Scope

Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) are autonomous, graphically embodied agents in an interactive, 2D or 3D virtual environment. They are able to interact intelligently with the environment, other IVAs, and especially with human users. The conference is an interdisciplinary forum for researchers and practitioners in computer graphics, animation, computer games, virtual environments, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive modeling, human-computer interaction and artificial life. Since the first IVA back in 1999 firm lines of research have been established but there is much that the graphics and AI communities can learn from each other.

The domain of Intelligent Virtual Agents has become much more diverse and now encompasses a wide range of disciplines; cognitive and social psychology, communication models (conversational skills, interaction loops, conversational analysis), non-verbal communication, sociology (modeling human / IVA societies), HCI (intelligent user interfaces, gesture/body tracking interfaces), design and arts (e.g., interactive installations with IVAs), and numerous application domains. While initial research often focused on the use of IVAs in virtual environments, they are now increasingly used in web-based interfaces, personal computing devices and interactive television. IVAs can provide appealing characters for games and entertainment. They can also be used in novel user interfaces or even as tools of psychological research. The rapid advances in the field have enabled it to be applied in both in research and industrial contexts.

IVA'07 will be a multidisciplinary forum for researchers and practitioners from academia and industry with an interest in the design, implementation, and evaluation of IVAs and IVA applications. We aim for a lively program of timely, high-quality presentations and demonstrations to discuss the state of the art and future of Intelligent Virtual Agents. Papers will be published in the Springer-Verlag LNAI (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence) series

This year, IVA’07 and ACII’07 are happening close to each other. While we do encourage submitting to both conferences we do highlight there are differences in topics of interest in each conference. We highly advise authors to read them carefully. Papers submitted to both conferences should be clearly different in their scope and topic.

IVA’07 will also host GALA – The Gathering of Life-like Agents

Topics

Design and modeling of IVAs

• design criteria and methodologies
• nature inspired IVAs/A-life for IVAs
• dimensions of intelligence in IVAs
• models of personality, culture for IVAs
• models of awareness of social context
• models of social agents/robots
• models of conversational skills and multi-modal interaction
• non-verbal expressiveness in IVAs
• IVAs with physical embodiment: lessons from and for robotics
• ethical considerations
• Application fields for IVA and experience reports
• Evaluation methodologies and user studies of IVAs

Software engineering issues

• standards / measures to support interoperability, portability, and reuse
• tools and toolkits for building IVAs
• advanced 3D modeling and animation technologies for IVAs
• real-time integrated system

Conceptual architectures

• learning IVAs
• improvisational IVAs
• multi-user /multi-IVA interaction
• crowd simulations with IVAs