Event photos are available here.
Schedule
Location - Room C, West Hub building (located opposite the Ray Dolby Building of the main conference)
1:00-1:15 pm
Opening
1:15-2:20 pm
Keynote - Dr Chi Ian Tang, Meta Reality Labs
"Toward Contextual Intelligence on Head-Worn Devices"
"Toward Contextual Intelligence on Head-Worn Devices"
2:20-3:00 pm
Session 1: Sensing around the ear
1: SleepBuds: Posture-Aware Modeling of Respiration-Driven Bilateral Earable Motion for Sleep Monitoring. Y. Liu et al.
2: Towards Personalised DPOAE Protocols: Bayesian Optimisation of Secondary Stimulus Levels. J. Stuchbury-Wass et al.
3: PineBuds Pro+: Unlocking In-Ear Audio Sensing on Off-the-Shelf Wireless Earbuds. Q. Yang et al.
2: Towards Personalised DPOAE Protocols: Bayesian Optimisation of Secondary Stimulus Levels. J. Stuchbury-Wass et al.
3: PineBuds Pro+: Unlocking In-Ear Audio Sensing on Off-the-Shelf Wireless Earbuds. Q. Yang et al.
3:00-3:30 pm
Coffee Break
3:30-4:20 pm
Session 2: Sensing on the head
1: Estimation and Localization of Chronic Pain level from EEG Signals. Mukhopadhyay et al.
2: Vibrational, Acoustic and Inertial Sensing on Smart Eyewear for Physiological Monitoring. A. Cortese et al.
3: AR/VR Headsets as Behavioral Sensors: Comparing Gaze Behavior during Navigation Across Real and Simulated Environments. M. Thavendra et al.
4: Platform and Study Design for Adaptive EMA Using Smart Glasses to Monitor Affective States. F. De Bona et al.
2: Vibrational, Acoustic and Inertial Sensing on Smart Eyewear for Physiological Monitoring. A. Cortese et al.
3: AR/VR Headsets as Behavioral Sensors: Comparing Gaze Behavior during Navigation Across Real and Simulated Environments. M. Thavendra et al.
4: Platform and Study Design for Adaptive EMA Using Smart Glasses to Monitor Affective States. F. De Bona et al.
4:20-4:30 pm
Closing and Awards
Best Paper: Vibrational, Acoustic and Inertial Sensing on Smart Eyewear for Physiological Monitoring. A. Cortese et al.
Keynote
Dr Chi Ian Tang Meta Reality Labs
Toward Contextual Intelligence on Head-Worn Devices
Dr Chi Ian Tang Meta Reality Labs
Toward Contextual Intelligence on Head-Worn Devices
Bio: Chi Ian Tang is a Senior Research Scientist at Meta Reality Labs, working on the foundational AI that powers smart glasses. His work bridges academic research and consumer products - a path that began with his PhD at the University of Cambridge's Mobile Systems Research Lab, where he developed self-supervised and continual learning methods for wearable sensing, and continued at Nokia Bell Labs, where he focused on multimodal analysis for longitudinal health insights.
Today at Meta Reality Labs, he tackles real-world perceptual challenges on resource-constrained devices, contributing to core audio AI capabilities, including features such as Conversation Focus. His work has appeared at venues including ICML, IMWUT, and ICASSP, with a particular focus on self-supervised learning for mobile sensing. As an active member of the pervasive computing community, he organises workshops and tutorials on human sensing and serves as an Associate Editor for ACM IMWUT. His long-term goal is to close the gap between human perception and machine understanding, enabling wearable AI that can see, hear, and reason about the world as we do.
Today at Meta Reality Labs, he tackles real-world perceptual challenges on resource-constrained devices, contributing to core audio AI capabilities, including features such as Conversation Focus. His work has appeared at venues including ICML, IMWUT, and ICASSP, with a particular focus on self-supervised learning for mobile sensing. As an active member of the pervasive computing community, he organises workshops and tutorials on human sensing and serves as an Associate Editor for ACM IMWUT. His long-term goal is to close the gap between human perception and machine understanding, enabling wearable AI that can see, hear, and reason about the world as we do.
Abstract: For a decade, wearable computing has meant quantifying the body: a device on the wrist counts steps, tracks heart rate and sleep quality. This talk argues that the more exciting shift is happening higher up on the body. Co-located with the eyes, ears, and brain, head-worn devices not only measure the body but also share the wearer's point of view. They capture the world as it is seen and heard, and the attention and intent behind it. This is the leap we need from the quantified self to the augmented self.
The talk develops this across different levels of context, from interpreting multimodal sensor streams to capturing the wearer's attention. It draws on recent work in label-efficient activity recognition from egocentric motion, low-power acoustic scene understanding, and attention-aware speech enhancement. These reveal a broader possibility: the head offers unique signals, including gaze, head motion, and sound, that remain under-explored and bring systems challenges of their own.
The talk closes with a research agenda for head-based, all-day contextual intelligence that taps into the unique signals captured by head-worn devices, sparking a discussion with the community about the open problems in this area.
The talk develops this across different levels of context, from interpreting multimodal sensor streams to capturing the wearer's attention. It draws on recent work in label-efficient activity recognition from egocentric motion, low-power acoustic scene understanding, and attention-aware speech enhancement. These reveal a broader possibility: the head offers unique signals, including gaze, head motion, and sound, that remain under-explored and bring systems challenges of their own.
The talk closes with a research agenda for head-based, all-day contextual intelligence that taps into the unique signals captured by head-worn devices, sparking a discussion with the community about the open problems in this area.
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, AR/VR headsets, and neck accessories, 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, neck accessories, 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. Finally we encourage the submission of Abstracts outlining initial ideas or summarising related work in the head-based computing area that can be then discussed at the workshop. We further encourage submissions that can help bootstrap exploration of the head-based computing space by the broader mobile systems community.
We are pleased to announce that all accepted papers will be eligible for the Best Paper Award and Best Presentation Award.
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
• Sensing with neck accessories: smart neck brace, necklace, and choker
• 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
advancements in smart glasses, smart earbuds, AR/VR headsets, and neck accessories, 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, neck accessories, 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. Finally we encourage the submission of Abstracts outlining initial ideas or summarising related work in the head-based computing area that can be then discussed at the workshop. We further encourage submissions that can help bootstrap exploration of the head-based computing space by the broader mobile systems community.
We are pleased to announce that all accepted papers will be eligible for the Best Paper Award and Best Presentation Award.
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
• Sensing with neck accessories: smart neck brace, necklace, and choker
• 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 02, 2026 (AoE)
Deadline Extension:
April 19, 2026 (AoE)
Notification of acceptance:
April 28, 2026
Camera-ready deadline:
April 30, 2026 (AoE)
Workshop date:
June 25, 2026
Deadline Extension:
April 19, 2026 (AoE)
Notification of acceptance:
April 28, 2026
Camera-ready deadline:
April 30, 2026 (AoE)
Workshop date:
June 25, 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)
Xiaofan (Fred) Jiang (Columbia University, US)
Xiaofan (Fred) Jiang (Columbia University, US)
Kai Kunze (Keio University, Japan)
Technical Program Committee
Yang Liu (Florida State University, USA, TPC Chair)
Dong Ma (University of Cambridge, UK, TPC Chair)
Andrea Ferlini (Oura, UK)
Garvit Chugh (IIT Jodhpur, India)
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)
Shiming Yu (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 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, position papers are limited to 4 pages and abstracts are limited to 2 pages. All page limits are including references. HeadSys follows a single-blinded review process so there is no need to anonymise the submissions.
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 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]
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 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]