[chisigmail] FW: CFP Intelligent Virtual Agents'09

[Cecile.Paris at csiro.au]

Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA'09)
http://iva09.dfki.de/
September 14-16, 2009
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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

IVA'09 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
welcome to share work which has a bearing on intelligent virtual agents. 
IVA'09 is held in cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of
Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the European Association for Computer
Graphics (EG) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGART and
SIGCHI).

SPECIAL TOPIC: "GAMES"
IVA'09 particularly encourages submissions on this year's special topic of
games.  The game industry is the source of the world's largest selection
of interactive characters.  To date, the creation of these characters and
their social behaviors has largely relied on carefully hand crafted
techniques rather than automation.  With larger environments, grander
stories, more players and a greater demand for realism, hand crafted
approaches are unlikely to scale.  Imbuing characters with more
intelligence and self-determination is an ongoing and so far unfulfilled
goal of the game industry.  IVA'09 is an opportunity to reveal, tackle and
discuss the issues that relate to using intelligent virtual agents in
games and aims to strengthen links and the exchange of knowledge between
academia and the game industry.


TOPICS OF INTEREST
Design and modeling 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 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 of IVAs
- future role and/or current experience in various fields including
    - computer games
    - art and entertainment
    - education and training
    - simulation and visualization
- delivery platforms: desktop, single/multi- user, virtual/augmented/mixed
reality

Conceptual Frameworks for IVAs
- learned, evolved or emergent behavior
- improvisational or dramatic interaction
- stages of autonomy (from avatars to agents)
- massive simulations of crowds


SUBMISSION DETAILS
Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers (12-14 pages), short
papers (6-7 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://iva09.dfki.de


IMPORTANT DATES
17 April, 2009                Submission of all papers
22 May, 2009                  Notifications of acceptance
12 June, 2009                 Camera-ready copies
01 June, 2009                 GALA video submission
14-16 September, 2009         Conference


ORGANIZATION
Chairs   Zsófia Ruttkay, University of Twente, The Netherlands
         Michael Kipp, DFKI, Germany
         Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, The Netherlands
         Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson, Reykjavík University, Iceland

Best Paper Chair                   Thomas Rist, FH Augsburg, Germany
Submissions Chair                  Patrick Gebhard, DFKI, Germany
Poster and Demo Chair              Dirk Heylen, University of Twente, The
Netherlands
Local Organization Chair           Betsy van Dijk, University of Twente,
The Netherlands

Senior Program Committee
            Elisabeth André, University of Augsburg, Germany
            Ruth Aylett, Heriot-Watt University, UK
            Marc Cavazza, University of Teesside, UK
            Jonathan Gratch, University of Southern California, USA
            Stefan Kopp, Bielefeld University, Germany
            Jean-Claude Martin, LIMSI-CNRS, France
            Patrick Olivier, Newcastle University, UK
            Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS, TELECOM-ParisTech, France
            Helmut Prendinger, National Institute of Informatics, Japan


MORE INFORMATION
Please visit the conference web site: http://iva09.dfki.de/
Contact conference chair:  iva09 at dfki.de


GALA 2009
The Gathering of Animated Lifelike Agents will take place at IVA'09, see:
http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/gala/


CO-LOCATION WITH ACII'09
IVA'09 will be co-located in Amsterdam with the complementary Affective
Computing & Intelligent Interaction International Conference (ACII'09)
(http://www.acii2009.nl/), held 10-12 September 2009. While this is a
great opportunity to make the most of a trip to Amsterdam, the same paper
cannot be submitted to both conferences: papers with a primary focus on
embodied conversational agents and virtual agents are encouraged to submit
to IVA'09; papers with a primary focus on emotion are encouraged to submit
to ACII'09.