January 15, 2007
AIIDE Reminder and Agent Workshop CFP
Just a reminder that the papers for AIIDE (Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment), originally blogged here, are due in a week, Monday, Jan. 22.
Also, I’m co-organizing a workshop at this year’s Automous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems conference (held this May in Honolulu, Hawai’i) on Agent-based Systems for Human Learning and Entertainment. The workshop will bring together people who are interested in autonomous characters for education and training with those interested in autonomous characters for games and interactive drama. Papers are due February 5. The workshop will be held May 14th or 15th. The full CFP is below.
Agent-Based Systems for Human Learning and Entertainment (ABSHLE)
Workshop at AAMAS 2007
May 14 or 15, 2007
Honolulu Hawaii USA
http://agents.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/abshle07
Overview
——–
Interest in the role of artificial intelligence in interactive systems has
grown rapidly in recent years, in part because increasingly powerful
consumer hardware makes research-level AI usable in real-world games and/or
immersive learning environments. Accompanying this, there has been a sharp
escalation in the number of research questions related to the use of agent
technologies to shape human experiences in complex environments. A number
of tensions accompany the use of agents in these contexts, since the goal
is not to simulate autonomous agents for their own sake, but to use them to
create an interactive experience with a pre-defined goal for the human
user: either to learn a curriculum or to experience an engaging and rich
world (or both, in the case of “edutainment”). Unlike fully
author-controlled experiences such as such as films and plays, or fully
scripted computer-aided instructional systems, dynamic interactive
experiences require a world that can appropriately and meaningfully respond
to the user—a natural fit for intelligent and believable agents. At the
same time, however, system designers want to shape users’ experiences,
presenting new research challenges to address the interplay between player
autonomy and designer intent. Thus, within this area of research, there is
a design space that ranges from complete autonomy for agents to complete
control for an agent coordinator. One of the goals of this workshop is to
foster a dialog among researchers who are exploring the complex tradeoffs
that must be made in designing agent systems for education and interactive
entertainment, and especially to bring together researchers focusing on
autonomous multi-agent systems with those focusing on more centralized
agent coordination for this problem.
The aim of the Agent-Based Systems for Human Learning and Entertainment
(ABSHLE) workshop is to bring together researchers who are working on
agent-based systems to support a variety of interactive applications for
human learning and/or entertainment. Within the “learning” realm, these are
typically split into two areas: “training”, which generally refers to adult
learning of job-related skills, frequently but not exclusively in military
settings; and “education”, which generally refers to child and (young)
adult learning in academic settings, including primary and secondary
schools, colleges and universities. Overlapping with the “entertainment”
realm, interactive applications built for learning can either by scripted
(i.e., designer-controlled) or user-controlled, reacting in real-time based
on a user’s interactions. This latter category of “intelligent” interfaces
is the primary interest of the ABSHLE workshop. The goal of the workshop is
to foster a dialogue among researchers who are exploring the complex
tradeoffs that must be made in designing agent systems for interactive
learning and/or entertainment.
Expanding on two earlier Agent-Based Systems for Human Learning (ABSHL)
workshops, held at AAMAS-2005 and AAMAS-2006, the 2007 ABSHLE workshop will
doubly focus on entertainment environments. Although the specific
application areas of the participants may be varied, the major issues faced
are shared. The plan for the full-day workshop is to interleave 25-minute
full talks with 15-minute short talks, as well as panel and general
discussions.
Topics of Interest
——————
We invite submissions that describe and/or demonstrate any of the
following, in relation to the design, development, implementation, testing
and/or evaluation of human learning or entertainment applications:
– innovative applications of MAS – new agent technologies
– cognitive, social and emotion models
– believable and engaging agents/environments
– novel approaches to drama management and/or comparisons of existing approaches
– evaluation methodologies – pilot/user/formative studies
– virtual reality environments
– models of agency and control, levels of agent autonomy
– models of user autonomy and control
– relationships between agents and story
The interdisciplinary nature of this workshop involves research into human
vision, cognition, intelligent systems, user interface design, graphics and
machine learning. This workshop is potentially of interest to researchers
and developers from, but not restricted to, the following fields, within
the context of human learning:
– Knowledge Acquisition
– Knowledge Based Reasoning
– Human Computer Interaction
– Case-Based Reasoning
– User Modelling
– Storytelling/Narrative Engines
– Scenario Analysis
– Game Development
– (immersive) Virtual Reality/Environment
– Cognitive, Emotion and Personality Modelling
– Embodied Agents
– Language Technology including Speech, Linguistics, Dialogue
– Multiagent Environments and Social Systems
We anticipate acceptance of papers to be split between edutainment,
entertainment (non-learning) and learning (non-entertainment) areas,
between the theoretical and applied communities, and addressing users of
various ages (from children to adults). The format will provide ample time
for discussion of each presentation. Since the goal is to help ABSHLE
researchers find and identify each other, reviewing emphasis will be based
more on appropriateness of material rather than maturity of work.
Submission Requirements
———————–
All submissions must be written in English and must include: title,
author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), mailing and electronic addresses, and
telephone and fax numbers. Papers should be no longer than 8 pages.
All accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings to be
handed out at the workshop.
Selected papers will be invited for publication in a special issue for the
Journal International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications.
To facilitate publication of the special issue, please format your papers
according to the instructions at: http://itssa.xiaglow-research.org.uk/ita/ita.htm
Don’t worry about the Author Bios at this time.
Prospective authors should email a PDF version of their paper to: Debbie Richards (richards@ics.mq.edu.au) by February 5, 2007
Important Dates
—————
Feb 05 Deadline for paper submission
Mar 05 Notification of Acceptance
Mar 19 Submission of Camera-ready papers
Mar 19 Notification of intent to run a demo
May 14/15 Workshop
Workshop Organizers ——————-
Brian Blake, Georgetown University, USA, (mb7 at georgetown.edu)
Charles Isbell, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA (isbell at cc.gatech.edu)
Michael Mateas, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA (michaelm at cs.ucsc.edu)
Debbie Richards, Macquarie University, Australia (richards at ics.mq.edu.au)
Elizabeth Sklar, City University of New York, USA (sklar at sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu)
Questions?
———-
For further information, please contact Elizabeth Sklar (sklar at sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu).
January 16th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I have much enjoyed my walk through your world today; as a poet and an avid reader, I found your site both enriching as well as enlightening…I thank you.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
AIIDE-07 is pleased to announce the collocation of the following workshop:
The Workshop on Optimizing Player Satisfaction
June 6-8, 2007, Stanford, California
http://www.mip.sdu.dk/~georgios/AIIDE07Workshop
February 24, 2007: Paper submissions
March 13, 2007: Notification of acceptance decision
April 10, 2007: Submission of camera-ready papers
The current state-of-the-art in intelligent game design using AI techniques is mainly focused on generating human-like and intelligent characters. Even though complex behaviors emerge through various adaptive learning techniques, there is generally little further analysis of whether these behaviors contribute to the satisfaction of the player. The implicit hypothesis motivating this research is that intelligent opponent behaviors enable the player to gain more satisfaction from the game. This hypothesis may well be true; however, since no notion of entertainment or enjoyment is explicitly defined, there is therefore little evidence that a specific opponent behavior generates enjoyable games.
The focus of this workshop is on adaptive methodologies based on richer forms of human-machine interaction for augmenting gameplay experiences for the player. We want to encourage dialog among researchers in AI, human-computer interaction, affective computing and psychology disciplines who investigate dissimilar methodologies for improving gameplay experiences. This workshop should yield an understanding of state-of-the-art approaches for capturing and augmenting player satisfaction in games.
Topics relevant to this workshop include, but are not limited to, the following areas:
* Adaptive learning for entertainment augmentation.
* Empirical approaches to entertainment modeling in games.
* Psychological approaches to entertainment capture / Psychology of entertainment.
* Player modeling for optimizing entertainment.
* Player-Game Interaction through biosignals.
The workshop is open to all members of the AI, adaptive behavior, human-computer interaction and psychology community. The workshop will be held as a parallel track at AIIDE-07. Participants must register for AIIDE-07, which will include all conference events, including the workshop. Submissions or requests should be sent to the conference co-chair, Georgios N. Yannakakis (georgios@mip.sdu.dk).