AAMAS 09 2009 - AAMAS 09 Workshop on Empathic Agents

Call for Papers

AAMAS 09 Workshop on Empathic Agents

http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/aamas09-ea/

Papers submission: 12th of February 2009



Creating characters and robots that give the illusion of life

and allow for the user\'s suspension of disbelief is still a

debated and fundamental goal in the area of virtual agents.

However, when we read a book, or watch a film we not only

suspend our disbelief and look at the characters as \"life\",

but we also establish emotional relations with the characters.

We feel sad when they are sad, angry when something unfair is

done to our hero, and so on. That is, we put ourselves in the

shoes of our favourite characters, and feel emotions for what is

happening to them. And these emotional empathic relations are

part of achieving that suspension of disbelief.



This workshop will be a meeting point to discuss the

creation of agents that are both empathic towards their

users and foster empathic reactions towards them by their users.

This workshop will be the second on this topic; the first one was

organized in 2004 in New York at the AAMAS conference.



This workshop will be part of the 8th International Conference

on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent systems (AAMAS), to be held

in Budapest Hungary on May 10-15, 2009. Details on the

conference can be found here.



**Topics of Interest



The topics of interest of the workshop (but not limited to) are as
follows:



* Models of empathy

* Empathy for rational agents

* Architectures for empathic agents and robots

* Emotion modeling for empathic agents and robots

* User modeling for empathic agents and robots

* Social robots and social agents and empathy

* Inter-agent communication and empathy

* Expression of Virtual Agents for Empathic interactions

* Empathy and facial expressions in Virtual Agents

* Empathic Synthetic Speech for Virtual Agents

* Applications to health and social education

* Interactive Storytelling and Empathy

* Entertainment and Education applications

* Empathy and long term interactions with virtual agents and robots

* Evaluating empathy in agents and robots

* Evaluating human empathic reactions to artificial agents and
robots



**Organisation of the workshop



The workshop will be a full-day workshop organized into two main
parts .

We expect the first part to cover a mix of presentations focusing on

theoretical and empirical studies motivating the creation of empathic
agents.

During this part we may include an invited speaker.

The second part will consist mainly of the presentation of papers

and a general discussion trying to reach some agreement on the answers

raised at the beginning of the workshop. Researchers can submit papers

for the workshop focusing the topics of interest of the workshop
stating

clearly how they can contribute to the theme proposed.



**Submission



Researchers are invited to submit papers for the workshop focusing

the topics of interest of the workshop stating clearly how they can

contribute to the themes proposed. Papers should be no longer than 8
pages.

Papers should be submitted by email to ana.paiva-AT-inesc-id.pt,

bickmore-AT-ccs.neu.edu and marsella-AT-isi.edu .



Authors should follow the format of AAMAS submissions.



**Dates



Papers submission: 12th of February 2009



Acceptance Notification: 1st of March 2009



Camera Ready: 15th of March 2009



**Organising Committee



Timothy Bickmore (USA)

Stacy Marsella (USA)

Ana Paiva (PT)



** Program Committee

Catherine Pelachaud (F)

Paolo Petta (AU)

Helmut Prendinger (J)

Lynne Hall (UK)

Sibylle Enz (D)

Magalie Ohs (F)

Ruth Aylett (UK)

Kerstin Dautenhahn (UK)

Ian Hornswill (USA)

Elisabeth Andre (D)

Eva Hudlicka (USA)

Joao Dias (P)


--------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Lynne Hall,
Principal Lecturer: Reachout
Department of Computing, Engineering and Technology,
Faculty of Applied Sciences

Tel: +44 1661 844696 / +44 191 515 3249
Mobile: 0776 220 8547
Skype: lynne.hall-1610
Home Page: http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0lha/

Address: David Goldman Informatics Centre,
St. Peter\'s Campus,
University of Sunderland,
Sunderland, SR6 0DD, UK