Human-Centered Smart Systems and Technologies

Submission Deadline: 30 April 2018

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Human-Centered Smart Systems and Technologies.

In the past several years, we have seen dramatic advancement in many sectors enabled by the use of computing and networking technologies. This development has resulted in many emerging, highly multi-disciplinary research areas typically termed as “smart“ technologies, including smart-healthcare, smart-home, smart-grid, as well as smart vehicles and intelligent transportation systems. These new technologies are transforming our society and have enormous economic impact.

It is well known that smart technologies are typically made possible by network-enabled sensors/actuators and intelligent computational algorithms. We have seen extensive research on the sensing and algorithms aspects of smart technologies, which has resulted in the development of various exciting new smart systems that improve efficiency, reduce cost, and/or make our life much more convenient. However, the research on the human aspects of such systems is lacking. Most smart systems are designed to be used directly by humans (by non-engineers in particular), which we refer to as human-centered smart systems. For some systems, such as smart healthcare systems, the sensing/actuating target is human itself, which makes the problem even more interesting and challenging.

The research on human aspects is important for several reasons: (1) Smart systems must offer an intuitive human-computer interface. A non-intuitive human-computer interface would not only reduce the acceptance of smart systems, but increase the likelihood of misuse as well, which may have disastrous consequences (e.g., a patient could die if a medical system is misused). (2) Human beings are different, hence, human-centered smart systems must have the capability to adapt to different users. The one-size-fit-all approach will not work for human-centered systems. (3) Some smart systems require built-in human-in-the-loop control, such as air-traffic controls and autonomous driving systems, as well as some medical and healthcare systems. It is important to understand when to get a human operator involved and in what form. For medical systems in particular, alarm fatigue is a still a serious problem and an open research issue. (4) Some human-centered systems are intended to alter human behaviors (e.g., those are designed to make humans more active or more compliant to best practices in using body mechanics). We still lack understanding on how to make long-term changes to human behaviors using these smart systems.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Design and implementation of various human-centered smart systems
• Human-computer interface and interaction in human-centered smart systems
• Human-in-the-loop control
• Alert and alarm generation algorithms for human-centered smart systems
• Alert and alarm delivery mechanisms for human-centered smart systems
• Personalized feedback and intervention for human-centered smart systems
• Personalized healthcare and precision medicine
• Machine learning algorithms for personalized interface and decision making in human-centered systems
• The impact of social networks for human-centered smart systems
• Human subject or clinical trials for human-centered smart systems
• User behaviors in human-centered smart systems

We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility, downloads, and citations of articles.

Associate Editor: Wenbing Zhao, Cleveland State University, USA

Guest Editors:

1. Yonghong Peng, University of Sunderland, UK
2. Kun Hua, Lawrence Technological University, USA
3. Peng Shi, University of Science and Technology, China
4. Hongqiao Wang, Xi’an Research Institute of Hi-Tech, China

Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:

1. Intelligent Systems for the Internet of Things
2. Trends and Advances for Ambient Intelligence with Internet of Things Systems
3. Advances of Multisensory Services and Technologies for Healthcare in Smart Cities

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Michael Pecht, Professor and Director, CALCE, University of Maryland

Paper submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: specialsections@ieee.org