Preface

In this age of rapidly advancing technology, the future of living and functional environments would involve humans interacting, coordinating, and collaborating with computers, machines, robots, and various technology-laden systems in a multitude of ways. Examples of such smart and interconnected environments include Smart Homes, Smart Industries, Smart Workplaces, Smart Buildings, and Smart Cities, just to name a few. This is the second of the two volumes of the edited books in this series that presents discoveries, innovative ideas, concepts, theoretical findings, practical solutions, improvements, and novel applications in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) aimed at developing trust, user acceptance, augmenting user performance, improving quality of life, and fostering human-technology partnerships in the future of technology-laden living and functional environments.

The topics covered in these books include the following:

• Applications of HCI for Smart Homes, Smart Cities, and Smart Vehicles
• Design of Technology for special user groups – elderly, disabled, etc.
• Prototypes of Interactive Systems with a focus on Human-Centered Design
• Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Mining in HCI
• Computer Vision, Image Recognition and their applications in HCI
• Novel works in mobile or web development related to HCI for Smart Environments
• Applications of HCI in healthcare, education, entertainment, and games
• Applications of HCI and related technologies focusing on COVID-19

The current part of this book, Part II, presents a unique and diverse collection of the global advancements in HCI in the above-mentioned application domains. It consists of chapters authored by experts and scientists in the field of HCI and its interrelated disciplines from 9 different countries – Albania, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This book is aimed at scientists, researchers, and developers in academia and in the industry who wish to learn, design, implement, and apply the emerging technologies, concepts, and applications from the field of Human-Computer Interaction in different application domains, with a specific focus on the future of technology-laden living and functional environments. Each chapter has an abstract and keywords followed by the introduction, methodologies, and other sections. Readers can determine their interest level in any chapter quickly, based on the keywords and the abstract.