Proactive embodied assistants in context-aware environments.

A full-stack workshop for the next generation of ubiquitous AI assistants, bridging sensing, decision-making, alignment, and longitudinal evaluation.

Date October 11 or 12, 2026
Venue Shanghai, China
Format Full-day · in-person
Submissions July 5, 2026
§01 · Motivation

Building a proactive embodied assistant is a full-stack problem.

A proactive embodied assistant has to do many things at once. Sense the user and environment under uncertainty. Model context well enough to act on. Decide when to interrupt. Choose actions aligned with long-horizon goals, not the immediate task. Evaluate in the wild, without ground truth. Each is a research community of its own.

The layers don't compose. A calibration error in sensing shifts what perception learns, which shifts what decision reasons over, which changes what alignment even means. A misjudged interruption rarely has a single cause. Most work fixes one layer in isolation; the failures that matter cross them.

PEACE 2026 is organized around this seam problem. We want work that bridges layers, work that re-examines one layer in light of the others, and longitudinal studies that surface what the lab cannot.

§02 · Scope

Three axes. Six threads. Bridging papers welcome.

PEACE is organized at the program level around three axes, with submissions tagged into six finer-grained threads. We particularly welcome work at the interface between two or more threads.

Axis A

Sensing substrate

What the assistant perceives, on what hardware, with what uncertainty.

Thread 1
Hardware and platforms
Form factors · sensor placement · power budgets · wearable & ambient platforms · edge / on-device compute · hardware–software codesign · heterogeneous integration.
Thread 2
Sensing and context perception
Multimodal pipelines · foundation models for perception · cross-user / cross-environment generalization · sim-to-real · on-device, privacy-aware perception · uncertainty-aware perception.
Axis B

Proactive decision & alignment

When the assistant acts, how it represents user values, and how those constraints are made legible.

Thread 3
Proactive decision-making and agency
When-to-act policies · agent reasoning over long-horizon context · mixed-initiative & shared autonomy · agentic wearable pipelines · intervention modality selection · reversibility & contestability.
Thread 4
Human alignment and interaction
Value elicitation from behavioral traces · bidirectional alignment loops · multi-stakeholder alignment in shared spaces · attention management · ethics of always-on observation · legibility.
Axis C

Toolkits, evaluation & deployment

How proactive systems are built, tested, and evaluated in the wild.

Thread 5
Development environments and toolkits
Simulation testbeds · synthetic users · open agentic frameworks · reproducible-research infrastructure · in-situ prototyping tools · sandboxes for rare or sensitive conditions.
Thread 6
Benchmarks, datasets, and field studies
In-the-wild & longitudinal methodology · shared datasets capturing intent and response · failure-mode taxonomies · evaluation beyond precision/recall · case studies · societal implications.
§03 · Submission

Two submission categories. Single-blind review.

Acceptance criteria weight originality, relevance, and discussion potential — submissions that seed productive workshop conversation are preferred over polished work suitable for the main conference. Two awards will be presented at the workshop: a Best Paper Award and a Best Bridging Paper Award. To be eligible for the Best Bridging Paper Award, authors must explicitly articulate the bridging contribution within the body of the paper.

Research papers 4–6 pages

Completed or substantial in-progress work — systems, sensing pipelines, toolkits, datasets, and empirical studies. Excluding references.

Position & vision papers 2–4 pages

Framings, critiques, agendas. Experience reports, negative results, and dataset / toolkit descriptions especially encouraged.

Review process

Single-blind peer review.

Template

IMWUT.

Publication

UbiComp/ISWC 2026 Adjunct Proceedings + ACM Digital Library.

Attendance

At least one author per accepted paper must register and present in person, unless exceptional circumstances make in-person attendance impossible, in which case a virtual presentation may be allowed with prior approval.

Important dates (Anywhere on Earth)

CFP release
May 2026
Submission deadline
July 5, 2026
Notification
July 19, 2026
Camera-ready
July 31, 2026
§04 · Program

TBD

§05 · Team

Organizers.