IEEE Smart World Technical Committee
Task Force on "User-Centred Smart Systems"


Task Force Chair

Liming Chen, De Montfort University, UK
Liming Chen is Professor of Computer Science, Head of the Context, Intelligence and Interaction Research Group and its associated Smart Lab. in the School of Computer Science and Informatics, De Montfort University, UK. He obtained his B.Eng. and M.Eng. from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, and Ph.D in Artificial Intelligence from De Montfort University. His current research interests include activity modelling and recognition, computational behaviour analysis, personalisation and adaptation of human-machine systems, decision support, smart environments and their application in smart homes and ambient assisted living. He is currently the coordinator of the EU Horizon2020 ACROSSING project and was the principal investigator for the EU FP7 MICHELANGELO project, EU AAL PIA and MobileSage projects and many other projects funded by industry and third countries. Liming has over 170 peer-reviewed publications in high-profile journals and conferences. He is the general chair or program chair for IEEE UIC2017, IEEE HealthCom2017, SAI Computing 2017, IEEE UIC2016, IntelliSys2016, MoMM2015/2014/2013, SAI2015/2013, IWAAL2014, UCAMI2013, and an organising chair for many workshops, associate editor of IEEE THMS, assistant EIC for IJPCC and guest editors for IEEE THMS, PMC and IJDSN. Liming is a member of IEEE, IEEE SMC and the ETTC Task Force on Smart World, and an expert of the EU H2020 evaluation panel and UK EPSRC Peer Review College, and also the research councils of the Netherlands and Chile. He has delivered around 20 keynotes, public talks and seminars in various forums, conferences, industry and academic events.


Task Force Vice-Chair

Jan Alexandersson, DFKI GmbH, Germany
Dr Jan Alexandersson is Research Fellow at the department of Intelligent User Interfaces at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI GmbH, head of the DFKI Competence Center for Ambient Assisted Living, President of the OpenURC Alliance, and CEO of ki elements, a startup focusing on assessing neurocognitive disorders by advanced analysis of spoken language. He has published around 100 peer-reviewed articles, papers and edited volumes on a wide range of topics including natural language processing, multimodal interaction, personalization and accessibility, security issues in smart homes & smart energy scenarios, early detection of diseases. Dr Alexandersson has acted as principal investigator in a wide range of domestic (German) and international (EU) R&D projects and is frequently serving the research communities by his membership in scientific and program committees.

Wenbing Zhao, Cleveland State University, USA
Dr. Zhao is a Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Cleveland State University. He earned his Ph.D. at University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002. Dr. Zhao has been doing research on smart and connected health since 2010. He has over 160 peer-reviewed publications and a research monograph on building dependable distributed systems, and a US patent (pending) on privacy-aware human activity tracking. He has served on several US National Science Foundation (NSF) panels for the smart and connected health, and the smart and autonomous systems programs. Dr. Zhao’s research has been funded by the US NSF, US Department of Transportation, Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, Ohio Department of Higher Education, and Ohio Development Services Agency. He has delivered more than 10 keynotes, tutorials, public talks and demonstrations in various conferences, industry and academic venues. Dr. Zhao is a senior IEEE member, and is a member of the IEEE SMC TC on Cybermatics for Cyber-enabled Worlds.

Huansheng Ning, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China
Huansheng Ning is a Professor and Associate Dean of School of University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB), Founder and Chair of Cybermatics and Cyberspace International Science and Technology Cooperation Base, Co-founder and Vice Chair of Beijing Engineering Research Center for Cyberspace Data Analysis and Applications. IEEE Computer Society Golden Core Member Award，IEEE Senior Member. Co-Founder and Co-Chair of IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society Technical Committee on Cybermatics , Vice Chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Emergent Technologies Technical Committee Task Force on Smart Word. IEEE Internet of Things Journal Steering Committee Member, Associate Editor of IEEE Systems Journal and IEEE Internet of Things Journal. Host and Executive Chair of the 2013 World Cybermatics Congress (www.china-iot.net) and the 2015 SmartWorld Congress (www.cybermatics.org); Steering Committee Member of IEEE international conference on Internet of Things (iThings), Co-Founder and Steering Co-Chair of IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing (CBDCom), and IEEE International Conference on Internet of People (IoP).


Committee Members:


IEEE Smart World Technical Committee Task Force on User-Centred Smart Systems


Introduction

With the rapid development, maturity and prevalence of the latest emerging technologies such as advanced sensing, mobile computing, the Internet of Things, pervasive computing, computational intelligence, deep learning, big data analytics, smart objects/device and cloud computing, a new wave of applications which support context awareness, novel multimodal interactions, personalisation, adaptation, high-level automation, anywhere and anytime computing, have attracted increasing attention. Such applications, including these built upon the conception of smart homes, smart cities, intelligent transport, service robots, smart cyber-physical systems, to name but a few, will change the way we live, work, travel and do business, thus having the huge potential of impacting the society and economy. One of the central research areas among these underpinning research topics and enabling technologies is the science and engineering of user-centred smart systems which are concerned with, and support context awareness, personalisation, and adaptation. User-centred smart systems place special emphases on intelligence, including computational intelligence, interactive intelligence and cognitive intelligence, and co-design, co-development, user experience, accessibility and acceptability of technologies, systems and services, in particular in the envisioned future smart world environments. As a typical example, user-centred smart systems have been widely studied and used to support personalized care and medicine, just-in-time independent living, self-care and self-management, early risk detection and intervention.

Though research and technology development on user-centred smart systems, supported by the wide availability of affordable sensing and effective processing technologies, has been intensified over the last decade, it remains a challenge to develop and deploy user-centred smart systems that can handle daily life situations and support a wide range of use scenarios. User-centred smart systems need to be adaptive to the needs and wants of different cohorts of users, to the diverse natures and characteristics of operation environments, and interoperable for heterogeneous applications, thus enabling seamless technology integration and rapid application development. In addition, further research and development is needed for a service-oriented cloud-based system architecture that can support reconfiguration and modular design which is essential for reusability and scalability of such systems.

To establish the TF on User-Centred Smart Systems is a timely effort to help address the challenges faced by this core research area. The TF will provide a venue, opportunities and platform for academic researchers, industrial technology and solution developers, application service providers and users, to 1) disseminate and exchange the latest research outcomes, technologies and products; 2) share views, perspectives and visions; 3) establish consensus, alliances and joint efforts; 4) promote best practice, research translation and user experiences; and 5) further identify future trends and directions, with the ultimate purpose of promoting research, innovation and sustainable development to impact society and economy.


Aims

Scope

Activities within the above topical areas will focus on human-centred systems in smart healthcare, intelligent transport, smart cities and smart energy.


Planned Activities