Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and signal processing are accelerating the next generation of autonomous systems — drones, self-driving vehicles, robotics, smart manufacturing, and digital health. In 2026, the most impactful progress is happening at the convergence of AI and Signal Processing: modern AI learns powerful representations from multimodal sensor streams, while signal processing provides physically grounded modeling, robustness to noise and drift, and real-time efficiency. As sensors become cheaper and ubiquitous, IoT/IIoT deployments generate massive, high-throughput data streams this creates a pressing need for reliable, low-latency, resource-aware methods that can operate across cloud–edge–device pipelines and remain trustworthy in real environments.
The global artificial intelligence (AI) market is currently valued at approximately $244 billion to $260 billion in 2025 and is projected to experience explosive growth, potentially reaching over $1 trillion by 2027 and nearly $4.8 trillion by 2033.
This market growth is driven by the expanding adoption of cloud-based applications and services, the surge of big data and streaming analytics, and rising demand for intelligent assistants and automation—enabled increasingly by advances in signal processing for sensing, perception, communications, and control. Yet several factors still limit AI from reaching its full business potential: lack of skilled workforce, data availability and quality, trust and transparency, and integration challenges into real products and infrastructures.
The ASPAI conference series was launched to help close this gap by providing a focused forum for open discussion and development of emerging AI and appropriate signal processing technologies with an emphasis on real-world implementation. ASPAI is designed to connect researchers, manufacturers, and users around deployable solutions— bridging theory, algorithms, and systems engineering — so that promising ideas translate faster into robust applications. The 1st ASPAI conference took place in Barcelona (Spain) in 2019, the 2nd in Berlin (Germany) in 2020 (online), the 3rd in Porto (Portugal) in 2021 (online), the 4th in Corfu (Greece) in 2022, the 5th in Tenerife (Canary Islands), Spain, the 6th in Funchal (Madeira Island), Portugal, and the 7th in Innsbruck, Austria.
ASPAI’ 2026 strengthens this mission by explicitly targeting the main market restrictions: it promotes deployment-ready skills (through practitioner-driven exchange and engineering-aware evaluation), addresses the data bottleneck (data-centric workflows and learning with limited labels), advances trustworthy and transparent AI for signals (robustness, uncertainty, validation), and accelerates integration (end-to-end pipelines spanning sensors, edge hardware, and cloud services). In short, ASPAI’ 2026 is where AI meets signal processing to move from “good demos” to scalable, reliable systems.
The ASPAI’ 2026 is organized by IFSA — a non-profit, professional association serving academia and industry since 1999 — with media partners including IFSA Publishing, IOS Press (Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering) and World Scientific (International Journal of Neural Systems).
The purpose of ASPAI’ 2026 is to bring together leading international researchers, developers and practitioners interested in artificial intelligence and appropriate signal processing technologies. The event will be co-located with the 2nd International Conference on AI in Medicine and Healthcare (AiMH’ 2026) under the same conference umbrella.
The conference will offer plenary and invited talks, contributed oral and poster sessions in person and virtual (on demand). Social and cultural events will also take place to foster networking among participants in a friendly manner. We trust that you will find ASPAI’ 2026 professionally rewarding and stimulating as well as enjoyable.
Welcome to ASPAI’ 2026 !
