Beyond the Concrete: Grounding Abstract Concepts in Multimodal Interaction Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce that the submission deadline for the 
BEACON 2026 Workshop — 
Beyond the Concrete: Grounding Abstract Concepts in Multimodal Interaction
co-located with ACM ICMI 2026, has been extended to July 17, 2026.

BEACON 2026 brings together researchers working on multimodal
representation learning, embodied and developmental models, robotics,
cognitive science, and hybrid cognitive architectures. The workshop
aims to consolidate computational approaches, datasets, and evaluation
methodologies for abstract concept grounding, and to identify shared
assumptions and open research challenges.

A keynote talk will be given by Professor Gabriella Vigliocco,
Professor of the Psychology of Language at University College London.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    Grounding abstract concepts in multimodal interaction

    Hierarchical and developmental models of abstraction

    Cross-modal abstraction and alignment

    Embodied and interactive concept learning

    Multimodal action and goal representations

    Affective and contextual abstraction

    Embodied and interactive learning of abstract language

    Hybrid cognitive architectures for abstract grounding

    Evaluation methodologies for abstract concept grounding

    Multimodal datasets and benchmarks for abstract concepts

    Applications of abstract grounding in HCI and HRI

Submission Formats

    Short papers: 4 pages

    Full papers: 8 pages

All accepted and presented papers will be included in the proceedings
of the ACM ICMI 2026 workshops.

Submission Instructions

Submit through the ICMI 2026 PCS portal:

https://new.precisionconference.com/icmi26/

After signing in, select:

SIGCHI ? ICMI 2026 ? ICMI 2026 Workshop: 
Beyond a Concrete: Grounding Abstract Concepts in Multimodal Interaction

Then click Go.

Updated Important Dates

    Submission deadline: July 17, 2026

    Notification of acceptance: July 31, 2026

    Camera-ready submission: August 7, 2026

    Workshop: October 9, 2026

Workshop website: https://beacon2026.github.io/

We welcome contributions from the multimodal interaction, artificial
intelligence, robotics, human-computer interaction, human-robot
interaction, and cognitive science communities.

For questions, please contact rahulsingh.maharjan@manchester.ac.uk


On behalf of the BEACON 2026 Organizers