Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are interactive characters that exhibit human like qualities and
 communicate with humans or with each other using natural human modalities such as facial 
expressions, speech and gesture. They are capable of  realtime perception, cognition and  
action that allows them to participate in dynamic social environments.

IVA 2012 is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main leading scientific 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 encouraged to share work with a 
relevance to intelligent virtual agents.

SPECIAL TOPIC: "Virtual Agents and Narrative". In 2012 the IVA conference will have a special 
theme on narrative. This topic will touch on many aspects of Intelligent Virtual Agent theory 
and application. To name a few areas, we will especially encourage submissions that deal with 
spoken language interaction with agents, including dialog and story-telling agents. Application 
areas include language and culture training, heritage preservation and entertainment. 
Issues include how systems deal with a variety of languages, linguistic and cultural modeling, 
and cultural differences in human-agent interaction.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Conceptual Frameworks and Models for IVAs
  * learned, evolved or emergent behavior in agents
  * improvisational or dramatic interaction
  * stages of autonomy (from avatars to agents)
  * simulations of groups and crowds
  * cognitive models for behaviour generation
  * theoretical foundations and formal models for virtual agents

Design, Modeling and Evaluation 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 and Applications 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 in games, education, art, etc.
  * delivery platforms: desktop, single vs. multi-user, virtual or augmented 
     or mixed reality, robots
  * future or current experience in various fields, e.g.: computer games,  
     art and entertainment,  education and training, simulation and 
     visualization

Special Topic: Storytelling and Games
  * conversational and story-telling agents
  * intelligent agents for serious games
  * improvisational or dramatic interaction
  * multi-modal interaction with intelligent virtual agents
  * applications for heritage preservation
  * applications for films  and animation

SUBMISSION DETAILS
Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers (12 pages), short papers (6 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://iva2012.soe.ucsc.edu/home

Important Dates
  * Submission of all papers: April 30th
  * Notification of acceptance: June 10th
  * Camera-ready copies: June 24th
  * Conference: September 12-14

ORGANIZATION
Conference Chairs
  - Marilyn Walker, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
  - Michael Neff , University of California, Davis, USA
  - Ana Paiva, INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Te´cnico, Portugal
  - Yukiko I. Nakano, Seikei University, Japan

Poster and Demo Chair
  - Arnav Jhala, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

MORE INFORMATION

Please visit the conference web site at: http://iva2012.soe.ucsc.edu/home Or contact the 
conference chairs at: iva2012@googlegroups.com
--
Ruth Aylett                                   Professor of Computer Science
Mathematics and Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK      Tel: 44-131-451-4189     Fax: 44-131-451-3327
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/                      "Life is beautiful"