call for participation

Student Innovation Contest

Submission deadline	August 2, 2021
Acceptance notification	August 9, 2021
Submission of project video	October 7, 2021
Presentation of final demo	At the online UIST conference, Oct. 11-13, 2021

Apply here: SIC registration page

In the UIST Student Innovation Contest (aka the "SIC"), we explore how novel input, interaction, actuation, and output technologies can augment interactive experiences! This year, in partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment toio team, we are seeking students who will push the boundaries of input and output techniques with the toio™ micro robot platform with absolute position tracking. Join the UIST SIC and turn your ideas into reality! Meet amazing people! Win fabulous prizes! Deadline to apply is the 2nd of August, and you can apply here: https://forms.gle/PMjZUquniPjtTrx36

The UIST SIC is your opportunity to shine and impress the world with your creative ideas! Participants will demo their work during the online conference program, and contest winners will be announced during the conference. A jury composed of senior UIST community members will select one team to receive the SIC jury award. On top of that, conference attendees will get a chance to vote for their favorite teams in the People's Choice category. All categories receive prizes.

We will give away the hardware to all selected teams! This is made possible through our generous sponsor Sony Interactive Entertainment! Thank you!

Toio Hardware Platform

This year’s hardware consists of:

• Four toio™ Core Cubes
• Two sets of chargers and controllers
• Two fixed-size tracking mats (56cm x 56cm)
• 12 flexible development mats (A3 size)

Each team receives 4 x toio robots, whose size is approximately 3.2cm x 3.2cm x 2.5cm. Each robot has two individually controllable motors + wheels. It can travel on a table with a relatively fast speed (max: 35cm/sec for traveling, 1500deg/sec for rotation). The top of the robot has a LEGO®-compatible connector, so that the user can also easily attach the LEGO® block on top of it.

toio robots can communicate with a computer or mobile phone through Bluetooth® (Low Energy). There is an official Node.js/JavaScript API available for the programmable robot control. Through this API, the user can control: the speed of individual motors, position of each robot, color of the LED, sound, etc. There are also several other API built by toio developer community (including third-party), such as Scratch-like Visual Programming, P5.js API which can directly control the toio from Chrome Web Browser without Node.js, or Python API, and Unity SDK and its simulator.

To track the accurate mm-level absolute position of the toiio robots, it leverages the built-in camera embedded in the robot and pattern-printed mats (imagine Anoto marker technology, but not the same). Therefore, the user can accurately control each of toio robots on the provided pattern-printed mats. We provide two different types of mats: 1) the large-size cardboard tracking mats with the size of 56cm x 56cm, and 2) the flexible A3 papers with the printed patterns. By utilizing these mats, the user can flexibly reconfigure (or even cut!) the mats to cover the large area with various configurations. Of course, the robot can also move without the mats, but in this case, the accurate tracking capability is not available.

To assist the students to develop their applications, we SIC chairs, as well as the toio developers from Sony Interactive Entertainment, will provide technical support if they have any questions.

UIST 2021 SIC Challenge: Small Robots for Big Impact

Your goal is to design and implement a new interactive tangible system using the toio platform we will provide to you and combining it with any other prototyping materials you have available. To successfully address this challenge, you need to figure out what task(s) you want your system to support, and what interaction(s) you want your system to enable. Your system should motivate the use case and articulate a clear set of assumptions on how it will be beneficial for users. Finally, your system does not have to be limited to one user— ideas that involve well executed, multi-user, simultaneous interactions are often crowd favourites at UIST! You will submit a video of your project demo by October 7th, and demonstrate your idea live at the UIST online event in October.

Application Areas and Design Space

You can build and design your system in a multitude of configurations, which affords the exploration of numerous design primitives. The main constraints are that you make use of the toio robotic platform and provide a way for users to meaningfully interact with the system. With these constraints in mind, you can tackle one or more application areas. Here, we list some of the example application areas and corresponding existing works for inspiration:

• Make invisible data graspable (e.g., [Zooids])
• Augment existing physical objects (e.g., [HERMITS])
• Education tools (e.g., [Cellulo])
• Accessibility assistant (e.g., [RoboGraphics])
• Haptic interfaces (e.g., [SwarmHaptics])
• Gestural human-robot interactions (e.g., [SwarmControl])
• Tangible programming (e.g., [toio Tangible Programming])
• Physical affordances (e.g., [ShapeBots], [UbiSwarm])
• Information display (e.g., [Pixelbots])
• Interactions with materials or environments (e.g., [Gesundroid], [PICO], [MoleBot])
• Wearable robots (e.g., [Rovables])
• Mobile robots as digital fabrication tools (e.g., [Fiberbots])
• Self-assembly or construction (e.g., [Kilobots], [Termite])
• Human augmentation
• Arts and creativity assistant
• Remote collaboration and communication
• Teleoperation
• Physical simulation for self-driving cars
• and many more

Note that these are just examples of areas and scenarios where your system can have a positive impact on society. Feel free to explore more.

Logistics

IMPORTANT: Due to the COVID’19, which enforces the team members remotely work together, we only accept a pair of students as a team. We ship the box to one of the team members

One of the students of each team will receive two toio sets of development kits (each kit includes 2 robots, 1 charger, 2 hand-held controllers, 1 fixed-size mat, 6 flexible mats). You will have access to example code to help you get started with the hardware. Teams are encouraged to open source their efforts, and even build on each other’s work. To get you moving fast, we will also provide, on top of all the hardware, a list of tutorials and mentoring sessions to ensure you have everything you need to make your vision a reality!

Registration

To participate, follow the instructions on this form: https://forms.gle/PMjZUquniPjtTrx36. The submission deadline is August 2nd, 2021 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).

To complete your submission, you’ll need:

• A description of your idea, in about 100-words.
• Supporting document with sketches or images to illustrate your idea (ACM SIGCHI Template with 2-Column Paper Format---the same as the full paper publication, 2-page max without references)
• Link to additional supporting materials (video, sketches, images, etc.)
• Complete other items in the registration page (contact info, etc.)
• Decisions will be emailed to each team by August 9th, 2019.

For accepted teams, one of your team members MUST register for the UIST conference and pay the registration fee. If you’ve been accepted as a student volunteer, you can let us know as well. Once we've confirmed your UIST conference registration, we will ship your hardware!

Contest Rules, Details, and Suggestions

• Pre-Selection Criteria: organizers will select up to 12 teams, judged based on usefulness, creativity, complexity, feasibility, and time/resource constraints.
• Maximum team size is 2, and you can’t be part of multiple teams!
• Eligibility: you MUST be a student to participate in this contest. Students of all levels (high school, bachelor's, master's, PhD) are encouraged to participate.
• Registration Requirement: If your team is accepted, at least one of your team members MUST register for the conference (or be accepted as a student volunteer). This is for three reasons: 1) you have to demo your idea at the online event, 2) you have to claim your prizes, and 3) UIST is an awesome conference!
• Demo Ideas: during the contest voting period, teams will be allowed to demo one idea. Different demos of the same idea are permitted.
• Demo Code: We encourage you to open-source your code. The organizers will create a github organization where all teams will be able to post their code (don’t worry, we will not judge you on your code!).
• Demo Safety: Safety is our utmost priority. Make sure your demos follow reasonable safety guidelines (i.e., don’t light anything on fire!)

Awards

Innovation comes in many forms. At UIST, we provide Student Innovation Contest awards for the following categories: Jury Award and People's Choice (Attendee Votes). All teams get to keep the hardware kits. Winners will win prizes and a UIST SIC certificate. Note that we reserve the right to change the awards structure during the contest.

SIC Chairs

Questions? Contact the SIC Chairs! sic2021@uist.org

UIST Visions

Back for its fourth year, UIST Visions is a venue for forward thinking ideas to inspire the community. The goal is not to report research but to propose new research directions. We want to project the UIST community as thought leaders in HCI technology. A maximum of 2 speakers will be invited and the review will be based on how interesting and provocative the ideas are. The author should aim to start a meaningful and well-informed discussion about future directions for computer-human interfaces. Appropriate issues might be: future trends, foundational technologies that we need to make progress on, significant, compelling problems that the community might address, something that is missing, or an alternative perspective on what we do.

Submission deadline	Sun. August 22, 2021 5pm PT Sun. September 12, 2021 5pm PT (extended)
Acceptance notification	TBD
Slide submission	TBD

Submission Information

Eligibility	Single author
Submission Platform	All submission materials must be submitted electronically to PCS 2.0 http://new.precisionconference.com/~sigchi before the submission deadline In PCS 2.0, first click “Submissions” at the top of the page, from the dropdown menus for society, conference, and track select “SIGCHI”, “UIST 2021” and “UIST 2021 Visions", respectively, and press “Go”.
Submission Format and Length	We will adopt the ACM TAPS Workflow: https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow. The abstract should be up to 1 000 words (excluding references), which is roughly equivalent to a 1-page limit.
Accompanying Video	None
Maximum File Size	Maximum total size for all files < 50 MB
Anonymity	Not anonymous, include the author's name and institution(s) on the 1 page submission
Selection Process	Curated by the UIST vision chair Less rigorous than paper review and does not include an author’s response or conditional acceptance, i.e. authors will not receive any formal feedback other than the selection decision Up to two speakers will be selected
Publication	Non-archival, ideas presented as a UIST vision can be resubmitted as a full paper in subsequent years Vision abstracts (the 1 pager) will be included in the ACM digital library as adjunct proceedings and distributed in digital form to conference attendees, the slides will not be included in the ACM digital library
Presentation Format	Talk at the conference 15 minute pre-recorded presentation + 15 minute Q&A Two 30-minute live text-chat sessions scheduled during the conference Accepted speakers will be required to sign the approval form to record and publish the talk Slides will be reviewed ahead of the conference to ensure a great, engaging presentation

Visions Chair

Questions? Contact: vision2021@uist.org

Lightning Talks

Starting this year, UIST will provide first-time UISTers, young researchers and professionals the opportunity to show a 60 seconds lightning talk at the beginning of the paper sessions. As part of the main program of UIST, the lightning talks will get a strong visibility and are a great opportunity to get to know more people at UIST. The lightning talks should briefly introduce the attendee, their research interest and may be potentially an opportunity to look for internship positions, finding a PhD advisor or simply getting to know more people at UIST.

The target user group includes but is not limited to:

• Undergrad students
• PhD Students
• Research Interns
• Industry researchers
• Postdocs

We will assign the lightning talk to a set of paper sessions (approx. 2-3, different time zones) that fit to the submitter's research interest (e.g. a student interested in VR/AR will be assigned to a VR/AR related session). Students should be present in the corresponding session on Discord if other attendees want to get in contact. Only UIST attendees are eligible to submit a lightning talk video.

Additionally, we will make all videos available on the UIST website including contact information.

Abstract deadline	September 16, 2021
Video deadline	September 23, 2021

Submission Information

Abstract Submission	Attendees should submit an abstract (<500 words) that includes: a short bio their research interest their motivation to present a lightning talk (e.g. networking or job search) contact information a link to their website (if available) The abstract should be sent as a .pdf to events2021@uist.org
Video Submission	We will provide an upload link with the acceptance mail after the abstract submission. Video Format: Resolution of 1920x1080, encoded as .mp4 using the H.264 codec No more than 60 seconds long Subtitles are required File size no more than 25MB
Video Content	The video content is up to the attendee. Below are a few recommendations: We recommend starting and ending the video with a title slide that includes the name, current affiliation/course of study, and contact information (e.g., the email address and the URL of the personal website). An overview of the past research projects Exciting hobbies A lightning talk is also a great opportunity to search for a PhD advisor, an internship position in academia or the industry, or to find other people with a similar research interest.

Social Event Chairs

Questions? Contact: events2021@uist.org

Social Meetups

Research communities coming together are the core of innovation and collaboration, and a fundamental element of a successful conference. This year's UIST will provide an opportunity for members of the research community to socialize in a casual digital atmosphere in the form of “Social Meetups” to discuss their topics of interest.

We invite attendees to organize such meetups centered on research topics like fabrication, virtual reality, or general themes like diversity in academia.

What we need from you:

• Abstract of the topic
• A few lines how we should advertise your event (on the Website/Social Media)
• How many people do you expect?
• Which are your preferred time zones?
• Your contact details

We can provide you with following infrastructure (if you need it):

• A space in the official UIST calendar
• Advertisement of the event on the website and UIST social media channel
• A social platform for the gathering (Ohyay, Discord, Zoom)

Submission deadline	October 1, 2021
Submission form	https://forms.gle/KrrhQaUerqFtKtNy8

Social Event Chairs

Questions? Contact: events2021@uist.org

Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) Sessions

Ask-Me-Anything sessions are a great way to provoke discussion around research-related topics, share experience about career development in academia and industry, or hear different opinions about how our field should move forward in regards to diversity and inclusiveness. Great AMA sessions raise questions, provoke discussions, and are controversial and innovative.

Topics for AMA sessions include, but are not limited to:

• Emerging developments in XR
• Social computing
• Novel fabrication technologies and physical user interfaces
• Career development
• Grant writing
• Diversity and accessibility
• How to survive the PhD?
• How to find postdoc positions

While we do not have a fixed format for these sessions, below are some suggestions as to how they may be structured:

• A 20-min presentation/introduction to the topic + 40-min Q&A
• A format similar to workshops at other HCI venues where multiple researchers discuss the future of a research field
• Members of the audience ask questions directly to the speaker/panelists, without any formal presentation
• Questions are typed in chat and the session chair collects them for the panelists

We ask organizer(s) to propose their ideas for the virtual format of their AMA session being both innovative but also reasonable to the resources the conference can provide. Below are infrastructure ideas that UIST can provide:

• UIST’s basic infrastructure: Discord (discussions, text), Zoom
• "Ohyay” is a fun video platform for a more natural feeling of being at a conference

The AMA session will be held in parallel to the Demo/Poster slot in the main program (after the paper sessions). For any questions, please contact the Social Event Chairs (events2021@uist.org)

Abstract deadline	September 23, 2021

Submission Information

Abstract Submission	Organizer(s) should submit a PDF (1-2 pages) to events2021@uist.org that includes: A description of the topic for AMA The participating speakers/panelists The format and the required infrastructure Information on how the interaction between audience and speaker will take place Information on how the AMA can be accessible to all UIST attendees (see Accessibility information — coming soon)

Social Event Chairs

Questions? Contact: events2021@uist.org