From 28 to 31 October 2026, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) hosted the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Human-Computer Interaction (IHCI 2026). Co-organised with NingboTech University, the University of Bath, and Nanchang University, the event brought together over 200 researchers, practitioners, and industry representatives from more than 20 countries and regions.

The programme featured seven keynote addresses from leading scholars, including Professor Stephen Brewster (University of Glasgow), who explored how extended reality (XR) can reshape the passenger experience, and Professor Zengguang Hou (Chinese Academy of Sciences), who discussed brain-computer interfaces for motor and cognitive rehabilitation.

Across 6 regular and 6 special sessions, attendees delivered 54 oral presentations covering accessible interaction, multimodal sensing, large language models, human-robot interaction, immersive media, and on-device AI. A poster session showcased 38 works, while research demos included SenseBridge, an action-based pain reporting system for non-speaking patients, and a VR interaction system for upper-limb rehabilitation.

A roundtable discussion on “Opportunities, Boundaries, and Talent in the AI Era” brought together perspectives from academia and industry, highlighting the need for rigorous, reliable AI deployment in industrial settings and the importance of human-AI collaboration in future workforce development.

In his closing remarks, Conference Chair Dr Boon Giin Lee thanked the organising committee, sponsors, and volunteers. The conference proceedings will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series and indexed in Scopus, Google Scholar, DBLP, and the ACM Digital Library.