Call: Interaction with Agents and Robots: Different Embodiments, Common Challenges (Workshop at IVA 2017)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The international full day workshop:
“Interaction with Agents and Robots: Different Embodiments, Common Challenges”
In conjunction with the 17th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) (http://iva2017.org/)
Stockholm, Sweden
August 27, 2017
Website: http://iar.ict.usc.edu/

Submission deadline: July 15, 2017

I. AIM AND SCOPE

As hardware and enabling technologies such as speech recognition improve, virtual agents and robots are increasingly able to autonomously take part in “face-to-face” interactions with people. But engaging in these types of interactions successfully requires the complex coordination of verbal and nonverbal behaviour, as well as the ability to respond to the verbal and/or nonverbal cues of a human interaction partner.

Researchers in the field of virtual agents and human-robot interactions have been concerned with these problems, and these fields provide many examples of implemented software systems that can give useful insights for researchers of the two communities. However, while the HRI and agents communities share research interests, there are differences in methodology and focus. This workshop seeks to increase communication and knowledge sharing between these communities. What can the agents community learn from HRI about the evaluation of people’s attitudes towards and acceptance of embodied agents? And what can the HRI community learn from the agents’ community about designing control architectures for embodied conversation?

Research on embodiment in agents suggests that whether an agent is embodied virtually or in hardware can influence how people respond during interaction. But in many real world applications such as assistance in domestic environments, it may be most practical for people to interact with both robots and software agents under different conditions. How to design and realize these systems of hybrid embodiment, as well as how to study people’s impressions of them are open questions for research. Should differing embodiments have distinct agency/personalities? Or should an agent migrate across them while interacting with a user?

The goal of this workshop is to enable a cross fertilization of ideas and solutions for the issues encountered when attempting to generate behavior coordination between machines and humans, that can be used independently from the embodiment of the agent. Similarly, we aim to better understand the limitations and benefits of physical or virtual embodiment for different interaction scenarios. This approach will enable a discussion about the nature of the differences between software and robotic agents, not only with respect to their construction and scientific use, but also to their fields of application.

II. KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dr. Catherine Pelachaud – CNRS, Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Paris
Dr. Ruth Aylett – Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

III. SUBMISSION

The papers should be submitted to mchollet@ict.usc.edu

Use the IEEE style (two-column format – US letter): IEEE Templates.

Submitted papers should be limited to 2-4 pages maximum.

The primary list of topics covers the following points (but not limited to):

  • synchronizing verbal and nonverbal behavior
  • AI for autonomous interaction dialog management for embodied agents and robots
  • design of hybrid and/or “migrating” embodiments
  • producing expressive gestures
  • evaluating embodied interaction
  • fostering long term acceptance of and attachment to embodied agents
  • expression and perception of socio-emotional states
  • multi-party human-robot-agent interaction
  • blending realities: robots and agents understanding and reacting to virtual and real events

IV. IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission: 15-July-2017
Notification of acceptance: 1-August-2017
Camera-ready version: 15 August-July-2017
Workshop: 27-August-2017

V. ORGANIZERS

Mathieu Chollet – USC Institute for Creative Technologies, USA
Ayan Ghosh – Heriot Watt University, UK
Hagen Lehmann – Italian Institute of Technology, Italy
Yukiko Nakano – Seikei University, Japan

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