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Research Areas within Human-Centered Systems

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Human-centered systems is a major research area at the Department of Computer and Information Science.

Here you will find information about current research areas and projects at the division Human-Centered Systems (HCS) at the Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA), Linköping University. The projects are listed thematically below, but there is also great overlap between research themes within the division. Researchers and current theses at HCS are also listed below.

About our research

The research at HCS spans a wide field in terms of applications, but often shares a focus on the interaction between humans, technology and society, as well as an effort to address complex problems through interdisciplinary and user-centered methods.

Many projects are based on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations, and a recurring approach is to involve intended users directly as co-creative actors in research and design processes (so-called co-design).

Another characteristic is the combination of qualitative and quantitative empirical methods, as well as the modelling and construction of computer-based systems. Several projects also include prototyping and simulation-based studies of people's interaction with technology.

Finally, there are several projects that use large amounts of data from existing registers, especially in health and transport.

Human-AI/robot interaction

About the research area

A prominent theme at HCS is investigations into how people interact with, understand and are affected by advanced technologies such as AI and robots.

The Bokbot project is an example of such a project where it is investigated whether social robots and AI can be used to awaken children's desire to read, with a focus on motivation and engagement. The project also highlights both technical challenges and the risk of AI bias.

The research on social cognition in human-robot interaction delves into the cognitive mechanisms behind how humans attribute mental states to robots as intentions and goals, and the project Child Development in the Age of AI and Social Robots addresses the question of how children need to develop an understanding of AI literacy in order to become critical users.

Several projects within Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) study the interaction with autonomous systems, such as drone swarms, in the aviation sector, and for emergency services. It also involves user interaction with autonomous agent planning and control systems.

The projects HARTER (Human Autonomy and Robot Teaming in Emergency Response) and Exoskeletons for Emergency Responders could also be placed under this heading but can be found further down under Health, Safety and Preparedness.

Projects

The bookbot project

Investigates how social robots can be used to awaken the desire to read in children, with prototypes such as Robot-Nils.

Funder: Swedish Research Council, Norrköpings fond for research and development

Researchers: Mattias Arvola (PI) and Tom Ziemke

News: Studying whether a robot can awaken children’s interest in reading

Link to webpage

Social cognition in human-robot interaction

Investigates the cognitive mechanisms behind how humans interpret robot behavior and attribute psychological states to them.

 Funder: Swedish Research Council

Researchers: Tom Ziemke (PI), Sam Thellman and Franziska Babel

 


Child development in the age of AI and social robots

Research on how children who grow up with AI technology perceive AI and develop AI literacy.

Funder: WASP-HS

Researcher: Tom Ziemke

Pedagogical robot platform

Research on how children who grow up with AI technology perceive AI and develop AI literacy.

Funder: Linköpings universitet

Researcher: Johan Blomkvist


Automated human-AI interaction and mission planning with teams of unmanned aircraft systems

Focuses specification and development of an integrated multi-agent mission planning system that includes interaction and data sharing.

Researchers: Daniel de Leng in collaboration with SAAB and Mariusz Wzorek (AIICS, IDA)

TextAD, Automatic text adaptations for students with reading difficulties

Aims to automatically create texts adapted for weak readers by describing the connection between readers and text.

Researchers: Arne Jönsson; Åsa Elwér, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, IBL, leads the project.

Societal challenges and systemic change

About the research area

Several of the projects at HCS use design and systems perspectives to address major societal challenges such as climate change, social services and polarisation.

Just Transitions is a graduate school that focuses on management for a just climate transition. The projects Design and Policy in Practice and Design and Public System Transformation study how design can function as an actor in policy development and transformation of the public sector, for example in the work with the new Social Services Act.

The megagame projects Switching the current and Melting polarisation explore new ways to create understanding and dialogue around complex systems such as energy and sustainability.

Projects

Just Transitions- graduate school

Graduate school with a focus on management and governance for a just climate transition.

Funder: Formas

Manager: Stefan Holmlid

Link to webpage

Design och policy i practice

Focus on the meeting between design and performative policy development, in collaboration with SKR and municipalities regarding the new Social Services Act TITI.

Researcher: Stefan Holmlid

Link to webpage

Workshops for practice

Within the university's profile area Societal Transformations, we investigate how design methodology can be used to prototype new practice and not just new technology.

Funder: Linköping University

Researcher: Johan Blomkvist

Link to profile area

Sound as a representation in service design

Postdoc project focusing on sound as a form of representation in service design. 

Researcher: Ana Kustrak Korper

Spatiality in transdisciplinary research

A study of how transdisciplinary research and methods are shaped by and build on spatial concepts.

Main Supervisor: Stefan Holmlid

External PhD student: Henrietta Palmer


Design and public system transformation

Design in the public sector viewed as a system actor in a local context.

Main Supervisor: Stefan Holmlid

External PhD student: André Szeles

Megagames - large-scale social simulations

  • Switching the current. Megagame project to find new formats to understand the complexity of energy systems and society.  Link to webpage
  • Melting the polarisation. Megagame project to create discussion and new narratives around sustainability in cities and rural areas.

  • Changing the game of consumption. A research communication project that uses large-scale social simulations, so-called megagames, to help groups explore different interests and ideas about transformations towards sustainable consumption related to food, vacations and furnishing. Link to webpage

Research leaders: Björn Johansson, Ola Leifler

Applied AI compass

Develop methodology and template for university education in applied AI, taking into account region-specific needs.  

Funder: WASP-ED

Researchers: Daniel de Leng; Aya Rizk (Institutionen för ekonomisk och industriell utveckling, IEI)

Transport, mobility and driver assistance

About the research area

A significant cluster of research projects is focused on the transport sector, with a particular focus on the driver's role, training and interaction with new technologies.

Several projects revolve around driver training and assessment, where we investigate the use of simulators, challenges for people with neuropsychiatric disabilities, and how educational goals can be made more understandable.

Innovations in the railway is another track, where remote control of trains is explored with a focus on both technology and the working environment for the driver.

The future of mobility is studied in the Advanced Air Mobility project, which examines the attitudes of the public and other actors towards future drone services.

 

Projects

New technologies for improved human performance

Testing a model for interaction with drone swarms in simulations.

Research leader: Björn Johansson (collaboration with SAAB)

Virtual Demo 2

Aims to bring together different research projects on autonomy and create synergy effects, as well as form a management system based on models.

Research leader: Björn Johansson (collaboration with SAAB)

The impact of advanced air mobility

Examines attitudes to future drone services from the perspective of the public, business and government.

Research leader: Björn Johansson (collaboration with VTI and LFV)

Projects about the driving licence process

  • Simulators in driver training tests. Examines the use of driving simulators in driving license training and prerequisites for a simulator-based screening test.
  • The Driving Licence Process for People with NPF. Examines challenges during the driving licence process for people with NPF, including a register study on difficulties and new drivers' outcomes.
  • Screen-based tools for driving tests. Categorisation and evaluation of films with hazard perception in the knowledge test.
  • Safer drivers with training objectives that are easier to understand. Explores how the GDE matrix, on which the curriculum is based, can be made more understandable to driving instructors.
  • Adaptation for driving licence. Deals with adaptations in driving licence training for people with different challenges.

Research leader: Birgitta Thorslund

Projects about remote control of trains

  • Doctoral project Remote control of trains. Focus on remote control of trains under Swedish conditions, including technology and work environment.

Research leader:Birgitta Thorslund

Comfort study on railways prior to ATO 

Focus on remote control of trains under Swedish conditions, including technology and work environment.

Research leader: Birgitta Thorslund

Link to more information about the project


Data management, semantics and circular economy

About the research area

A group of projects has a common technical focus on using ontologies and data integration to enable traceability and circular flows. Trace4Value, SwePass and C/o Glass are all working on circular economy traceability, specifically for flat glass, by developing ontologies, data integration and interfaces for sharing information.

Onto-DESIDE broadens this to include the construction, textiles and electronics sectors. The same methods are also applied in the health field in VaccEval to integrate data from multiple regions for analysis of vaccine effectiveness, and in REBUC to study effects of childhood cancer treatments via registry studies.

Projects

Trace4Value

Traceability for Circular Economy; contributes with ontologies and data integration for the reuse and recycling of flat glass.

Research leader: Eva Blomqvist

Link to webpage

Build cycle

Uses image recognition to train models to recognize different types of construction waste.

Research leader: Eva Blomqvist

SwePass

Studying data for Digital Product Passports and EPDs, technology for data sharing and semantic interoperability for circular economy.

Research leader: Eva Blomqvist

Link to webpage about the project

Onto-DESIDE

Development of ontologies and data sharing platform for circular economy, with use cases in construction, textiles and electronics.  

Funder: EU

Research leader: Eva Blomqvist

Link to website

C/o Glass

Focus on people in relation to new technology for circular flows; IDA's part is about designing interfaces for interaction with technology developed in T4V and SwePass.  

Funder: Formas

Research leader: Eva Blomqvist

Språkbanken CLARIN

Infrastructure project for corpora and resources for humanities and social sciences research, including name recognition in Swedish.

Researchers: Arne Jönsson och Lars Ahrenberg; Marcel Bollmann (AIICS, IDA) serves as LiU's respresentative and Sara Stymne (Uppsala University) leads the project nationally.

Link to website

Health, safety and preparedness

About the research area

A recurring research theme concerns people's well-being and safety, both proactively through training and reactively in the event of accidents and crises.

Projects such as HeartFarming and Social exergames for the elderly use gamification and exergames to promote physical activity in heart patients and the elderly.

In the area of response and rescue, there is the CARER centre, which runs projects on, among other things, the use of robots in operations, new technology for the rescue services during heightened alert, and how laymen and spontaneous volunteers act and coordinate at accident scenes.

Projects

Evaluation of exercises and actual blue light events

Studying how evaluation of exercises and actual blue light events are handled.

Researchers: Peter Berggren, main supervisor, and Anton Björnkvist (external PhD student from industry)

CARER, Centre for Advanced Research in Emergency Response

Centre for research, education and commissioned activities in the field of response and rescue.  

Funder: Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency (MCF)

Deputy Director: Erik Prytz

Link to CARER

HARTER, Human autonomy and robot teaming in emergency response

Studying the use of robots with varying degrees of autonomy in the field of rescue and response.

Funded within CARER

Researchers: Erik Prytz, main supervisor,  and Axel Holmgren, PhD student

Exoskeletons for rescue workers

Project investigating whether exoskeletons can be used to reduce musculoskeletal injuries for rescue personnel.

Funder: AFA Insurance

Research leader: Erik Prytz

Link to webpage about the project (in Swedish)

New technology for rescue services during heightened alert

Research assignment to support the development and evaluation of new technologies for strengthened capabilities for rescue services during heightened alert.  

Funder: Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency (MCF)

Researcher: Erik Prytz

Laymen's abilities in first aid

Doctoral project on spontaneous volunteer laymen's abilities to help in the event of injury.

Erik Prytz, main supervisor, and Marc Friberg, PhD student.

VaccEval

Data integration and data flows to be able to make analyses around vaccine effectiveness and safety based on data from several regions.

Researcher at HCS: Eva Blomqvist

Link to webpage about the project (in Swedish) 

REBUC

Registry studies to study cardiovascular effects of childhood cancer and childhood cancer treatments, integrating registry data.

Researcher: Robin Käskisärkkä

Exergames - training projects

  • HeartFarming, eXg-HF. Training project for patients with heart failure, increase training with mobile AR, design of gamification app for the elderly. Researcher at HCS: Erik Berglund; Tiny Jaarsma, Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, HMV, leads the project. Link to webpage
  • Development of design of exergames with camera-based tracking of the body. For effective and fun training. Researcher: Erik Berglund
  • On-the-job training with companies with Liopep. Evaluation of the effects of training breaks at work, e.g. on productivity and recovery. Researcher: Erik Berglund together with Aseel Berglund (SAS, IDA) News article about the project

 

Service prototyping as a method for shaping the digital work environment

The project investigates the use of service prototypes to understand and reduce negative psychosocial effects of digitalization in health and social care.

Funder: AFA Insurance, press release (in Swedish)

Researcher: Johan Blomkvist; co-applicantat Uppsala University

Chatbot - Family support

Relatives of heart failure patients are happy to chat about various issues related to heart failure. This project investigates whether you can have a chatbot for that purpose.  

Researchers at HCS: Mattias Arvola, Charlie Simonsson och Tom Ziemke; the project is lead by Hanna Alleman, Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, HMV.

More information about projects

Illustration of big data.

Catena-D

This project aims to validate the concept of digital threads on the circular economy (CE) context, together with artificial intelligence (AI) applied to big data systemically with a circular business model.
Three screens of a game with a trophy.

The Heart-exergame study

In general, everybody is recommended to be physically active for at least 150 minutes a week to improve health. Physical activity helps us to participate in daily life activities, stay independent for a longer time and have a good quality of life.

Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is an extension of the traditional Web in which interlinked data with well-described semantics has been added in a machine-processable form.

Current theses at the division Human-Centered Systems

2026

Marc Friberg (2026) Perceiving Emergencies: Laypeople's Judgement, Stress, and Performance in Traumatic Bleeding (Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/9789181185973
Henrietta Palmer (2026) Collaboration for Transformation: Designing Boundary Spaces for Dealing with Difference (Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/9789181185515

2025

Emma Mainza Chilufya (2025) Human-Centred Design of Socially Interactive Virtual Agents (Doctoral thesis, monograph) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/9789180759342
Oscar Bjurling (2025) Designing Human-Swarm Interaction Systems (Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/9789180759595

2024

Kajsa Weibull (2024) Emergency Vehicle Approaching: Warning Drivers Using Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/9789180758055
Robert Johansson (2024) Empirical Studies in Machine Psychology (Doctoral thesis, monograph) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/9789179295066
Sofia Thunberg (2024) Companion Robots for Older Adults: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Deployments in Care Homes (Doctoral thesis, monograph) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/9789180755740

2021

Robin Keskisärkkä (2021) Complex Event Processing under Uncertainty in RDF Stream Processing (Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary) https://dx.doi.org/10.3384/diss.diva-179481
Link to more theses at HCS in DIVA

Short facts about our researchers, funders and partners 

Researchers

The department consists of approximately 60 people, of which 20 are permanent employees and 15 are researchers with a PhD. We also have around 10 employed PhD students and several external PhD students who are employed by some of our partners.

Funders

  • The Swedish Transport Administration
  • Formas
  • The Kamprad Family Foundation
  • Swedish Research Council (VR)
  • Vinnova
  • EU
  • The Carnegie Foundation
  • WASP-HS
  • The Swedish Police
  • AFA Insurance
  • Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency (MCF)
  • The Research Council of Norway
  • Norrköping Municipality's Foundation for Research and Development

Partners

Our research is distinctly interdisciplinary, and within Linköping University we have collaborations with all other departments. Our research is also strongly challenge-driven, which means that we collaborate with a wide range of societal actors:

  • Fenomenmagasinet
  • The Aphasia Association
  • Urban Futures Centre
  • City of Gothenburg
  • Viable Cities
  • EUMETS
  • Energy efficient Dalarna
  • Coompanion
  • The Living Countryside Network
  • The National Association for Local Heritage Preservation
  • Hultabygdens återvinningsförening
  • Plockhugget
  • Centre for Disaster Medicine and Traumatology (KMC)
  • Regional nursing homes and old people's homes
  • Schools in Motala, Uddevalla, Norrköping, Linköping and Varberg
  • Region Östergötland
  • Region Västra Götaland
  • Norrköping Municipality
  • Linköping Municipality
  • National Language Bank
  • National Forensic Centre (NFC)
  • The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
  • The County Administrative Boards
  • Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency (MCF)
  • ABB
  • Saint Gobain
  • Ragn-Sells
  • Scania IT
  • Saab Aeronautics

We also have collaborations with other universities, both nationally and internationally:

  • Jönköping Institute of Technology
  • University of Gothenburg
  • Chalmers University of Technology
  • KTH Royal Institute of Technology
  • Lund University
  • Karlstad University
  • Ghent University (Belgium)
  • Prague University of Economics (Czech Republic)
  • UPM (Spain)
  • University of Bologna (Italy).