Symbiotic 2015 - 4th international workshop on symbiotic interaction

The 4th International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction was held in Berlin on the 7th and 8th of October 2015, chaired by Prof. Benjamin Blankertz (Technische Universität Berlin) and Prof. Giulio Jacucci (University of Helsinki), both partners in the MindSee project.

Since 2012, Symbiotic has been focusing on the symbiotic relationships between humans and computers as well as novel advancements therein. The idea of symbiotic systems put forward in this year's workshop capitalises on the computers’ ability to implicitly (even subliminally) detect the users goals and psycho-physiological states and thereby enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI) without subducting control from the human.

The workshop was opened with a tutorial of the software MIDAS,  to provide a hands-­on session in which participants were introduced to online analysis of psychophysiological signals. It continued with a Keynote speech by Fabio Babiloni on "Brain computer interfaces for the industrial application of cognitive neuroscience" and concluded with a rich poster session. On the second day, Professor Peter Desain opened the workshop with a Keynote speech titled "Broad Band Evoked Potentials, the advantage of a model-driven BCI"  and continued with a number of talks from researchers of variuos institutions, closed by a panel discussion.

In line with the previous thrree events, the workshop aimed at promoting the exchange of scientific experiences in designing symbiotic systems, studying the way in which they affect human behaviour and defining the principles for a functional interdependence of humans and machines, with a special focus on physiological computing approaches, e.g. using brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.  

All papers and posters accepted and showcased during the workshop (peer-reviewed) will be available in a  proceeding published by Springer in Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

Given the growing relevance and interest gathered, it has been announced that the Symbiotic Workshop series will continue in 2016! See you all in Padova, Italy on September 29-30!