Perceptual Computer Science: Human-centric and reality-based human-machine interaction

This habilitation thesis entitled Perceptual computer science is realized as a collection of research articles selected to reflect my contributions to this field (=Sammelhabilitation). It unifies contributions on the way to the future of human-machine interaction in topics such as converging of humans and computers, human-computer confluence, user experience-based interaction, individuality and personality traits in human-machine interaction, or user variability. Research in “Perceptual computer science” has the potential to revolutionize how we (humans) understand the interaction with the “outside world” by aggregating and combining knowledge from medicine, health science, psychology, bio-engineering/-informatics, robotics, and other domains with computer science skills. Perceptual computer science is aimed as innovation driver as it extends on the understanding of how human individuals perceive and interact with the environment and with other humans, and it deals with research questions such as “what enables a system to robustly understand human-human communication?”, “how to detect what a user is expected to do next, and how to alter its decision?”, “how to address the uniqueness of the user in the response of a system?”, or “which faults are accepted when ignoring ’noise’/variability caused by individuality and personality?”. The academic field of “Perceptual (computer) science” has only recently found its way into research labs at MIT Cambridge, Rutgers University, (...)