Call for Papers
The 1st HeadSys workshop comes at a critical juncture where headcentric computing research, encompassing sensing, communication, and computing-based systems, has become increasingly prominent in the mobile and ubiquitous computing space. Head-worn devices occupy a uniquely privileged position on the human body, offering unparalleled access to physiological signals, environmental context, and natural modalities for human-computer interaction. With rapid
advancements in smart glasses, smart earbuds, and AR/VR headsets, head-based systems are poised to reshape how we augment human perception, cognition, and communication.

HeadSys will provide a venue for presenting current research
and technology trends, and debating future research agendas in head-based intelligent systems. The workshop spans the full ecosystem of head-based wearables, including smart earbuds and hearables, smart glasses, VR/AR/XR headsets, head-mounted displays, brain-computer interfaces, and other multimodal sensing platforms, examining both hardware innovations and the software intelligence that powers them.

We solicit papers of six or fewer pages that present preliminary research in broad areas of head-based computing, with efforts inclusive of prototyping a system, experience in designing a novel technology, or survey of useful tools for designing interdisciplinary systems and applications. We also encourage position papers that propose new directions for research or advocate disruptive design ideas and project applications. We further encourage submissions that can help bootstrap exploration of the head-based computing space by the broader mobile systems community.
The focus areas include, but are not limited to:

• Smart glasses and optical head-mounted displays
• Ear-worn wearables, hearables, and smart earbuds
• AR/VR/XR systems
• Brain-computer interfaces and neural sensing
• Intra-oral or mouth-based sensing
• LLM/VLM-powered head-worn intelligence and agentic applications
• Multi-device coordination and interplay between head-worn wearables
• Electromyography (EMG) and facial gesture interfaces
• Gaze tracking, eye-based interaction, and attention monitoring
• Head-based health monitoring (e.g., cardiovascular, neurological, auditory)
• Bone conduction, in-ear, and around-ear sensing modalities
• Head-based activity recognition and context awareness
• AI on head-worn devices: on-device ML/DL for resource-constrained platforms
• Audio augmented reality and spatial audio/video computing
• Privacy-preserving architectures for always-on head-worn sensing
• Head-worn devices for accessibility and assistive technology
• Cognitive augmentation and affective computing with head-worn wearables
• Social acceptability and human factors in head-worn computing
• Novel energy management for head-based systems
• Head-worn biometrics for authentication
• Haptics and feedback mechanisms for head-worn devices
• Head-worn infrastructure and toolkits (hardware/software, custom/open source)
• Novel sensor integration and fabrication for head-worn form factors
Location
Cambridge, UK
Important Dates
Submission deadline:
April 17, 2026 (AoE)

Notification of acceptance:
April 24, 2026 (AoE)

Camera-ready deadline:
April 29, 2026 (AoE)

Workshop date:
June 25/26 (TBC), 2026
Organizing Committee
Workshop Chairs

Qiang Yang
University of Cambridge
Jake Stuchbury-Wass
University of Cambridge
Tobias Röddiger
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Stephen Xia
Northwestern University

Steering Committee

Cecilia Mascolo (University of Cambridge, UK)
Michael Beigl (KIT, Germany)
Kai Kunze (Keio University, Japan)


Technical Program Committee

Dong Ma (University of Cambridge, UK, TPC Chair)
Yang Liu (Florida State University, USA, TPC Chair)
Andrea Ferlini (Oura, UK)
Hong Jia (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Huanqi Yang (The City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Kaiyan Cui (NJUPT, China)
Khaldoon Al-Naimi (Nokia Bell Labs, UK)
Leming Shen (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)
Ningning Hou (Macquarie University, Australia)
Qijia Shao (HKUST, Hong Kong)
Tao Chen (Samsung Research America, USA)
Terry Fawden (University of Cambridge, UK)
Yang Liu (Nokia Bell Labs, UK)
Young Kwon (Samsung Cambridge, UK)
Yuntao Wang (Tsinghua University, China)
Yu Yvonne Wu (Dartmouth College, USA)
Zhelin An (University of Georgia, USA)


Website/Publicity Chair
Adam Pullin (University of Cambridge, UK)
Submission Instructions
We invite original research papers that have not been previously published and are not currently under review for publication. All submissions must be provided in PDF format, and follow the formatting guidelines of MobiSys 2026. Full papers must be no longer than 6 pages, and position papers are limited to 4 pages including references. HeadSys follows a single-blinded review process.

All submissions must use a 10pt font (or larger) and be correctly formatted for printing on letter-sized (8.5" by 11") paper. Paper text blocks must follow ACM guidelines: double-column, with each column 9.25" by 3.33", 0.33" space between columns, and single-spaced. The abstract should contain less than 250 words.

To maximize the chances that papers will print correctly, only standard printer fonts (e.g., Times Roman, Helvetica, etc.) or standard TeX Computer Modern fonts should be used; other fonts may be used but must be included in the PDF file. The paper must print clearly on standard black-and-white printers. Reviewers may not view a paper in color. Symbols and labels used in the graphs should be readable as printed.


Latex Template
Submissions can use this LaTex template which is known to comply with the formatting requirements. Authors remain responsible for checking that their resulting PDF meets our formatting and anonymity specifications.

Submission Site
The papers can be submitted at: https://headsys26.hotcrp.com/

If you have any questions, please reach out to Qiang via [email protected]

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