AISB 2005 - Social Presence Cues for Virtual Humanoids

Call for Papers

        Social Presence Cues for Virtual Humanoids

                An AISB 2005 symposia,
 The University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK, 12-13 April, 2005
 Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents

Important dates:
	Submissions due:	Oct 31st
	Notification:		Nov 22nd
	Camera ready copies:	Dec 17th
	Early registration:	Jan 14th
	AISB convention:	Apr 12-15th, 2005
  
Abstract:
Embodied Conversational Agents, or ECAs, have been developed for a wide
range of applications. One of the most often reported difficulties is
to maintain the user's attention and interest.  Most of the studies
report that interaction with ECAs does not last more than a few turns.
To overcome this short interaction pattern, a popular approach is to
make ECA more human-like, but recent work suggests that some aspects of
human behaviour are more important than others.  The theme to be
explored in this workshop is that the important aspects are those that
make an agent appear to have social intelligence.
The social intelligence hypothesis is that intelligence as we know it
is a result of evolution in an environment where cooperation is key to
survival.  Animals that live in same species groups, including humans,
develop protocols for dealing with intra group pressures.  These
protocols require the presentation and recognition of cues that express
social relations and any agent, human or virtual, that is to operate in
a social context must be able to work with these cues.  A key question
is what protocols and techniques have evolved in human society, and what
must an Embodied Conversational Agent do to be a recognisably social
being?

These issues have been studied before in various disciplines.  Reeves
and Nass show how humans are sensitive to the medium of a message, not
just the message content, and Brown and Levinson use the concept of
'face' to model politeness.  The aim of this workshop is to draw this
work together by showing how it is applied it to the creation of ECA's.
Multi disciplinary and multi paradigm contributions are welcome. Authors
are not necessarily expected to have implemented a system, but the
consequences of their paper should be apparent to those who wish to
create embodied conversational agents that act in a social world.

Format:
	6-8 pages, two column, pdf.  Details to follow.
Submit:
	email to c.pelachaud@iut.univ-paris8.fr
	receipt will be acknowledged by email within 7 days.
Web:
	http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~pelachaud/AISB05

Note:
AISB'05 is a collection of 15 symposium spread over 4 days, of
which Social Presence Cues will occupy the first two.  Those
attending this symposia will be required to register for the four
day convention.  See the AISB web-site for more information:
	http://aisb2005.feis.herts.ac.uk/