WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
Creating bonds with humanoids
In conjunction with
AAMAS 2005 Workshop
DESCRIPTION
Humanoids (virtual such as Embodied
Conversational Agents, ECAs in short, or human-like
robots) are a powerful means of interaction between humans and machines. They
allow the user to converse with his usual means of communication, namely, words
and gestures. Nowadays, humanoid agents are being employed to provide
information, explain pedagogical material, or sell products. But they promise
even more; they can be the individualized, privileged companion of a user; they
can be assisting and entertaining, and they can be emotive. By the simple fact
of their human-like appearance and behavior, users
tend to build up relationships with ECAs and
human-like robots, just as they do with human folks. In order that the user
perceives and accepts the ECA as a companion, the ECA too should maintain such
a relationship. Tying and maintaining these bonds is highly related to the
engagement between interactants. But engagement does
not mean pervasiveness. Humanoids should not invade the user’s working space,
nor should they intervene at any time. Rather, they ought to gain the
capability to determine when to intervene and for which reason. This workshop
is particularly interested in this topic: how humanoids can create and maintain
social and affective relationships with the user. Such agents ought to be
enhanced with capabilities of:
perceiving user’s engagement
soliciting user’s engagement
maintaining user’s engagement
knowing when and how to interact
Over and
above, they need to be able to interact emotionally with the user. Thus they
should:
display recognizable emotional behaviors
perceive user’s emotion
react according to user’s emotion
WORKSHOP
AIMS
The topic of this workshop is on the bonds that
humans and humanoids (virtual or not) may create with each other when
interacting. More specifically, it lies on techniques and models allowing an agent
to build a long lasting relation with the user. This is not restricted to
models of complex concepts such as personality, culture, social role and the
like, which are of course primordial elements intervening in building
relationships. For example, Nass and colleagues have
shown that users prefer interacting with agents that look like themselves,
personality-wise and culturally-wise.
But in this workshop, we are not only
interested in such aspects per se, but more in the way operational models can
be developed and practically used for humanoid agents. Thus, we propose to look
at the relationship itself: how it is build, how its evolution in time can be
detected, how it can be maintained. These are fundamental questions to resolve
when building an ECA or a human-like robot that would be our companion in the
future interfaces. It is the aim of this workshop to identify and to tackle those
questions, calling for our understanding of:
the different kinds of relationships
(e.g. short-time vs. long-term, social, emotional, etc.) possible between
humans and humanoids
the factors influencing their
establishment, maintaining, and breakup
the technical models/methods required
to recognize, solicit, maintain,
the methods with which they can be
evaluated
the benefits and risks of
"bonding" humanoids
The purpose of this full-day workshop is to
bring together researchers and developers of embodied conversational characters
to exchange ideas and experiences on the various aspects involved in creation
bonds with humanoids:
linguistic
speech (voice, intonation)
cognitive, personality and emotion models
nonverbal communication
animation
graphics look
dialogue capabilities and social interaction
with other agents
Contributions from related fields like
cognitive science and psychology (e.g. on guidelines for models of
relationships) are welcome, as well as presentation and evaluation studies of ECAs and robots which operate based on complex models.
MAJOR TOPICS
Issues to
be addressed:
model of agent’s
attention
model of detecting user’s engagement
model of soliciting and maintaining user’s engagement
perception model of emotion
simulation models of emotion
model of back-channels
evaluation studies, e.g. on measurement of user engagement
Submissions
can be either short papers of 2-4 pages (statements of interest, position
statements) or long papers of 8 pages maximum, following AAMAS specified style
(see http://www.aamas2005.nl/paper_submissions.php).
Submissions
should be sent to: Catherine Pelachaud
c.pelachaud_AT_iut.univ-paris8.fr
April 1,
2005 Deadline
for submitting of contributions to workshops CHANGED!!
April 18,
2005
Acceptance Notifications of contributions to workshops
July 25-26,
2005 AAMAS-05 Workshops
Primary Contact:
Catherine Pelachaud (LINC, IUT de Montreuil - University of Paris 8, 140 rue de
c.pelachaud_AT_iut.univ-paris8.fr
Elisabeth André,
Elisabeth.Andre_AT_informatik.uni-augsburg.de
Stefan
Kopp,
skopp_AT_techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Zsofià Ruttkay,
zsofi_AT_cs.utwente.nl
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Elisabeth André,
DE
Norman Badler, USA
Tim Bickmore, USA
Kerstin
Dautenhahn, GB
Arjan Egges, CH
Dirk Heylen, NL
Nicole Kraemer,
DE
Stefan Kopp, DE
Ana Paiva, PT
Catherine Pelachaud, FR
Christopher
Peters, FR
Helmut
Prendingher, JP
Zsofia Ruttkay,
NL
Candace Sidner,
USA
Kris Thórisson, Iceland