The First International Conference on Human-Machine Interaction and Coexistence
Porto, Portugal
June 7 - 11, 2026
This event will be held in hybrid mode, with both on site and remote options.
Submission:
February 12, 2026
Notification:
April 2, 2026
Registration:
April 15, 2026
Camera Ready:
April 28, 2026
Submission deadline: February 12, 2026
- At a Glance
Nowadays, intelligent systems continue to spread through human spaces, either digital, physical, and social. As a result, the nature of human-machine interactions has evolved from isolated transactions to a rich, dynamic, and adaptive coexistence. This new paradigm of interaction demands more than just being user-friendly or efficient; it requires trust, transparency, empathy, and ethical alignment. Machines are more than tools; they are partners, assistants, and, sometimes, autonomous decision-makers, integrated into both critical and everyday environments.
Conference Chairs
Prof. Dr.
Gerhard Hube
Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany
Prof. Dr. rer. nat.
Claudia Heß
IU Internationale Hochschule, Germany
Advisory Board
(to be announced)
Participate
If you want to get involved beyond submitting an article, please consider organizing a workshop, a thematic session, or a demo. Details are available on the Event Satellites page.
- Call For Papers
Nowadays, intelligent systems continue to spread through human spaces, either digital, physical, and social. As a result, the nature of human-machine interactions has evolved from isolated transactions to a rich, dynamic, and adaptive coexistence. This new paradigm of interaction demands more than just being user-friendly or efficient; it requires trust, transparency, empathy, and ethical alignment. Machines are more than tools; they are partners, assistants, and, sometimes, autonomous decision-makers, integrated into both critical and everyday environments. This conference explores the frontiers of human-machine interaction and the conditions for the emergence of meaningful and sustainable coexistence. From “human-in-the-loop” systems to
affective interfaces, from multimodal communication to embodied agents, the event invites contributions reflecting both scientific rigor and an appreciation of the socio-technical complexities involved. The goal is to advance our understanding of the design, evaluation, and governance of systems that learn from, adapt to, and support human users in diverse contexts.
The influence of AI, robotics, and immersive technologies introduces new possibilities and challenges. As machines become capable of interpreting emotions, responding to natural language, or sharing physical spaces, the boundaries between autonomy, control, and collaboration must be carefully rethought. This requires an interdisciplinary approach, connecting engineering, cognitive science, design, ethics, and policy, to shape interactions that are not only functional but also respecting human values and society expectations.
Professionals from industry, government, and academia, researchers, engineers, practitioners, and students are invited to contribute. HMICO welcomes 1) full papers presenting significant research, development, application, position, or survey, 2) short papers on work-in-progress, 3) posters, 4) contributed talk presentations, as well as workshops, thematic sessions, and demos.
Prospective authors are invited to submit original, unpublished works, which are not under review in any other conference or journal. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following.
Topics
- Cognitive models for human-machine collaboration
- Human factors in interactive system design
- Formal theories of interaction
- Adaptive and user-centered interface design
- Human error modeling and conflict mitigation
- Embodied interaction and spatial cognition
- Feedback loops and attention modeling
- Multi-sensory integration in interfaces
- Measuring usability and interaction efficiency
- Trust and transparency in interactive systems
- Human-guided decision-making processes
- Interactive machine learning and feedback
- Human-AI teaming in complex systems
- Real-time control with human oversight
- Risk-aware adaptive autonomy
- Task delegation and switching dynamics
- Transparency vs. cognitive overload
- Cooperative vs. competitive AI agents
- Dynamic roles allocation and responsibility ownership
- Boundary conditions for human override
- Simulation of human feedback in learning
- Human–robot collaboration (shared tasks)
- Human–agent interaction (AI-powered assistants and service agents)
- Human–avatar engagement (immersive and metaverse spaces)
- Human–persona interaction (digital identities and personality)
- Human–drone coordination (piloting, situational awareness, etc.)
- Human–vehicle communication (dedicated interfaces).
- Human–swarm interaction (multi-agent or multi-robot systems)
- Human–digital twin collaboration (decision and simulation)
- Human–AI teaming (cognitive and generative systems)
- Human–body network interaction (pervasive sensing)
- Human–cyber-physical coexistence in virtual–physical infrastructures
- Human–hologram interaction in collaborative projections
- Interaction understandability and role sharing
- Explainable AI in human-facing systems
- Mental models of machine behavior
- Trust calibration and erosion
- Visual and verbal explanations
- Interpretable decision boundaries
- User perception of probabilistic outputs
- Social implications of opacity in automation
- Faithful vs. plausible explanations
- Metrics for explainability and human trust
- Skills-oriented adaptive interpretability and explainability
- Dynamic user-adaptive explanation generation
- Affective computing for interactive systems
- Emotion detection via sensors and facial cues
- Emotion-aware robot behavior
- Empathy simulation in conversational agents
- Emotional alignment and conflict resolution
- Multimodal emotion fusion and response
- Affective feedback in virtual environments
- Emotion-aware decision systems
- Ethical implications of affective manipulation
- Cultural variability in emotional cues
- Voice-based command and dialog systems
- Natural language understanding in HMI
- Gesture-based interaction for control systems
- Multimodal fusion (speech, gaze, touch)
- Emotion in speech and gesture input
- Human-machine interaction via sign language
- Wearables and ambient input channels
- Context-aware multimodal adaptation
- Personalization of input modalities
- Robustness to noise and ambiguity
- Physical safety and proximity constraints
- Socially acceptable robot behavior
- Embodied agents in public and private spaces
- Human-robot joint task execution
- Long-term cohabitation and adaptation
- Perception of autonomy and control
- Assistive and service robot behavior modeling
- Learning from demonstration and imitation
- Motion planning with human intent awareness
- Ethical boundaries in physical coexistence
- HMI in immersive and extended reality (XR)
- Embodiment and presence in virtual agents
- Shared spaces between humans and digital agents
- Haptic feedback and tactile augmentation
- Spatial audio and attention tracking
- Adaptive avatars for cognitive alignment
- Simulation of social presence in AR/VR
- Safety and realism in mixed-reality HMI
- Cognitive and perceptual fatigue in XR
- Multi-user collaborative interfaces
- Mechanisms for dynamic persona adaptation in AI-driven interfaces
- Real-time avatar rendering with emotional and behavioral cues
- Cross-platform identity continuity and authentication for avatars
- Cultural sensitivity modeling in digital persona design
- Multi-modal input fusion for expressive avatar control
- AI-driven personalization of virtual identities in collaborative environments
- Privacy-preserving techniques for avatar–persona interaction logs
- Adaptive trust calibration based on persona behavior consistency
- Human factors in avatar realism vs. stylization trade-offs
- Long-term co-evolution of user and avatar in persistent environments
- Ethics, Trust, and Governance of Personas and Avatars
- Human dignity and autonomy in HMI
- Moral agency in AI and robots
- Consent and awareness in passive interaction
- Manipulative vs. persuasive system behavior
- Human-machine identity and dependency
- Regulation of emotional or behavioral influence
- Coexistence in labor and economic systems
- Cultural dimensions of HMI acceptance
- Rights and responsibilities of autonomous systems
- Societal expectations and responsibility gap
- Continual learning from user behavior
- Personalization through interaction history
- Mutual adaptation in long-term use
- Active learning with user steering
- User model evolution and drift
- Reinforcement learning with human feedback
- Calibration of learning rates and intervention
- User-aware error recovery and correction
- Human-tuned objective functions
- Coevolution of human expectations and machine strategies
- Human-machine teams in critical domains (health, defense, space)
- Interaction in assistive technologies
- Human-AI interfaces in education and training
- Augmented work and factory coexistence
- Interaction in smart homes and cities
- Wearables for cognitive and physical assistance
- Codriving and shared control in vehicles
- Digital therapy and mental health apps
- Human-AI interaction in arts and creativity
- Multi-agent systems in public service
Instructions for Authors
For more information on the submission process, please consult The Detailed Instructions for Authors.
To submit your work to this event:
- Scientific Board
(to be announced)
- Submit an Article
Before submitting, please consult The Detailed Instructions for Authors.
To submit your work to this event:
- Event Satellites
If you are interested in organizing a workshop, a thematic session, or a demo within the program of this conference, we are looking forward to hearing from you.
The details for what this entails are available at Event Satellites. The contact information on that page will serve as the starting point with someone ready to answer any questions you may have and to help set up the required logistics.
- Camera Ready
Prepare the camera-ready following these guidelines:
- Ensure the paper is formatted according to the IEEE formatting template. See https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates
- Consider all the comments from the reviewers that were sent with your acceptance notification email.
- Do NOT include page numbers or any copyright information.
- The length is 6 pages of text (including figures and references) in the standard IEEE two-column format above, with the possibility of 2 extra pages.
The camera ready site will be ready in time for notification.
- Registration
The registration site will be open at the same time as the notification date.
Details about the registration process are available on the Registration page.
- Publication
All accepted and registered papers (full papers and short/work in progress papers), regardless of presentation mode, will be published in the conference Proceedings under an ISBN reference and included in the Digital Library.
Proceedings: DRT Society Press
Library: DTR Society Digital Library
Accepted and registered Posters and Contributed Talks, regardless of presentation mode, will be posted on the conference webpage.
- Presentation
All accepted and registered contributions are allotted a presentation slot of 25 minutes in the conference program.
We encourage everyone to attend the conference and present in person, but we recognize that this may not always be feasible. Authors who are unable to attend physically have the option to send their presentation slides in advance to be posted online. If a prerecorded presentation video is provided, it will also be made available.
Authors who will present in person at the conference location also have the option to send their presentation slides to be posted.
The in-person sessions from the conference location will not be streamed.
For additional instructions on preparing the presentation slides and optional video, please see the Presentations page.
- Peer Review
Methodology
All submissions are peer reviewed by three or more reviewers, and evaluated based on relevance, technical content, originality, competence, significance, and presentation.
Reviewers are asked to offer constructive feedback to help the authors improve their work, regardless of whether the submission is accepted or rejected.
Reviewers are expected to adhere to our Conduct Policies.
Notification
Notification of acceptance or rejection will be issued by the evaluation system and sent to the contact author email address.
Rebuttal
Authors have a period for rebuttal of one week after notification. A rebuttal can be filed by contacting us along with the relevant data (conference name, submission number, and reason for rebuttal)
All rebuttals are answered, and the decisions are final.
- Indexing
All 2026 events are first events in their series. Indexing is planned when the events get mature and solid in terms of number of contributions and content within the coming years.
The enhanced visibility of all publications is the scientific target of the DTR Society. The proceeding will be submitted to various indexes like Google Scholar, SCOPUS, DBLP, PubMed, HCIBib, EI-Compendex, etc.
- Conference Venue
The conference will take place at:
Hotel Novotel Porto Gaia
Rua Martir Sao Sebastiao, Afurada,
4400-499 Vila Nova de Gaia
Phone: +351 22 772 8700
Email: h1050@accor.com
A group registration form will be available.
For more information about the conference venue, please consult the Hotel Novotel Porto Gaia page we have put together.
- Touristic Information
For places to visit around the conference location, please consult the Porto touristic information page.
- Program
| Location Hotel Novotel Porto Gaia Day 1: Sunday, June 7 |
||
| Time | Conference Room #1 | |
| 12:00 – End of Day | Participant Registration | |
| Invited Speeches | ||
| 19:00 – 20:00 | Welcome Reception | |
| Day 2: Monday, June 8 | ||
| Time | Conference Room #1 | Conference Room #2 |
| 09:15 – 09:30 | Opening Remarks | |
| 09:30 – 10:30 | Invited Speech | |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Morning Break | |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch | |
| 14:00 – 15:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Afternoon Break | |
| 16:00 – 17:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| 20:00 – 22:00 | Social Dinner | |
| Day 3: Tuesday, June 9 | ||
| Time | Conference Room #1 | Conference Room #2 |
| 09:30 – 10:30 | Invited Speech | |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Morning Break | |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch | |
| 14:00 – 15:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Afternoon Break | |
| 16:00 – 17:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| Day 4: Wednesday, June 10 | ||
| Time | Conference Room #1 | Conference Room #2 |
| 09:30 – 10:30 | Invited Speech | |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Morning Break | |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch | |
| 14:00 – 15:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Afternoon Break | |
| 16:00 – 17:30 | Presentations Session | Presentations Session |
| Day 5: Thursday, June 11 | ||
| Time | Conference Room #1 | |
| 09:30 – 10:30 | Invited Speech | |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Morning Break | |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | Presentations Session | |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch | |
| 14:00 – 15:30 | Presentations Session | |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Closing Remarks | |