An international workshop on Processing Sensory Information for Proactive Systems (PSIPS 2004) will be arranged in Oulu, Finland, on June 14-15, 2004. Oulu is a well-known high-technology city in North Finland, situated not far from the Arctic Circle. This is the fifth in the series of machine vision and media processing workshops supported by Infotech Oulu. The workshop is also supported by the Finnish Artificial Intelligence Society and Pattern Recognition Society of Finland.

Proactive computing is a new area of research, in which the goal is to develop systems that can adapt and adjust to the user's movements and actions without requiring any conscious control. It can be seen as the next significant step in development from the current phase of user-oriented information technology, which is based on interaction between man and machine. A three-year research program on proactive computing was recently begun in Finland, financed by the Academy of Finland.

Capability to understand human actions is mandatory for any proactive computing solution. For instance, knowledge of whether a person is sitting, standing, or walking is likely to matter as well as how he is using his hands, which way he is facing, and whether he is talking. Based on this kind of information the environment may adapt to the activities and provide desired responses to relevant events (see, for example, http://www.ee.oulu.fi/research/imag/proact).

The aim of this workshop is to provide a forum for presenting recent research results and for discussing how to support application development. The program of the workshop includes plenary presentations by leading experts and contributed papers describing recent progress in this field. The papers presented in the workshop will be published in the workshop proceedings.

This workshop focuses on methods, sensors, and networks to view and interprets the scene and human activities in proactive systems. Contributions are expected from, but not limited to the following areas:

• context recognition
• human detection and recognition
• analysis of events and human actions
• sensory signal analysis
• computer vision
• sensor solutions
• system architectures

• Deadline for extended summary (>1000 words): February 16, 2004
• Notification of acceptance: March 24, 2004 (Revised)
• Deadline for camera-ready copy: May 15, 2004
• Deadline for early registration: May 15, 2004

Prof. James L. Crowley, Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France
Prof. Carlo Regazzoni, University of Genoa, Italy
Prof. Martti Mäntylä, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland

Extended summary (>1000 words) should be submitted electronically via the conference web site (http://www.psips2004.oulu.fi).

Some financial support for the foreign participants presenting a paper in the workshop is available on request. A free form application should be addressed to Minna Rautio (minna.rautio@ee.oulu.fi) by March 31, 2004.