Proceedings of the 28th Annual European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics

Abstract

Hearty welcome! We hope that you will experience an informative, accessible, interactive and pleasant 28th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2010. In addition to the general and recurrent discussion of ongoing research, this year's conference will focus on "Caring technology for the future". Affective computing and persuasive technology have become core themes in our research area, with pioneers like Rosalind W. Picard and B.J. Fogg. New insights on these themes help to move from insensible computers towards caring technology, and to start creating synthetic companions, electronic partners or social robots. The Paro is a good example of this development, as will be presented in the keynote of Takanori Shibata. Such a seal robot can be used by end-users with specific needs for care, older adults and children. In his keynote, Panos Markopoulos will go into more detail on the development of interactive products for such children. The keynote of Brenda Wiederholt focuses on another type of caring technology: the treatment of anxiety, panic, phobias, and posttraumatic stress disorder with VR exposure and cognitive-behavioral therapy, in combination with objective physiological measurements. These keynotes show that our research area of cognitive ergonomics, human technology interaction and cognitive engineering continuously provides exciting new theoretical and practical challenges. Creative and sound multidisciplinary research and development initiatives are needed to meet these challenges. We were pleased to receive this year 41 submissions in the long paper category, 32 submissions in short paper category, 25 submissions in the posters and demonstration category, 9 submissions for the doctoral consortium, and 6 workshop proposals. Submissions in the long and short paper category have been reviewed by independent international reviewers and meta-reviewed by the category chairs. Submissions in the other categories were reviewed by the category chairs. These reviewers' reports were discussed in the conference committee meeting where the final decision was taken, considering both the scores given by the reviewers as their written comments. Of the 25 long papers and 16 short papers that will be presented at the conference 13 themes emerged.