Call for Papers
Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA'09)
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, University of Paris 8, INRIA, France
            Helmut Prendinger, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
 
 
MORE INFORMATION
Please visit the conference web site: http://iva09.dfki.de/
Contact conference chair:  z.m.ruttkay@ewi.utwente.nl
 
 
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.