Connectionists: CFP FUTURE INTERNET Special Issue: "Making Sense of Machine Senses: Signal Understanding beyond Computer Vision in Next-Generation Internet Applications"

[Stefano Rovetta]

FUTURE INTERNET
Special Issue: "Making Sense of Machine Senses: Signal Understanding  
beyond Computer Vision in Next-Generation Internet Applications"
Deadline: 31 march 2023

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/futureinternet/special_issues/1W7143A802

While the prominent role of computer vision is clearly evident in  
machine learning applications, other artificial sensory modalities  
have seen notable progress in recent years. For instance, “machine  
listening” has attained a high level of accuracy, either for speech  
signals or other types of audio signals, with applications such as  
speech recognition, first and foremost, but also voice emotion  
recognition, audio surveillance and event detection. Of apparently  
more limited interest, but actually with very promising development  
potential, also artificial touch (currently mainly applied in  
robotics) and artificial nose (for gas sensing) have recently  
experienced interesting advances.

Development in the area of artificial senses, combined with the  
diffusion of high-speed and low-latency networks, may potentially pave  
the way to a whole generation of new networked devices and distributed  
applications that are more immersive, empathic and environment-aware,  
possibly based on entirely novel interaction paradigms. Most tasks,  
however, require mining knowledge from signals which, at some or all  
levels, lack clear and manageable models. For instance, while the  
problem of modelling speech is reasonably solved, the problem of  
modelling voice emotion (either for prosodic synthesis or for  
recognition) is largely open, as well as subject to contextual  
influences. Due to these issues, it is no wonder that computational  
intelligence and machine learning, especially deep neural networks,  
represent the most common approach in this area.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions on advances in the  
technology of artificial senses for internet applications, in the form  
of methodological advancements, theory, or new data collections.  
Topics include advanced and future applications and technologies, made  
possible by the evolution of the Internet, that revolve around (for  
instance): analysis and understanding of speech, environmental audio  
and sound; touch sense and related technologies (e.g., whiskers and  
proximity sensing); artificial noses and taste sensors; without  
excluding possible other technologies. However, emphasis should be  
given to the tasks of understanding and making sense of the incoming  
artificial sensory signals, as well as possibly on synthesis and  
generation, rather than on the sensor technologies themselves.  
Application areas may include personal assistants, event detection,  
scene analysis and object recognition, surveillance, human–computer  
interaction, prosthetics, computer-assisted and autonomous driving,  
crowd management, smart houses and appliances, among others.

Guest Editor: Stefano Rovetta
Department of Computer Science Robotics and Systems Engineering,  
University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy