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THE 2021 COGAIN SYMPOSIUM

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Website: https://cogain2021.cogain.org Where: Stuttgart, Germany (virtually) When: May 25-27, 2021, as part of ETRA 2021 (https://etra.acm.org/2021/)

Important dates (Anywhere on Earth): Short Papers due: Feb 20, 2021 Position Papers due: March 8th, 2021 Notifications: Mar 15, 2021 Camera-ready: Mar 30, 2021

# CALL FOR PAPERS

The Symposium on Communication by Gaze Interaction organized by the COGAIN Association (http://cogain.org/) will be co-located with ETRA 2021 (https://etra.acm.org/2021/), the ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications. ETRA 2021 will take place (virtually) in Stuttgart, Germany, from May 25th to the 27th.

Founded in 2008 as a continuation of the COGAIN Project (a network of excellence supported by the European Commission’s IST 6th framework program from 2004 to 2009), the COGAIN Association aims to promote research and development in the field of gaze-based interaction in computer-aided communication and control.

The COGAIN Symposium will be co-located with ETRA 2021. By combining our efforts with ETRA, we hope to encourage a broader exchange of knowledge and experiences amongst eye tracking communities of researchers, developers, manufacturers, and users.

# SPECIAL SESSION: FUTURE OF GAZE-BASED ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

This year a special session is dedicated to the opportunities and challenges of gaze-based assistive technologies of the future. The advent of mobile computing devices and technologies such as VR and AR has increased the availability of eye tracking in many environments beyond the desktop. Research in this area has already demonstrated gaze-based interactions in smart home environments, mobile robotics, and e.g. wheelchairs or prostheses control. Thus, gaze-based assistive technologies have the potential to help people interact with various types of machines in everyday situations. We want to bring together people working towards this vision and foster this community. For the COGAIN Symposium 2021 we are particularly interested in position papers addressing these opportunities and challenges.

# GENERAL TOPICS OF INTEREST

The COGAIN workshop focuses on all those aspects of gaze interaction which have a connection with eye-controlled assistive technology. Thanks to its strong identity, the symposium will be the right venue to present advances in these areas, leading to new capabilities in gaze interaction, gaze enhanced applications, gaze contingent devices, etc. Unless the main focus is on assistive technology, the authors must clearly state how the paper advances or is linked to eye-controlled assistive technology. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Eye-typing * Gaze-contingent devices * Gaze-enhanced games * Gaze-controlled robots and vehicles * Gaze interaction with mobile devices * Gaze-controlled smart-home devices * Gaze interfaces for wearable computing * Gaze interaction in 3D (VR/AR/MR & real world) * Gaze interaction paradigms * Usability and UX evaluation of gaze-based interfaces * User context estimation from eye movements * Gaze-supported multimodal interaction (gaze with multitouch, mouse, gesture, etc.)

# SUBMISSIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

One half of the COGAIN Symposium is dedicated to presentations and a discussion about the future of gaze-based assistive technologies, aimed at community building. Late-breaking research results are put forward in the second half of the symposium. As ETRA 2021 is a virtual event, presentations are expected to take place as pre-recorded videos to ensure high-level delivery and allow for asynchronous participation.

We invite authors to prepare and submit papers following ETRA’s ACM format (http://etra.acm.org/2021/submissionprocess.html). For COGAIN, we are accepting Short Papers until February 20th and Position Papers until March 8th.

Short Papers can be up to 8 pages (single-column format, not counting references), and Position Papers up to 4 pages (single-column format, not counting references), can be submitted through PCS: https://new.precisionconference.com/etra (select the COGAIN track from the drop down list).

The Short Paper submissions are reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. All accepted Short papers will be published in ETRA’s short paper proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. We expect at least one author per submission to register for the conference.

# ORGANIZATION

General co-chairs: – Carolin Hainke (University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany) – Thies Pfeiffer (University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany) – Sarah Yeo

Program co-chairs: – Ken Pfeuffer (Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany) – Augusto Esteves (ITI/LARSyS, University of Lisbon, Portugal)

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Please visit http://cogain2021.cogain.org/ for more information or contact us by email to cogain2021@cogain.org

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