CALL FOR PAPERS
CALL FOR PAPERS
We are excited to announce the 1st edition of the Workshop on "Sensing, Hardware, and Embedded Intelligence for Eye Tracking (SPHERA)”, to be held at ACM ETRA 2026.
This workshop focuses on the emerging frontier of low-power sensing, hardware acceleration, and embedded machine learning for deployable eye-tracking systems on smart glasses, AR headsets, and other wearable platforms.
By bringing together researchers working across sensing hardware, embedded intelligence, and gaze estimation, the workshop aims to bridge cutting-edge technological innovations with the practical requirements of real-world, resource-constrained devices.
For the complete details and requirements, please consult the official Submission Process.
Submission Format
We accept the following contribution format:
Full paper submissions (up to 8 pages, plus references):
After peer review, accepted papers will be published in the ETRA 2026 Workshop Proceedings as part of the ACM Digital Library. Papers must follow the ACM single-column format.
All submissions will be handled electronically via the Precision Conference System (PCS) and will ensure a double-blind review process without any conflict of interest.
We invite submissions on a wide range of topics related to eye tracking including but not limited to:
Novel sensor modalities: capacitive sensors, optical flow sensors, electro-oculography sensors, event cameras, and other sensor modalities for low-power, high-speed gaze estimation.
Hardware architectures and co-design: FPGA, MCU, or custom accelerators; active and adaptive sensing; low-latency, energy-efficient pipelines; hardware-software co-design for embedded eye tracking.
Edge AI and TinyML: quantized and pruned networks for on-device gaze estimation, adaptive pipelines, and methods leveraging novel sensors for efficient inference.
Applications: smart eyewear, XR headsets, assistive technology, driver monitoring, and mobile HCI, highlighting integrated hardware-software approaches that enable real-time gaze-based interaction.
Reproducibility and benchmarking: open hardware platforms, standardized evaluation and datasets for eyewear eye-tracking, and open software platforms to foster reproducible research.
Authors of papers rejected from the ETRA 2026 main conference tracks are invited to submit their work to the SPHERA workshop through a fast-track submission process. Fast-track submissions will be evaluated taking into account the reviews received during the ETRA 2026 review process.
Please submit your paper via email with the following information:
Email address: sphera.etra2026@acm.org
Subject: ETRA2026 SPHERA - Fast-track Submission
Attachments:
Anonymized PDF of the paper.
Original ETRA reviews you received via email.
Submissions should follow the SPHERA workshop paper format and page limits. Authors may submit after the regular paper deadline via the fast-track; however, early submission is strongly encouraged to allow adequate time for review. Late submissions may not be considered. For any questions, please contact sphera@polimi.it or sphera.etra2026@acm.org.
REGULAR PAPERS SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Please ensure all submissions adhere to the ACM ETRA 2026 submission guidelines.
For detailed information on submission policies, please visit the ETRA 2026 Submission Policies and Call for Papers pages.
Submissions will be handled electronically via the conference’s Precision Conference System (PCS).
To make a submission to the workshop, make sure to select "ETRA 2026 SPHERA" as a Track.
BEST PAPER AWARD
Exceptional submissions will be recognized with Best Paper Awards sponsored by EssilorLuxottica, honoring papers that demonstrate strong scientific contribution, technical innovation, and relevance to the workshop themes, as evaluated by the program committee.
Awards will be presented during the workshop
ACM NOTICE
Effective January 1, 2026, ACM is fully transitioning to 100% Open Access (OA) through its ACM OPEN initiative. This means the entire ACM Digital Library will become freely accessible to everyone worldwide. As an ACM-sponsored conference, ETRA is part of this transition, operating under a "pay-to-publish" model.
To publish your work without incurring a fee, the corresponding author's institution must be an ACM OPEN participating member. A comprehensive list of participating countries and institutions is available at https://libraries.acm.org/acmopen/open-participants. (Note: There can only be one corresponding author, who does not necessarily need to be the first author.)
Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a geographic or discretionary financial hardship waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the Policy on Geographic APC Waivers and Discounts Policy and the Policy on Discretionary APC Waivers. Keep in mind that discretionary waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM. Simply sending a message to ACM indicating an inability to pay an APC is typically an insufficient justification for such a waiver. Waivers are based on the specific circumstances of the author(s) requesting the waiver. ACM does take seriously into consideration the institutional affiliation of the authors and whether it is a reasonable expectation that their institution should be joining the ACM Open program. This is necessary for the long-term financial sustainability of the ACM Open model.
To support a smooth transition and encourage broader ACM Open participation, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy on APC pricing for 2026. Please visit the official Call for Papers webpage for more information.