different periods of time, even after centuries, as often happened for religious and convent buildings.

Lecce

Lecce is a historic city in southern Italy, the capital of the province of Lecce, the second largest province in the region by population, as well as one of the most important cities in Apulia. It is the main city of the Salento peninsula, a sub-peninsula at the heel of Italy, and is over 2000 years old. For the rich Baroque architectural monuments in the city, Lecce is commonly nicknamed “The Florence of the South”. The city also has a long traditional affinity with Greek culture dating back to its foundation. Lecce is an important agricultural center, mainly for the production of olive oil and wine, as well as an industrial center specialized in the producation of ceramics. Lecce is home to the University of Salento.