Description

Intelligent Virtual Characters are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, and are being used in games, film, education, and social situations. We are seeing advances in perceptual abilities, language processing and generation, and animation; and a better understanding of embodied communication and conversation. Microsoft's new Xbox demo involving the virtual boy Milo sets a vision for the possibilities of virtual characters playing a role in social engagement with humans.

This workshop, held as part of HCSNet SummerFest 2009, aims to explore technical, psychological, and sociological issues in the development of intelligent virtual characters and applications involving them. We encourage a broad range of submissions from researchers working on the development of virtual characters or capabilities for them, or on issues related to human engagement with such characters, or on social situations that may involve one or more virtual participants. We are particularly interested in bringing together insights from both technical and social perspectives.

Specific topics may include:

• Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) or human-robot interaction
• Perceptual abilities: e.g. speech, vision, emotion detection, physical object detection
• Communicative abilities: language processing and generation; physical gesture; gaze and facial expression
• Social abilities: models of attention, engagement and interaction; turn-taking
• Emotional and affective modelling: emotion rendering through face and language; personality
• Computational frameworks and animation: platforms for building agents
• Reasoning and control: AI for ECAs; scripting multi-character scenarios; autonomy
• Applications: games; movies; entertainment; education and training; virtual reality; virtual companions

Professor Catherine Pelachaud, one of the world's leading ECA researchers, will give a keynote presentation at the workshop, which will consist of presentations, posters, demos, and discussion sessions. We encourage participation from interested researchers from Computer Science, Sociology, Psychology, and Communication, as well as anyone working in or interested in any application area for Virtual Characters, including industry perspectives. As an outcome, we hope to bring together a diverse community and develop collaboration opportunities amongst groups working on different aspects of the design of intelligent virtual characters.

Important Dates

• Submission Deadline: Monday 28th September 2009
• Notification of Acceptance: Monday 12th October 2009
• Registration: Closes Friday 6th November 2009
• Event Date: Friday 4th December 2009

Submission Format

Submissions should be in the form of 500 word abstracts.

Submission deadline: Monday 28th September 2009

Registration Information

Registration: Closes Friday 6th November 2009