Twelfth International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
http://iva2012.soe.ucsc.edu/home
September 12-14 Santa Cruz, California, USA
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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 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 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 Técnico, Portugal
· Yukiko I. Nakano, Seikei University, Japan

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

Senior Program Committee

· Elisabeth Andre, Augsburg University, Germany
· Ruth Aylett, Heriot-Watt University, UK
· Norm Badler, University of Pennsylvania, USA
· Tim Bickmore, Northeastern University, USA
· Christina Conati, University of British Columbia, Canada
· Dirk Heylen, University of Twente, The Netherlands
· Michael Kipp, Hochschule Augsburg, Germany
· Stefan Kopp, Bielefeld University, Germany
· James Lester, North Carolina State, USA
· Stacy Marsella, University of Southern California, USA
· Jean-Claude Martin, LIMSI-CNRS, France
· Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS, TELECOM ParisTech, France
· Mark Riedl, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
· Hannes Vilhjalmsson Reykjavík University, Iceland
· Michael Young, North Carolina State, 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