Call for Papers

IVA 2012
Twelfth International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
http://iva2012.soe.ucsc.edu/home
September 12-14 Santa Cruz, California, USA

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 facial expressions, speech and gesture. They are capable of realtime perception, cognition and action that allows them to participate in dynamic social environments.

IVA 2012 is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main leading scientific 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.

SPECIAL TOPIC: “Virtual Agents and Narrative”. In 2012 the IVA conference will have a special theme on narrative. 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. 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 and Models for IVAs

• learned, evolved or emergent behavior in agents
• improvisational or dramatic interaction
• stages of autonomy (from avatars to agents)
• simulations of groups and crowds
• cognitive models for behaviour generation
• theoretical foundations and formal models for virtual agents

Design, Modeling and Evaluation of IVAs

• design criteria and design methodologies
• evaluation methodologies and user studies
• ethical considerations and social impact
• applicable lessons from other fields (e.g. robotics)
• 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 platforms: desktop, single vs. multi-user, virtual or augmented or mixed reality, robots
• future or current experience in various fields, e.g.: computer games, art and entertainment, education and training, simulation and visualization

Special Topic: Storytelling and Games

• conversational and story-telling agents
• intelligent agents for serious games
• improvisational or dramatic interaction
• multi-modal interaction with intelligent virtual agents
• applications for heritage preservation
• applications for films and animation

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://iva2012.soe.ucsc.edu/home

Important Dates

• Submission of all papers: April 30th
• Notification of acceptance: June 10th
• Camera-ready copies: June 24th
• Conference: September 12-14

ORGANIZATION

Conference Chairs
- Marilyn Walker, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
- Michael Neff , University of California, Davis, USA
- Ana Paiva, INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Te´cnico, Portugal
- Yukiko I. Nakano, Seikei University, Japan

Poster and Demo Chair
- Arnav Jhala, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

MORE INFORMATION
Please visit the conference web site at: http://iva2012.soe.ucsc.edu/home
Or contact the conference chairs at: [email protected]

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