HumanSys'26

HumanSys 2026

The 4th International Workshop on Human-Centered Sensing, Modeling, and Intelligent Systems

October 30, 2026 | Austin, Texas, USA

Co-located with ACM MobiCom 2026

Overview

HumanSys 2026 brings together researchers and practitioners working on sensing, models, and interactive systems that are designed around real human needs.

  • Human-centered sensing for health, behavior, activity, and context understanding
  • AI and statistical models that support human-in-the-loop decision making and adaptation
  • Systems, interfaces, and deployments evaluated in real-world environments with people

The workshop aims to create a focused venue for discussing methods, systems, and lessons learned across sensing, modeling, interaction design, and deployment.

Program

Friday, October 30, 2026 · Austin, Texas, USA

A single-track day of two keynotes, four technical sessions, and a poster session. Each oral presentation is 8 minutes followed by 2 minutes of Q&A; keynotes are 40-minute talks with 10 minutes for discussion.

2 Keynotes
23 Oral talks
10 Posters
4 Sessions

Morning

  1. 8:00–8:30 AM

    Arrival

    Tea, coffee, and continental breakfast

  2. 8:30–8:40 AM

    Welcome

    Opening remarks

  3. 8:40–9:30 AM

    Keynote

    Keynote 1

    40-minute talk + 10-minute Q&A

  4. 9:30–10:30 AM

    Session 1

    6 oral presentations · 8 min talk + 2 min Q&A

    1. HeadSense: Head Orientation Tracking for AI Wearables using Ultra-Wideband Ranging

      A. K. Agrawal, A. Dhekne, R. R. Choudhury

    2. ABreath: Bed-Frame-Mounted Vibration Sensing for Noise-Robust Abnormal Breathing Detection

      S. Yin, J. Zhang, L. Yang, Y. Rong, L. Qian, P. Zhang, J. Zhu

    3. Design and Characterization of an Energy-Aware Embedded System for On-Device Postural Muscle Profiling

      J. Reyes, R. Vargas, B. Sanchez, S. Rohal, S. Pan, X. Yu

    4. Comparing Self-Supervised Pretraining Methods and Transfer Configurations for Wrist ECG under Motion

      Y. Hu, Z. Jia, S. Chen, D. Kelly, M. Zhao, T. Chen, R. Liu, J. Nie

    5. RecoverRL: Reliability-Guided Reinforcement Learning for RFID-Based Heartbeat Waveform Recovery

      Y. Wang, C. Liu, D. Nguyen, H. Bai, Z. Jiao, S. Mao, X. Wang

    6. Optimizing the Duty Cycle in Smartwatches for Sleep Sensing

      T. Srivastava, V. Viswanath, Z. Yang, V. Nathan, J. Kuang

  5. 10:30–11:00 AM

    Break

    Coffee break

  6. 11:00 AM–12:10 PM

    Session 2

    7 oral presentations · 8 min talk + 2 min Q&A

    1. mmSketcher: Physics-Grounded and Editable Scenes for mmWave Human-Sensing Simulation

      S. Lu, T. Toha, S. Nirjon

    2. HERO: Human-Centered, Environment-Aware Optimization for Designing Gait Sensing Under Requirement Uncertainty

      A. Green, Y. Li, S. Billington, Y. Dong

    3. RadarAgent: Agentic Tool Utilization for Radar-to-Language Understanding

      S. He, Y. Gao, R. Nandakumar

    4. Generating Human Pose and Activity Videos from Wearable Ultra-Wideband Sensors

      T. Toha, Z. Wang, D. Jagadeesh, G. Zhang, T. Chen, S. Nirjon

    5. Open-World Continuous Human Activity Recognition with Novel Class Discovery

      J. Jiang, E. Thomaz

    6. CausalGait: Towards Personalized Gait Interpretation via Causality-Informed Knowledge Graphs

      M. Ma, M. Yang, K. Clewes, E. Lowe, J. Rose, Y. Dong

    7. Only Speaking FACTs: Foundation Models for Activity-Centric Timeline Description

      D. Lee, T. Patil, S. Pan, A. Weakley

  7. 12:10–12:15 PM

    Transition

    Announcements

12:15–1:30 PM

Lunch break

Afternoon

  1. 1:30–2:20 PM

    Keynote

    Keynote 2

    40-minute talk + 10-minute Q&A

  2. 2:20–3:30 PM

    Session 3

    7 oral presentations · 8 min talk + 2 min Q&A

    1. HumanSpeech-TeleOp: Human-in-the-Loop Edge-IoT Framework for Speech and LLM-Driven Robot Teleoperation and Object Detection

      H. Nambiappan, C. Song, A. Truong, F. Makedon

    2. HotRGB: Temperature Aware RGB-to-Thermal Training Data for Drive-by Urban People Detection

      T. Fernandez, Y. Chang, C. Codling, J. Zhang, J. Gersey, N. Sochocki, S. Ganti, J. Aggarwal, J. Ko, H. Noh, L. Junghans, P. Zhang

    3. FollowMe: Automating Precise Image Annotation Across Various Environments

      S. Xia, J. Du, C. Peng

    4. Evidence-Grounded Mapping of Multimodal Human Sensing to Psychological Transdiagnostic Dimensions

      X. Hu, X. Xue, Y. Lyu, H. Shao, J. Nie

    5. When Not to Diagnose: Evaluating Evidence-Sufficiency Recognition in ECG Multimodal Language Models with ECGTrustBench

      Q. Huang, J. Jiang, F. Syed, A. Riaz, Y. Chen, J. Nie

    6. GREAF: Graph-based Real-time Anomaly Detection via Forecasting for IoT-Enabled Indoor Spaces

      M. Tanvir, F. Irfan, R. Iqbal

    7. Will My Assistant Remember My Allergy? What Personal LLM Assistants Forget When Conversation Memory Is Compressed

      L. Zhu, Y. Lin, Y. Wang, Y. Liu, H. Li, Y. Chen

  3. 3:30–4:00 PM

    Break

    Coffee break and poster setup

  4. 4:00–4:50 PM

    Posters

    10 posters

    1. Vision: HomeLM for Ambient Intelligence in the Smart Home

      A. Agrawal

    2. Out-of-Clinic Measurement of Time-Domain Gait Parameters From Low-Frame-Rate Videos

      Y. Fu, Y. Luo, S. Ndiaye, C. Xu

    3. Harnessing Agent Capabilities to Integrate Human Demands into Energy Infrastructure Operations

      T. Zhou, J. Wen, J. Yang

    4. From Community Feedback to Measurement Redesign: Iterating mRehab for Accessible Home-Based Stroke Rehabilitation

      E. Liu, K. Dandapat, T. Master, A. Das, A. Gherardi, W. Bo, L. Cavuoto, S. Bhattachariya, H. Subryan, W. Ji, W. Xu

    5. Exploring Privacy Risks of Inertial Sensing on Wearable Rings: A Feasibility Study on Keystroke Classification

      C. Arvonen, N. Maldei-Stumm, A. Chatterjee, A. Jain, S. Sanghavi, E. Thomaz

    6. FocusSync: A Multisensory Audio–Visual–Haptic Stimulation System for Attention Support

      N. Anjum, C. Cao, C. Shultz, Y. Dong

    7. Contact-Free Continuous ABP Waveform Reconstruction via Triaxial Bodyseismography

      Y. Wu, Y. Zhang, Y. Zhang, J. Li, F. Dou, W. Song, H. Noh

    8. Separating Safety from Preference in Clinical LLM Evaluation

      K. Dandapat, T. Master, A. Das, W. Bo, M. Lei, E. Liu, L. Cavuoto, S. Bhattachariya, H. Subryan, W. Xu

    9. A Real-World Study of Sport-Based Support for Autism Spectrum Disorder

      H. Yang, E. Liu, X. Zhang, W. Bo, Y. Wu, Y. Liu, Q. Xie, W. Xu

    10. Comparing Three On-Device Classifier Deployments for Ring Microgesture Recognition

      Y. Du, E. Thomaz

  5. 4:50–5:20 PM

    Session 4

    3 oral presentations · 8 min talk + 2 min Q&A

    1. HearFocus: Low-Latency Speech Separation for User-Focused Listening

      H. Zhao, K. Shen, H. Li

    2. RAST: Resolution-Aware Privileged Structure Transfer for Low-Resolution Audio Activity Recognition

      J. Park, G. Gudur, Y. Shen, D. Liang, E. Thomaz

    3. Identifying Office Door Closing from Acoustic and Vibration Data

      B. Fengler, A. Reinhardt

  6. 5:20–5:30 PM

    Closing

    Awards and closing remarks

Call for Papers

This workshop aims to foster collaboration among researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and service sectors, providing a platform to share ideas and experiences in developing human-centered systems.

We welcome contributions that emphasize human-centric sensing technologies, novel models for human-centered systems, and applications in areas including, but not limited to:

Human-Centered Sensing and Data Acquisition

  • Novel sensing approaches for health, activity, gesture, and behavior monitoring of individuals or groups
  • Camera, VR/AR, wearables, mobile platforms, vibration, acoustics, IMU, mmWave, and WiFi sensing
  • Data management and transmission methodologies, including communication and networking

Human-Centered Static and AI Driven Models

  • Statistical models for representing and analyzing human behavior, preferences, and environmental interactions
  • Advanced AI models and techniques, including LLMs, convolutional neural networks, transformers, graph neural networks, time-series models, and statistical learning models
  • System models or frameworks for human-in-the-loop applications and data interpretation in cyber-physical systems

Human-Centered System Design and Implementation

  • Integration of human needs and preferences in the design of cyber-physical systems
  • Privacy considerations, UI/UX design, and the integration of LLM agents or related intelligent systems
  • Prototyping and iterative system design to refine and validate human-centered solutions

Applications and Real-World Studies

  • Real-world deployment experience with human participants
  • Evaluation methodologies and insights of cyber-physical systems with humans in the loop
  • Applications across healthcare, smart living, accessibility, and everyday environments

Submission

Submitted papers must be unpublished and must not be currently under review for any other publication.

We will solicit papers in three categories:

  1. Full Papers (up to 6 pages including references) should report reasonably mature work in human-centered sensing, modeling, or intelligent systems.
  2. Experience Papers (up to 4 pages including references) should present experiences with the implementation, deployment, and operation of novel sensing or modeling technologies for human-centered applications.
  3. Extended Abstracts (up to 2 pages including references) are encouraged to report novel and creative ideas that may benefit from early community feedback.

All papers will be at most 6 single-spaced 8.5" x 11" pages with 10-pt font size in two-column format, including figures, tables, and references. All submissions must use the LaTeX (preferred) or Word styles found here. LaTeX submissions should use the acmart.cls template (sigconf option), with the 10-pt font. All of the accepted papers (regardless of category) will be included in the ACM Digital Library.

HumanSys'26 follows a single-blind review process.

Please submit your papers via this link: https://humansys26.hotcrp.com/.

A Best Paper Award, sponsored by Nokia, will be presented at the workshop.

Important Dates

Paper submission July 8, 2026 July 15, 2026 AOE (Firm deadline)
Acceptance notification August 15, 2026
Camera-ready deadline August 30, 2026
Workshop date October 30, 2026

Submission Notes

  • Submission link HotCRP
  • Review processsingle-blind review process
  • Page limitsFull Papers: up to 6 pages; Experience Papers: up to 4 pages; Extended Abstracts: up to 2 pages

Policies

Human Participants Policy

All submissions are subject to ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's policy on research involving human participants and subjects. Authors should review the policy carefully before submission.

Learn more about the ACM policy

ORCID Requirement

Authors of accepted papers should ensure that they have an ORCID ID available for the ACM publishing workflow. ORCID helps improve author discoverability, attribution, and name normalization across publications.

Organization

General Chairs

  • Yiwen Dong (yiwen@illinois.edu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)
  • Jingping Nie (jingping@unc.edu, UNC Chapel Hill, USA)
  • Yang Liu (yang.16.liu@nokia.com, Nokia, UK)

Program Chairs

  • Sijie Ji (sijieji@caltech.edu, California Institute of Technology, USA)
  • Huining Li (hli83@ncsu.edu, North Carolina State University, USA)

Publicity Chairs

  • Yuyan Wu (wuyuyan@stanford.edu, Stanford University, USA)
  • Ruiqing Wang (ruiqing@illinois.edu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Social Media Chairs

  • Jiale Zhang (jiale@umich.edu, University of Michigan, USA)
  • Mingrui Ma (mma36@illinois.edu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Web Chairs

  • Julia Gersey (gersey@umich.edu, University of Michigan, USA)
  • Jinsi Guo (jinsig2@illinois.edu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)
  • Jingxia Jiang (jjingxia@unc.edu, UNC Chapel Hill, USA)

Steering Committee Members

  • Fred Xiaofan Jiang (Columbia University, USA)
  • Pei Zhang (University of Michigan, USA)

Technical Program Committee

  • Ananta Narayanan Balaji (Nokia, UK)
  • Andrea Ferlini (ŌURA, UK)
  • Dong Ma (University of Cambridge, UK)
  • Junlong Chen (University of Cambridge, UK)
  • Jiale Zhang (University of Michigan, USA)
  • Lilin Xu (Columbia University, USA)
  • Longfei Shangguan (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
  • Minghui Zhao (Columbia University, USA)
  • Qiang Yang (University of Cambridge, UK)
  • Qijia Huang (Duke University, USA)
  • Qijia Shao (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China)
  • Sheng Lyu (The University of Hong Kong, China)
  • Sheng Sheng (The University of Hong Kong, China)
  • Shubham Rohal (UC Merced, USA)
  • Tao Chen (Samsung Research America, USA)
  • Ting Dang (The University of Melbourne, Australia)
  • Wei Bo (University at Buffalo, the State University of New York (SUNY), USA)
  • Xinzhe Zheng (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
  • Yang Liu (Florida State University, USA)
  • Yiting Wang (Florida International University, USA)
  • Ziyan An (Vanderbilt University, USA)

Venue

HumanSys 2026 is co-located with ACM MobiCom 2026 in Austin, Texas, USA, and shares its venue. Please refer to the MobiCom venue page for the conference hotel, travel, and local information.

ACM MobiCom 2026 venue information

Registration

Workshop attendance is handled through ACM MobiCom 2026 registration. Please refer to the MobiCom registration page for rates, deadlines, and the registration form.

ACM MobiCom 2026 registration