Call for Participation
                     EMBODIED LANGUAGE AND ACTION

                   AAAI 1995 Fall Symposium Series
                         November 10-12, 1995
                     MIT, Cambridge Massachusetts


This symposium focuses on agents that can use language or similar
communication, such as gesture, to facilitate extended interactions in
a shared physical or simulated world.  We examine how this embodiment
in a shared world both stimulates communication and provides a
resource for understanding it. Our focus is on the design of
artificial agents, implemented in software, hardware, or as animated
characters.  Papers should clearly relate the technical content
presented to one of the following tasks:

        --- Two or more communicating agents work together to
        construct, carry out maintenance on, or destroy a physical
        or simulated artifact (Collaborative Engagement)

        --- An agent assists a human by fetching or
        delivering physical or software objects.
        The human communicates with the agent about what
        is to be fetched or delivered to where.
        (Delivery Assistance)

We solicit papers on the following issues (not to the exclusion of
others):

 -- Can task contexts act as resources for communication by
simplifying the interpretation and production of communicative acts?

 -- How does physical embodiment and its concomitant resource
limitation affect an agent's ability to interpret or generate
language?

 -- Can architectures designed to support perception and action support
language or other forms of communication?

 -- How can agents to mediate between the propositional representations
of language and the (often) non-propositional representations of
perception and action?

 -- What tradeoffs exist between the use of communication to improve
the agents' task performance and the additional overhead involved in
understanding and generating messages?

 -- Do differences between communication used to support concurrent task
execution and communication used to support planning, reflect deeper
differences in agent ability?

 -- What is the role of negotiation, whether of task responsibilities,
or of reference and meaning, in such situated task environments?

Interested participants should submit either (1) a paper (in 12 pt
font, not to exceed 3000 words), or (2) a brief position statement.

Send contributions, plain ascii or postscript, by April 14, 1995 to
ian@ai.mit.edu.  Notification of acceptance will be given by May 19,
1995.  Material to be included in the working notes of the symposium
must be received by August 15, 1995.

If electronic submission is impossible, mail 6 copies to:

Ian Horswill
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139

COMMITTEE:
John Batali, UCSD
Jim Firby, University of Chicago
Ian Horswill, MIT (CoChair)
Marilyn Walker,  Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (CoChair)
Bonnie Webber, University of Pennsylvania