CALL FOR PAPERS Computer Vision and Image Understanding Special Issue on Assistive Computer Vision and Robotics _______ SCOPE _______ Assistive technologies provide a set of advanced tools that can improve the quality of life not only for disabled, patients and elderly but also for healthy people struggling with everyday actions. After a period of slow but steady scientific progress, this scientific area seems to be mature for new research and application breakthroughs. The rapid progress in the development of integrated micro-mechatronic and computer vision tools has boosted this process. In addition, the interest in this research field has further recently increased due to the affordable fallouts of the technologies and methodologies involved in both traditional challenging related problems (such as monitoring of car drivers, behaviors analysis in surveillance contexts, etc.) and pioneering topics (such as customer behavior analysis, innovative sales strategies, etc.). However, many problems remain open especially as regards to environment perception and interaction of these technological tools with people. The goal of the this special issue is then to focus on research related to assistive technology in which Computer Vision and Robotics take a key role. In particular, the special issue aims to bridge the gap between researchers in computer vision, robotics, machine learning, neuroscience, psychology, rehabilitation science, social science and bio-medical science by providing insight on how to exploits computer vision and robotics in the context of assistive technologies. Research papers involving both academia and industry in novel innovative explorative contributions in the context of assistive computer vision and robotics technologies are encouraged. ______________ LIST OF TOPICS ______________ We invite authors to contribute with high quality paper that will stimulate the research community on the use computer vision and robotics methods to be applied in real-life environments for assistive technologies. Research papers are solicited in, but not limited to, the following TOPICS: * Augmented and Alternative Communication * Human - Robot Interaction * Mobility Aids * Rehabilitation Aids * Home Healthcare * Technology for Cognition * Automatic Emotional Hearing and Understanding * Activity Monitoring Systems * Manipulation Aids * Smart Environments and Monitoring Systems * Safety and Security * Quality of Life Technologies * Navigation Systems * Sensory Substitution * Mobile and Wearable Systems * Applications for the Visually Impaired * Applications for the Ageing Society * Applications to improve health and wellbeing of children and elderly * Datasets and Evaluation Procedures * Personalized Monitoring * Scene Understanding * Life-logging * Food Recognition, Analysis and Monitoring * Video summarization * Visual Attention and Visual Saliency * Egocentric and First-Person Vision _________________________ SUBMISSIONS AND REVISIONS _________________________ Submissions to the special issue must include new, unpublished, original research. Papers must be original and have not been published or submitted elsewhere. All papers must be written in English. The submissions will be blind reviewed by at least three reviewers. Papers should be submitted electronically using the Elsevier CVIU submission system (http://ees.elsevier.com/cviu) and following the Instructions for Authors (http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/home). Please make sure that authors select “SI: Assistive CV and Robotics” as the Article Type to ensure be correctly assigned. Sent an email to the Lead Guest Editor for any doubt on the submission process. All submissions will undergo initial screening by the Guest Editors for fit to the theme of the Special Issue and prospects for successfully negotiating the review process. __________ DEADLINES __________ Submission Deadline: March 15, 2015 First Review: May 15, 2015 Revisions Due: July 15, 2015 Final Decision: September 15, 2015 Publication: October 15, 2015 __________________ LEAD GUEST EDITOR __________________ Giovanni Maria Farinella gfarinella@dmi.unict.it University of Catania, Italy __________________ GUEST EDITORS __________________ Takeo Kanade tk@cs.cmu.edu Carnegie Mellon University, USA Marco Leo marco.leo@cnr.it National Research Council (CNR), Italy Gérard Medioni medioni@usc.edu University of Southern California, USA Mohan Trivedi mtrivedi@soe.ucsd.edu University of California at San Diego, USA