IVA 2019 is the 19th meeting of an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main leading scientific forum for presenting research on modeling, developing and evaluating Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) with a focus on communicative abilities and social behavior. IVAs are interactive digital characters that exhibit human-like qualities and can communicate with humans and each other using natural human modalities like facial expressions, speech and gesture. They are capable of real-time perception, cognition, emotion and action that allow them to participate in dynamic social environments. In addition to presentations on theoretical issues, the conference encourages the showcasing of working applications.
IVA 2019's special topic is "Social Learning", that is learning while interaction socially; agents can learn from the humans and humans can learn from the agents. Agents can take different roles such as tutors, peers, motivators, coaches in training and in serious games. They can act as job recruiter, virtual patient, and nurse to name a few applications. With this topic in mind we are seeking closer engagement with industry and also with social psychologists.
The papers and extended abstracts will be published in the ACM digital library. All submissions will be reviewed via a double-blind review process.
SCOPE AND LIST OF TOPICS
IVA invites submissions on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:
Socio-emotional agent models:
- Cognition, machine learning and adaptation
- Emotion, personality and cultural differences
- Model of emotionally communicative behavior
- Model of conversational behavior
- Model of social skills
- Machine learning for endowing virtual agents with social skills
Multimodal interaction:
- Verbal and nonverbal coordination
- Engagement
- Interpersonal relation
- Multi-party interaction
- Model driven by theoretical foundations from psychology
- Data driven model
Social agent architectures:
- Design criteria and design methodologies
- Real-time human-agent interaction
- Incremental agent control
- Real-time integrated system
Evaluation methods and studies:
- Evaluation methodologies and user studies
- Ethical considerations and societal impact
- Applicable lessons from other fields (e.g. robotics)
- Social agents as a means to study and model human behavior
Applications:
- Social skills training
- Virtual agents in games and simulations
- Applications in education, health, games, art
Social learning:
- Learning in social interaction
- Social skills acquisition model
- Learning in interaction with agents
Full papers and extended abstracts
Paper submissions should be anonymous and prepared in the "ACM Standard" format, more specifically the "SigConf" format.
* The LaTeX template for the "ACM Standard"/"SigConf" format can be found inside the official 2017 ACM Master article template package, please use the most recent version (1.57a) that is available at the ACM: https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template
* The "ACM Standard" Microsoft Word template is currently not part of the downloadable package as the ACM is currently revising it to improve accessibility of resulting PDF-documents. Please use the "Interim Word Template" instead:https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/word_style/interim-template-style/interim-layout-.docx
IVA 2019 accepts two types of submissions:
* Full papers: 7 pages + 1 additional page of references
* Extended abstracts: 3 pages (including references)
Papers need to be submitted in PDF-format.
Demonstrations
If your proposal is accepted you will be able to present your work in the allocated demo session during the conference.
WORKSHOPS
The IVA 2019 organizing committee solicits proposals for full-day and half-day workshops to be held in conjunction with the main conference.
The purpose of a workshop is to provide an opportunity for participants from academia, industry, government and other related parties to present and discuss novel ideas on current and emerging topics relevant to intelligent virtual agents, their applications and emergent technologies.
Workshops are scheduled for July the 1st, 2nd (morning) and 5th (afternoon) 2019.
Each workshop should be organized under a well-defined theme focusing on emerging research areas, challenging problems and industrial/governmental applications. Organizers have free control on the format, style as well as the building blocks of the workshop. Possible contents of a workshop include but are not limited to invited talks, regular papers/posters, panels, and other pragmatic alternatives. In case workshop proposers need extra time to prepare their workshop, early decisions may be considered if justified.
We would like to encourage organizers to avoid a mini-conference format by (i) encouraging the submission of position papers and extended abstracts, (ii) allowing plenty of time for discussions and debates, and (iii) organizing workshop panels.
Organizers of accepted workshops are expected to announce the workshop and disseminate their call for papers, maintain the workshop website, gather submissions, conduct the reviewing process and decide upon the final workshop program. They are also required to prepare an informal set of workshop proceedings to be distributed with the registration materials at the main conference, with a proceedings format template provided by IVA 2019. Workshop organizers may choose to form organizing or program committees aiming to accomplish these tasks successfully.
Workshop proposals should be sent to the IVA 2019 Workshops chairs and should contain the following information:
- The NAMES, AFFILIATIONS, and SHORT BIOS of all the organizers
- The MAIN CONTACT organizer’s e-mail and telephone number
- The TITLE of the workshop
- A maximum of three paragraphs that describe the TOPIC of the workshop, its target AUDIENCE, and its RELEVANCE to IVA
- One paragraph MOTIVATING the workshop (why we should organize it NOW in conjunction with IVA 2019)
- Tentative names of invited speakers, reviewers, and panelists (if a panel will be organized)
- The desired LENGTH of the workshop: full-day (~8 hours) or half-day (~4 hours)
- Tentative PROGRAM SKETCH
- For workshops previously held at IVA or other conferences, details on venue, attendance and number of submissions/accepted papers from past editions
- For new workshops, a list of possible attendees/submissions and/or a justification of the expected attendees/submissions
- Tentative descriptions of all other workshop components (panels, discussion sessions, poster sessions, invited talks,etc.)
