Overview
*********************
Generating nonverbal behaviours, such as gesticulation, facial expressions and gaze, is of great importance for natural interaction with embodied agents such as virtual agents and social robots. At present, behaviour generation is typically powered by rule-based systems, data-driven approaches, and their hybrids. For evaluation, both objective and subjective methods exist, but their application and validity are frequently a point of contention.

This workshop asks “What will be the behaviour-generation methods of the future? And how can we evaluate these methods using meaningful objective and subjective metrics?” The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on the generation and evaluation of nonverbal behaviours for embodied agents to discuss the future of this field. To kickstart these discussions, we invite all interested researchers to submit a paper for presentation at the workshop.

GENEA 2021 is the second GENEA workshop and an official workshop of ACM ICMI’21, which will take place either in Montreal, Canada, or online. Accepted submissions will be included in the adjunct ACM ICMI proceedings.

Paper topics include (but are not limited to) the following
********************
Automated synthesis of facial expressions, gestures, and gaze movements
Audio- and music-driven nonverbal behaviour synthesis
Closed-loop nonverbal behaviour generation (from perception to action)
Nonverbal behaviour synthesis in two-party and group interactions
Emotion-driven and stylistic nonverbal behaviour synthesis
New datasets related to nonverbal behaviour
Believable nonverbal behaviour synthesis using motion-capture and 4D scan data
Multi-modal nonverbal behaviour synthesis
Interactive/autonomous nonverbal behavior generation
Subjective and objective evaluation methods for nonverbal behaviour synthesis
Guidelines for nonverbal behaviours in human-agent interaction

For papers specifically on the topic of healthcare, whether for generating or understanding nonverbal behaviours, consider submitting to the workshop on Socially-Informed AI for Healthcare, also taking place at ICMI’21. The website of that workshop can be found at: https://social-ai-for-healthcare.github.io/

Submission guidelines
*********************
Please format submissions for double-blind review according to the ACM conference format.

We will accept long (8 pages) and short (4 pages) paper submissions, along with posters (3 page papers), all in the double-column ACM conference format. Pages containing only references do not count toward the page limit for any of the paper types. Submissions should be made in PDF format through OpenReview.

Keynote speakers
********************************
Louis-Philippe Morency (CMU, USA)
Hatice Gunesh (University of Cambridge, UK)

Organisers
********************************
Taras Kucherenko KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Zerrin Yumak Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Gustav Eje Henter KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Pieter Wolfert Ghent University, Belgium
Youngwoo Yoon ETRI / KAIST, South Korea
Patrik Jonell KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

The main contact address of the workshop is: genea-contact@googlegroups.com