1st Call for Papers

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Real-Time Affect Analysis and Interpretation:
Closing the Affective Loop in Virtual Agents and Robots
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Special issue of the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces

www.jmui.org
www.springer.com/12193

Guest editors:

Ginevra Castellano, Queen Mary University of London, Department of
Computer Science,
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, United Kingdom;
ginevra@dcs.qmul.ac.uk

Kostas Karpouzis, Institute of Communication and Computer Systems,
National Technical University of Athens, Greece; kkarpou@cs.ntua.gr

Christopher Peters, Department of the Digital Environment,
Coventry University, United Kingdom; Christopher.Peters@coventry.ac.uk

Jean-Claude Martin, LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France; martin@limsi.fr


Deadline for Paper Submission: ***6th April 2009***


This special issue will address computational models and techniques for
the real-time interpretation of the user’s behaviour to produce mid- or
high-level state descriptors, from basic emotions to more complex
appraisals or mental states (e.g. agreement and interest, or blends of
several emotions) for the purpose of closing the affective loop in social
robots and virtual agents.

A vital requirement for social robots and virtual agents is the ability to
infer the affective and mental states of humans, so as to be able to
engage in and behave appropriately during sustained social interactions.
Examples include ensuring that the user is interested in maintaining the
interaction or providing suitable empathic responses. A fundamental
component in these 'mentalizing' and 'empathizing' capabilities is the
interpretation of human behavior from sensory input, which must be
conducted in a timely manner. Researchers in multimodal interfaces have
been increasingly addressing the design of systems endowed with these
abilities. Nevertheless, only a few attempts have been made towards the
development of virtual agents and robots capable of inferring the user’s
states in real-time.

The focus of this special issue is on real-time computational techniques
for the recognition and interpretation of human verbal and non-verbal
behavior, models of 'mentalizing' and 'empathizing' for integrative
representation and processing of input data, and implementation to support
human-agent and human-robot interaction frameworks.


***Important Dates***

- Deadline for paper submission: 6th April 2009
- Notification of acceptance: 11th May 2009
- Camera-ready version of accepted papers: 8th June 2009
- Publication date: July/August 2009


Topics to be addressed include, but are not limited to:

• Multimodal affect recognition (facial expressions, body language,
speech, biosignals, typed text, users’ actions etc.)

• Perception-action loops in agents/robots

• Affect sensitive and socially interactive agents/robots

• Cognitive and affective mentalizing / theory of mind

• Social appraisal

• Visual attention

• Theories of emotion

• Emotion and cognitive state representation

• Context awareness

• Cognitive modelling of user

• Individual differences in the expression and perception of affect

• User engagement

• Evaluation of affective interaction and user-centred design

• Applications: interactive games, empathic interfaces, pedagogical
agents, health care, etc.


***Instructions for Authors***

Submissions should be 4 to 12 pages long and must be written in English.

Formatting instructions and templates are available on: http://www.jmui.org

Authors should register and upload their submission on the following
website: http://www.editorialmanager.com/jmui/

During the submission process, please select “AFFINE special issue” as
article type.

Authors are encouraged to send to: ginevra@dcs.qmul.ac.uk
a brief email indicating their intention to participate as soon as
possible, including their contact information and the topic they intend to
address in their submissions.