CALL FOR PAPERS  --  ACM IVA 2023

The annual ACM Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) is the premier international event for interdisciplinary research on the development, application, and evaluation of Intelligent Virtual Agents with the specific focus on the ability to socially interact. Such agents can be embodied graphically (e.g. virtual characters, embodied conversational agents) or physically (e.g. robots). They are capable of real-time perception, cognition, emotion and action allowing them to participate in dynamic social environments. This includes human-like interaction qualities such as multimodal communication using facial expressions, speech, and gesture, conversational interaction, socially assistive and affective interaction, interactive task-oriented cooperation, or social behaviour simulation. IVAs are highly relevant and widely applied in many important domains including health, tutoring, training, games, or assisted living.

We invite submissions of research on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to: theoretical foundations of intelligent virtual agents, agent and interactive behaviour modelling, evaluation, agents in simulations, games, and other applications. Please see the detailed list of topics below.

VENUE

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IVA 2023 will take place in Würzburg, Germany. Würzburg is a vibrant town located by the river Main in northern Bavaria, between Frankfurt and Nuremberg. The mix of stunning historical architecture and the young population is what makes the atmosphere so unique, including 35,000 students from three different universities. The mild and sunny climate is ideal to enjoy the many activities Würzburg has to offer: visiting a beer garden next to the river, attending a sporting or cultural event or taking a stroll through one of the parks.

IVA is targeted to be an in-person conference. In case of extraordinary circumstances, such as visa problems or health issues, video presentation will be possible. However, there is no digital or hybrid conference system planned, thus it is not possible to attend this year’s IVA conference remotely.

IMPORTANT DATES

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Abstract submission: April 14, 2023

Paper submission: April 18, 2023

Review notification / start of rebuttal: May 31, 2023

Notification of acceptance: June 23, 2023

Camera ready deadline: July 18, 2023

Conference: September 19-22, 2023

All deadlines are anywhere on earth (UTC−12).

SPECIAL TOPIC

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This year’s conference will highlight a special topic on “IVAs in future mixed realities”, e.g., in social VR and potential incarnations of a Metaverse. Immersive and potentially distributed artificial virtual worlds provide new forms of full-size embodied human-human interaction via avatars of arbitrary looks, enabling interesting intra- and interpersonal effects. They also enable hybrid avatar-agent interactions between humans and A.I.s, unlocking the full potential of non-verbal behavior in digital face-to-face encounters, significantly enhancing the design space for IVAs to assist, guide, help but also to persuade and affect interacting users. We specifically welcome all kinds of novel research on technological, psychological, and sociological determinants of such immersive digital avatar-agent encounters.

TYPES OF SUBMISSION

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- Full Papers (7 pages + 1 additional page for references):

Full papers should present significant, novel, and substantial work of high quality.

- Extended Abstracts (2 pages + 1 additional page for references)

Extended abstracts may contain early results and work in progress.

- Demos (2 pages + 1 additional page for references +1 one page with demo requirements)

Demos submissions focus on implemented systems and should contain a link to a video of the system with a maximum length of 5 minutes.

All submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed by a group of external expert reviewers. All accepted submissions will be published in the ACM proceedings.

Accepted full papers will be presented either in oral sessions or as posters during the conference (depending on the nature of the contribution), extended abstracts will be presented as posters, and demos will be showcased in dedicated sessions during the conference. For each accepted contribution, at least one of the authors must register for the conference.

IVA 2023 will also feature workshops and a doctoral consortium. Please visit the website (https://iva.acm.org/2023) for more details and updates.

TRACKS

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For full paper submissions, IVA will have different paper tracks with different review criteria. Authors need to indicate which one of the following tracks they want to submit their paper to:

1. Empirical Studies

• criteria: methodology, theoretical foundation, originality of result etc.

2. Computational Models and Methods

• criteria: technical soundness, novelty of the model or approach, proof of concept, etc.

3. Operational Systems and Applications

• criteria: innovation of the application, societal relevance, evaluation of effects, etc.

SCOPE AND LIST OF TOPICS

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IVA invites submissions on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:

AGENT DESIGN AND MODELING:

- Cognition (e.g. task, social, other)

- Emotion, personality and cultural differences

- Socially communicative behaviour (e.g., of emotions, personality, relationship)

- Conversational and dialog behavior

- Social perception and understanding of other’s states or traits

- Machine learning approaches to agent modeling

- Adaptive behavior and interaction dynamics

- Models informed by theoretical and empirical research from psychology

MULTIMODAL INTERACTION:

- Verbal and nonverbal behavior coordination (synthesis)

- Multimodal/social behavior processing

- Face-to-face communication skills

- Interaction qualities  engagement, rapport, etc.)

- Managing co-presence and interpersonal relation

- Multi-party interaction

- Data-driven modeling

SOCIALLY INTERACTIVE AGENT ARCHITECTURES:

- Design criteria and design methodologies

- Engineering of real-time human-agent interaction

- Standards / measures to support interoperability

- Portability and reuse

- Specialized tools, toolkits, and toolchains

EVALUATION METHODS AND EMPIRICAL STUDIES:

- Evaluation methodologies and user studies

- Metrics and measures

- Ethical considerations and societal impact

- Applicable lessons across fields (e.g. between robotics and virtual agents)

- Social agents as a means to study and model human behavior

APPLICATIONS:

- Applications in education, skills training, health, counseling, games, art, etc.

- Virtual agents in games and simulations

- Social agents as tools in psychology, neuroscience, social simulation, etc

- Migration between platforms

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

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Paper submissions should be anonymous and prepared in the “ACM Standard” format, more specifically the “SigConf” format. Please consult https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template for the Latex template, word interim template, or connection to the overleaf platform.

All papers need to be submitted in PDF-format.

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.  ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors.  The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022.  We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

This event is sponsored by SIGAI.

Please visit the conference website for detailed information on how to submit your paper.

CONFERENCE WEBSITE

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https://iva.acm.org/2023/