计算机学院系列讲座名家讲坛第36期——From Sensing to Influencing: How Intelligent Environments Understand and Affect Human Behavior

报告题目(Title)：From Sensing to Influencing: How Intelligent Environments Understand and Affect Human Behavior

时间(Date & Time)：2026.7.14; 3:00pm

Zoom：5868518746

密码：kangaroo

主讲人(Speaker)：Abdelsalam (Sumi) Helal

邀请人(Host)：Daqing Zhang(张大庆)

报告摘要(Abstract)：

Smart environments are increasingly equipped with sensors, connected devices, and artificial intelligence capable of continuously observing he physical world and the people within it. But how does a computer move from raw sensor readings to understanding what a person is actually doing? And once a system understands human behavior, can it intelligently act to influence that behavior?

This lecture explores these questions through two complementary perspectives. We first examine Human Activity Recognition (HAR), the computational problem of transforming uncertain and heterogeneous sensor observations into meaningful interpretations of human activities. We introduce sentience abstractions and explore how probabilistic sequential models, particularly Hidden Markov Models, reason about activities that unfold over time. We will also examine why uncertainty remains a fundamental challenge in sensing and smart environments. Resolving these uncertainties constitute important projects as PhD theses or undergraduate Capstone graduation projects.

The second part of the lecture moves from understanding human behavior to influencing it. We introduce Human Persuasive Cybernetics and examine intelligent systems that close the loop between sensing, reasoning, intervention, and human response. Through examples of persuasive technologies and behavior-change systems, we explore how computing systems can detect the need for intervention, select an appropriate influence, deliver it through technological channels, and assess whether the human is responding as intended.

Together, these topics illustrate a fundamental evolution in intelligent environments: from systems that merely collect data, to systems that understand human behavior, and ultimately to cybernetic systems that interact with people and attempt to affect change. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of the technical, human, and ethical questions raised when computers move from observing us to agentic-ally influencing us.

主讲人简介(Bio)：

Abdelsalam Helal (aka: Sumi Helal) is a Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Bologna, Italy. Prior to joining the University of Bologna, he spent 26 years as associate and then full processor in the Computer & Information Science and Engineering Department at the University of Florida, USA. At University of Florida, he directed the Mobile and Pervasive Computing Laboratory, co-founded and directed the Gator Tech Smart House –a real-world deployment project that aimed at identifying key barriers and opportunities to make the Smart Home concept a common place (creating the "Smart Home in a Box" concept). His active areas of research focus on architectural and programmability aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT), service-oriented IoT architectures, IoT edge intelligence, and pervasive/ubiquitous systems and their human-centric applications, especially in the Digital Health area. Helal is also a technologist at heart who founded several successful ventures in the areas of IoT and Digital Health. His patents that came out of his research were licensed by the top multinational tech industry including Google, Apple, Samsung, Bosch, Siemens, IKEA, T-Mobile, Verizon, ATT, Nokia, Ericsson, among others. Helal is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, AAAS, AAIA, IET, and a member of Academia Europaea. He is also a member of the US National Academy of Inventors. He can be contacted at: helal@acm.org

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北京大学计算机学院