Dagstuhl-Seminar — Designing Computers’ Control Over Our Bodies

Previous human-computer interaction (HCI) paradigms mostly focused on a controller-responder relationship, where the user issued a command to control the computer to execute a task. This paradigm has served computer science well for many decades. However, more recent research steered away from it by not only considering cases where the human being is in control, but also the computer. In particular, more recent research considered human-in-the-loop interactions, where the computer, in return, can also take control. Currently, we are witnessing an emergence of systems in which the computational machine can take control, and in particular, embodied control of the user’s body through technologies such as electrical muscle stimulation, galvanic vestibular stimulation or exoskeletons. In other words, the user’s body is physically controlled by the machine. Controlling the human body by a computational machine can have many advantages. In the example of the autonomous car, the user is transported to their location faster and more safely than if a human was in control. Similarly, autonomous exoskeletons can provide mobility to paralyzed populations, and even enhance abilities such as strength beyond what is otherwise humanly possible.