[iva] IVA 2018 DEADLINE EXTENSION - The 18th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

[Anton Bogdanovych]

*** You still have 1 MORE MONTH to submit your papers, posters and demos to IVA 2018.
Due to a large number of deadline extension requests, the paper, poster and demo
submission deadline for IVA 2018 is extended until MAY 31, 2018 ***

The call for papers is below.

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        18th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
                              CALL FOR PAPERS
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18th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2018)
November 5-8, 2018, Sydney, Australia
http://iva2018.westernsydney.edu.au<http://iva2018.westernsydney.edu.au/>

Sponsored By
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and SIGAI

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Full Papers Due: May 31, 2018
Demos, Industry Track Submissions and Extended Abstracts Due: May 31, 2018
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IVA 2018 is the 18th meeting of an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main leading scientific forum for presenting research on modelling, developing and evaluating Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) with a focus on communicative abilities and social behaviour. 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.

Special Topic
IVA 2018’s special topic is ‘Virtual Agents in Games and Simulations’, which are agents that act as non-player characters (NPCs) in video games and agents that participate in game-like simulations and serious games. With this topic in mind we are seeking closer engagement with the gaming industry and expect submissions sharing industry wisdom in relation to building non-player characters in video games. We are also interested in papers discussing practical applications of virtual agents and technical details in relation to creating those for various types of simulations that feature virtual environments and avatars. Examples of such simulations are military training environments, historical simulations, educational simulations, medical simulations, etc.

Full Papers, Short Papers and Extended Abstracts for Poster Presentations: Research Track
Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers, short papers, or extended abstracts for poster presentations. All submissions must be anonymous. All submissions should be made through the conference review system at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iva2018. The page limit for full papers is 8 pages, for short papers is 6 pages and for extended abstracts is 2 pages.
Submission Deadline: Full papers, short papers and extended abstracts for poster submissions must be submitted by May 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time.

Demonstrations
We welcome demonstrations to be shown during the conference showcasing your latest technology. Please submit a 2-page paper explaining your demonstration together with a short description including any requests for space or equipment before the deadline.
If your proposal is accepted you will be able to present your work in the allocated demo session during the conference.
Submission Deadline: Demonstration proposals must be submitted by May 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time.

Industry Track
This is the first time we are running an Industry Track at IVA. The intention behind having the industry track is to provide industry professionals with a way to communicate with the academic community and share the results of their work. We expect to receive submissions in the form of case studies and papers sharing common practices and lessons learned in relation to Intelligent Virtual Agents. Papers targeting our special topic of Virtual Agents in Games and Simulations are particularly welcome. This track also highlights new research challenges motivated by applications of Intelligent Virtual Agents in the real world.
Submitted papers will go through a competitive peer review process. Types of papers, formatting and publication with be the same as for research papers. The Industry Track is distinct from the Research Track in that submissions solve real-world problems and focus on systems that are deployed or are in the process of being deployed. Below are indicative categories for industry track papers:
·         Deployed: Must describe deployment of a system that solves a non-trivial real-world problem. The focus should be on describing the problem, its significance, decisions and tradeoffs made when making design choices for the solution, deployment challenges, and lessons learned.
·         Discovery: Must include results that are discoveries with demonstrable value to an industry or government organization. This discovered knowledge must be “externally validated” as interesting and useful; it cannot simply be a model that has better performance on some traditional evaluation metrics such as accuracy or area under the curve. A new business insight enabled by the use of IVAs is an example of what this category will include.
·         Emerging: Submissions do not have to be deployed but must have clear applications to distinguish them from IVA research papers. They may also provide insight into issues and factors that affect the successful use and deployment of IVAs. Papers that describe enabling infrastructure for large-scale deployment of IVAs also fall in this category.
·         Case Studies: Should describe an interesting application of Intelligent Virtual Agents in an industry context. Case studies related to special topics of the conference “Virtual Agents in Games and Simulations” are particularly welcome.
Note: IVA is a dual track conference hosting both a Research track and an Industry track. Due to the large number of submissions, papers submitted to the Research track will not be considered for publication in the Industry track and vice-versa. Authors are encouraged to carefully read the track descriptions and choose an appropriate track for their submissions.
The page limit for industry track papers is 8 pages for full papers and 6 pages for short papers.
Submission Deadline: Industry track papers must be submitted by May 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time.


Keynote Speakers

•    Hiroshi Ishiguro, Professor at Osaka University
•    Liko-Paul Pinsonnault, Technical Director at Wargaming Sydney
•    Mark Sagar, CEO of Soul Machines and Associate Professor at The University of Auckland
•    Mike Seymour, Co-founder of FxGuide and FxPhd, Lecturer at The University of Sydney

List of Topics
Agent modelling and evaluation
·         design criteria and design methodologies
·         evaluation methodologies and user studies
·         ethical considerations and societal impact
·         applicable lessons from other fields (e.g. robotics)
·         improvisational or dramatic interaction
·         dimensions of intelligence, cognition and behavior
·         models of multimodal perception and action
·         models of emotionally communicative behavior
·         models of conversational behavior
·         models of narrative and storytelling
·         theoretical foundations and formal models
·         learned, evolved or emergent behavior
Agents in games and simulations with special focus on Applications of virtual agents
·         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. Interactive narrative and story-telling, computer games, art and entertainment, education and training, simulation and visualization

Organising committee
Conference Chairs
·         Dr. Anton Bogdanovych, Western Sydney University
·         Prof. Deborah Richards, Macquarie University
·         Prof. Simeon Simoff, Western Sydney University
Program Chairs
·         Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS – ISIR, Université Pierre et Marie Curie
·         Dirk Heylen, University of Twente
·         Tomas Trescak, Western Sydney University
Workshop Chair
·         Hatice Gunes, University of Cambridge
Sponsorship Chair
·         Kerry Holling, Western Sydney University
Posters & Demo Chair
·         Dr. Tomas Trescak, Western Sydney University
Gala and Competitions Chair
·         Dave de Jonge, Western Sydney University
Webmaster
·         Dr. Tomas Trescak, Western Sydney University
Senior Program Committee
·         Stefan Kopp, Bielefeld University
·         Elisabeth André, University of Augsburg
·         Ruth Aylett, Heriot-Watt University
·         Dan Bohus, Microsoft
·         Timothy Bickmore, Northeastern University
·         Joost Broekens, Delft University of Technology
·         James Lester, North Carolina State
·         Yukiko Nakano, Seikei University
·         Michael Neff, UC Davis
·         Ana Paiva, INESC-ID and University of Lisbon
·         Gabriel Skantze, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
·         Hannes Vilhjálmsson, Reykjavík University
·         Michael Young, University of Utah

Publication
Peer-review accepted papers will be published in the IVA 2018 ACM Proceedings.

Venue
The conference will be held on Level 9, Parramatta City Campus of the Western Sydney Univeristy, Australia. Parramatta City campus is a modern multi-storey building located in the heart of the historic Parramatta CBD, just a couple of minutes away from the Parramatta train station. Here is some information about this campus: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/campuses_structure/cas/campuses/parramattacity/one_parramatta_square

Please share with your colleagues!
We are looking forward to receiving your submission and welcoming you in Sydney.

Regards,
Dr Anton Bogdanovych | Senior Lecturer,
Academic Course Advisor for Bachelor of Entrepreneurship
School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics
P: (02) 9685 9180

westernsydney.edu.au<http://westernsydney.edu.au/>

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