Organizers: Mohamad Eid and AbdelwahabHamam

The deadline for this special session has been extended to 20 March 2015.

Instructions for authors submitting a paper to a special session:

After submitting your paper, please inform the organizers of the special session by email. Please also send an email to the special session co-chairs (katrien.demoor@item.ntnu.no / fliegek@fel.cvut.cz) containing the title of your paper and the session to which you have submitted a paper.

Motivation and objectives

Haptics technology has changed the way humans interact with computers and each other via computers. Incorporating the sense of touch into human computer interaction has opened a new era of interactive applications ranging from medical simulations and rehabilitation to entertainment and social interaction. What remains obscure is the experience the users undergo when incorporating the haptic modality in multimedia systems. Quality of Experience (QoE) is an evaluation metric from the user’s perspective that has received limited attention from the research community. Assessing the QoE of haptic applications reflects the overall user satisfaction and the value-added when incorporating haptic modality, in addition to opening doors for an ideal user-centric design. The objective of this Special Session is to bring together researchers and practitioners involved in haptics research. We invite contributions in the following areas:

  • Quality of Experience models for haptic interactions
  • Assessment of kinesthetic and/or tactile hapticsQoE
  • Perceptual, physiological, and psychological measures for haptic QoE
  • Haptic QoE and usability analysis
  • Haptic QoE and Quality of Service (QoS)
  • Rendering quality and haptic QoE
  • QoE for haptic multimodal applications
  • Haptic QoE immersive applications
  • Evaluation methods for Haptic QoE, including fatigue analysis
  • Haptic QoE and emotional reactions, including measurement of emotions and arousal reactions

We encourage contributions in terms of both short and regular papers, and we intend to find a special format for their presentation, depending on the number and type of contributions we receive. All submitted papers will be subject to the same review process as regular papers to ensure quality.

Short biography of the organizers:

Mohamad Eid (mohamad.eid@nyu.edu) received the PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 2010. He is currently an assistant professor of electrical engineering in at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He was previously a teaching and research associate at the University of Ottawa from June 2008 until April 2012. He is the co-author of the book: “Haptics Technologies: Bringing Touch to Multimedia”, Springers 2011, the co-chair of the 3rd International IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Services and Technologies for E-health (MUST-EH 2013), technical chair for the Haptic-Audio-Visual Environment and Gaming (HAVE) workshop in 2013. He is the recipient of the best paper award of DS-RT 2008 conference and the prestigious ACM Multimedia 2009 Grand Challenge Most Entertaining Award for “HugMe: Synchronous Haptic Teleconferencing” System. He has more than 70 conference and journal papers and 4 patents. His academic interests include Multimedia haptics, affective haptics, and tangible human computer interaction for assistive living. See my Google Scholar profile: Google Scholar Profile).

Abdelwahab Hamam (ahamam@immersion.com) received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 2013. His PhD thesis is entitled Quality of Experience Evaluation for Haptic Multimedia Applications. He is currently a postdoctoral research scientist at Immersion in Montreal, Canada focusing in research and development ofnovel haptic technologies and interactions. He was previously a teaching and research assistant at the University of Ottawa from Jan 2005 to May 2013. He has more than 25 academic papers and pending patent applications. His Google Scholar Profile can be located at this location: A. Hamam Google Scholar Profile. His research interests include haptic applications, medical simulations, and quality of experience for multimedia haptics.