IVA 2011 – International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
GALA 2011 – The Gathering of Lifelike Agents Festival 

Eleventh International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
http://iva2011.ru.is
September 15-17, 2011 Reykjavik, Iceland

Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are interactive characters that exhibit human-like qualities and communicate with humans or with each other using natural human modalities such as speech and gesture. They are capable of realtime perception, cognition and action that allows them to participate in dynamic social environments.

IVA 2011 is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main forum for presenting research on modeling, developing and evaluating intelligent virtual agents with a focus on communicative abilities and social behavior. In addition to presentations on theoretical issues, the conference encourages the showcasing of working applications. Researchers from the fields of human-human and human-robot interaction are also encouraged to share work with a relevance to intelligent virtual agents.

IVA 2011 is sponsored by Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence, Bielefeld University (CITEC), Icelandic Institute for Intelligent Machines (IIIM) and Reykjavik University. It is held in co-operation with AAAI and EUROGRAPHICS.

SPECIAL TOPIC: “Language and Culture”

In 2011 the IVA conference will focus on Language and Culture. This topic will touch on many aspects of Intelligent Virtual Agent theory and application. To name a few areas, we will especially encourage submissions that deal with spoken language interaction with agents, including dialog and story-telling agents. Application areas include language and culture training, heritage preservation and entertainment. Interesting issues include how systems deal with a variety of languages, linguistic and cultural modeling, and cultural differences in human-agent interaction.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Conceptual Frameworks for IVAs

• learned, evolved or emergent behavior
• improvisational or dramatic interaction
• stages of autonomy (from avatars to agents)
• simulations of groups and crowds
• face-to-face human-agent interaction

Design and Evaluation of IVAs

• design criteria and design methodologies
• evaluation methodologies and user studies
• ethical considerations and social impact
• dimensions of intelligence, cognition and behavior
• models of personality and cultural awareness
• models of social competence
• models of multimodal perception and action
• models of emotional communicative behavior

Implementation and Applications of IVAs

• software engineering issues
• real-time integrated systems
• portability and reuse
• standards / measures to support interoperability
• specialized tools, toolkits and tool chains
• specialized modeling and animation technologies
• applications in games, education, art, etc.
• delivery on various platforms

Special Topic: Language and Culture

• conversational and story-telling agents
• spoken and multimodal dialog interaction
• language and culture training agents
• applications for heritage preservation
• multi-lingual and cross-cultural issues

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers (12 pages), short papers (6 pages), or poster papers (1-2 pages) in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) format.  For details on how to submit your paper, consult the conference web site: http://iva2011.ru.is/

Important Dates

• Submission of all papers: April 26
• Notification of acceptance: June 10
• Camera-ready copies: June 24
• Conference: September 15-17

ORGANIZATION

Conference Chairs

• Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson, Reykjavík University, Iceland
• Kristinn R. Thórisson, Reykjavík University, Iceland
• Stefan Kopp, Bielefeld University, Germany
• Stacy Marsella, University of Southern California, USA

Poster and Demo Chair

• Yngvi Björnsson, Reykjavík University, Iceland

Senior Program Committee

• Jan Allbeck, George Mason University, USA
• Elisabeth Andre, Augsburg University, Germany
• Ruth Aylett, Heriot-Watt University, UK
• Tim Bickmore, Northeastern University, USA
• Jonathan Gratch, University of Southern California, USA
• Dirk Heylen, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Michael Kipp, DFKI, Germany
• Ana Paiva, INESC-ID, Portugal
• Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS, TELECOM ParisTech, France
• Helmut Prendinger, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
• Mark Riedl, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
• Thomas Rist, University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, Germany
• Zsofia Ruttkay, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Hungary

Local Conference Secretariat

• RS Travel Solutions LP
  Att: Ms. Ragnheiður Stefánsdóttir
  Phone/Fax: (354) 568 7939 or (354) 892 7073
  E-mail: [email protected]

MORE INFORMATION

Please visit the conference web site at: http://iva2011.ru.is/ Or contact the conference chairs at: [email protected]

GALA 2011 – THE GATHERING OF LIFELIKE AGENTS FESTIVAL
http://di.ncl.ac.uk/publicweb/gala2011/

GALA is an annual festival, held in conjunction with IVA, to showcase the latest Animated Lifelike Agents created by university students and academic or industrial research groups. GALA consists of: (a) A final video screening event to demonstrate the state-of-the-art in the technology of virtual humans; (b) The GALA Jury Award for student projects and the GALA Public Award for any entry; (c) The permanent GALA Gallery on the web with the best entries exhibited for further study; and (d) The possibility of a short paper (2 pages) publication in the IVA proceedings.

GALA Participation Tracks

• Student: Students from any university, individually or as a group.
• Other: Non-student work from academic institutions and industry.

GALA Submission Categories

• Communication: How do agents communicate with users and each other?
• Animated Lifelike Agent Applications: Agents shown in application context.
• Other Animated Lifelike Agent Creation: Tools for creation and control.

GALA Submission Format

A video of 2-4 minutes (“flv” format) and an optional 2 page paper (with the possibility of inclusion in the IVA2011 proceedings). Successful applicants will be able to submit a higher quality paper/video later.

GALA Submission Deadline

• 26th April – GALA short paper deadline.
• 23rd May – GALA flash video submission deadline.

GALA Contact

• Phil Heslop: [email protected]

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