This book provides an overview of the current research in the interdisciplinary area of personal assistants (PA) and cognitively inspired systems. It discusses the most relevant topics in this highly diversified domain, like reasoning, health, personalization, robotics, and ethical and social issues. Personal assistants (PA) are a relatively new concept directed at people with cognitive or physical disabilities, and is expanding to include complex platforms such as sensors, actuators, monitoring abilities and decision processes. Designed for a general audience, it is also of interest to undergraduates, graduates and researchers involved with intelligent systems, ambient intelligence or ambient assisted living. The content goes from an introduction of the field (aimed at undergraduates and a general readership) to specific and complex architectures (aimed at graduates and researchers).

Within higher education, there are enormous untapped opportunities for product/services companies, administrators, educators, start-ups. and technology professionals to begin embracing artificial intelligence (AI) across the student ecosystem and infuse innovation into traditional academic processes by leveraging disruptive technologies. This type of human-machine interface presents the immediate potential to change the way we learn, memorize, access, and create information. These solutions present new openings for education for all while fostering lifelong learning in a strengthened model that can preserve the integrity of core values and the purpose of higher education. Impact of AI Technologies on Teaching, Learning, and Research in Higher Education explores the phenomena of the emergence of the use of AI in teaching and learning in higher education, including examining the positive and negative aspects of AI. Recent technological advancements and the increasing speed of adopting new technologies in higher education are discussed in order to predict the future nature of higher education in a world where AI is part of the fabric of universities. The book also investigates educational implications of emerging technologies on the way students learn and how institutions teach and evolve. Finally, challenges for the adoption of these technologies for teaching, learning, student support, and administration are addressed. Highlighting such tools as machine learning, natural language processing, and self-learning systems, this scholarly book is of interest to university administrators, educational software developers, instructional designers, policymakers, government officials, academicians, researchers, and students, as well as international agencies, organizations, and professionals interested in implementing AI in higher education.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2021, held as a virtual event, in April 2021. The 17 full papers presented in this book together with 8 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 67 submissions. The papers are grouped in topical sections as follows: persuasive affective technology; digital marketing, ecommerce, etourism and smart ecosystems; and persuasion and education.

This book features high-quality research papers presented at Third Doctoral Symposium on Computational Intelligence (DoSCI 2022), organized by Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), AKTU, Lucknow, India, on March 5, 2022. This book discusses the topics such as computational intelligence, artificial intelligence, deep learning, evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, fuzzy sets and vague sets, rough set theoretic approaches, quantum inspired computational intelligence, hybrid computational intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, soft computing, distributed computing, parallel and grid computing, cloud computing, high performance computing, biomedical computing, and decision support and decision making.

This book presents a particular area of interest in computing psychiatry with the modelling of mood and anxiety disorders. It highlights various methods for building these models. Clinical applications are prevalent due to the growth and interaction of these multiple approaches. Besides, it outlines some original predictive and computational modelling ideas for enhancing psychological treatment interventions. Computational psychiatry combines multiple levels and types of computation with different data types to improve mental illness understanding, prediction, and treatment.

The concepts represented in this textbook are explored for the first time in assistive and rehabilitation robotics, which is the combination of physical, cognitive, and social human-robot interaction to empower gait rehabilitation and assist human mobility. The aim is to consolidate the methodologies, modules, and technologies implemented in lower-limb exoskeletons, smart walkers, and social robots when human gait assistance and rehabilitation are the primary targets. This book presents the combination of emergent technologies in healthcare applications and robotics science, such as soft robotics, force control, novel sensing methods, brain-computer interfaces, serious games, automatic learning, and motion planning. From the clinical perspective, case studies are presented for testing and evaluating how those robots interact with humans, analyzing acceptance, perception, biomechanics factors, and physiological mechanisms of recovery during the robotic assistance or therapy. Interfacing Humans and Robots for Gait Assistance and Rehabilitation will enable undergraduate and graduate students of biomedical engineering, rehabilitation engineering, robotics, and health sciences to understand the clinical needs, technology, and science of human-robot interaction behind robotic devices for rehabilitation, and the evidence and implications related to the implementation of those devices in actual therapy and daily life applications.

Robots are increasingly becoming prevalent in our daily lives within our living or working spaces. We hope that robots will take up tedious, mundane or dirty chores and make our lives more comfortable, easy and enjoyable by providing companionship and care. However, robots may pose a threat to human privacy, safety and autonomy; therefore, it is necessary to have constant control over the developing technology to ensure the benevolent intentions and safety of autonomous systems. Building trust in (autonomous) robotic systems is thus necessary. The title of this book highlights this challenge: “Trust in robots—Trusting robots”. Herein, various notions and research areas associated with robots are unified. The theme “Trust in robots” addresses the development of technology that is trustworthy for users; “Trusting robots” focuses on building a trusting relationship with robots, furthering previous research. These themes and topics are at the core of the PhD program “Trust Robots” at TU Wien, Austria.