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Workshop on Multimodal Analyses enabling Artificial Agents in Human-Machine Interaction - Call for Papers

Workshop Website: http://fastnet.netsoc.ie/ma3_2012/Welcome.html

The workshop will be held on September, 15th at the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, University of California, Santa Cruz (IVA 2012)
Conference website: http://iva2012.soe.ucsc.edu/


**********SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED: July 16th 2012 (23:59 UTC/GMT -11) **************


CALL FOR PAPERS

Exploring how human beings interact with the world and with each other is of outstanding importance for creating what is commonly named intelligent behaviour in Human-Machine Interaction. In the scientific community there is a growing interest in new techniques aimed at obtaining a more natural and human like interaction with machines. It is important, in the framework of intelligent virtual agent, to find the space for a socially intelligent virtual agent.
An appropriate system whether it is a virtual agent or a companion-like device has to analyse multiple sources of information to interact with humans in a proper and socially aware way. Such modalities are in general speech and its content, mimicry, gesture, biological signals, etc., and in particular it is the prosodic and paralinguistic features of the speech, facial mimicry, and heart rate, etc.
The aim of this workshop is to discuss techniques for gathering and analysing information on multimodal signals, combining methods of analysis in order to understand the correlation between different sources of information (gesture, speech, motion, etc.), as well as understanding how the environment and the context can influence how participants react.
Agents and smart devices are already more than a pure system. They become companions and a kind of friend. Thus, a Human- Machine Interaction will be no longer fixed on a task solution; it will be more human like, and include elements of chat and non- fixed gestures. The workshop will discuss the combination of these different signals, to foster more human-like interactions with virtual agents.

Workshop topics include, but are not limited to:


Multimodal recognition and identification of user behaviour

Awareness of the user's/agent's situation based on multimodal data

Analysis of Human-Machine conversations

Comparison of Human-Human vs. Human-Machine conversations

Strategies of multimodal Human-Machine Interaction

Analyses of speech and prosody wrt. paralinguistic features

Mimicry and gesture analyses

Using multimodal data sets for Human-Machine Interaction

Annotation and processing of multimodal data sets

Developments and combinations of analysis methods

Applications of agents in Human-Machine Interaction



IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline: July, 16th 2012

Notification of Acceptance: August , 8th

Camera-ready deadline: August 31st

Workshop date: September, 15th


AUTHOR INSTRUCTIONS

Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers (8 pages), short papers (6 pages), or poster (4 pages), in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) format.

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Extended versions of selected papers of the workshops be published in a special issue of the Springer "Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces".
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To submit your paper, please go to https://www.softconf.com/d/ma3-2012/

All submissions should be anonymous.

Submissions must describe substantial, original, completed and unpublished work.
Wherever appropriate, concrete evaluation and analysis should be included. Submissions will be judged on correctness, originality, technical strength, significance, relevance to the conference, and interest to the attendees.


ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Ronald Böck, Cognitive Systems Group, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany

Francesca Bonin, Speech Communication Laboratory School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Nick Campbell, Stock Professor, Speech and Communication Lab, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Christian Becker-Asano, U Freiburg, Germany

Laurence Devillers, U Paris-Sorbonne 4, France

Jens Edlund, KTH Stockholm, Sweden

Dirk Heylen, U Twente, Netherlands

Costanza Navarretta U Copenhagen, Denmark

Catherine Pelanchaud, TELECOM ParisTech, France

Dietmar Rösner, U Magdeburg, Germany

Stefan Scherer, USC, USA

Björn Schuller, TU Munich, Germany

Jianhua Tao Chinese Ac. Sciences, China

Thora Tenbrink, U Bremen, Germany

Jürgen Trouvain, U Saarland, Germany

Khiet Truong, U Twente, Netherlands

Michel Valstar, U Nottingham, UK

Andreas Wendemuth, U Magdeburg Germany

Yorick Wilks IHMC, USA




CONTACTS AND FURTHER INFORMATION
boninf@scss.tcd.ie
ronald.boeck@ovgu.de

Workshop website: http://fastnet.netsoc.ie/ma3_2012/Welcome.html