ACE2023: how Artificial Character Embodiment shapes user behaviour in multi-modal interaction Call for Papers

ACE2023: how Artificial Character Embodiment shapes user behaviour in multi-modal interaction

Web page:  https://sites.google.com/view/ace2023workshop/home

 

IMPORTANT DATES:

*        Submission deadline: July 23, 2023

*        Notification to authors: August 6, 2023

*        Camera-ready: August 14, 2023

*        Workshop: October 13, 2023, Paris

 

MOTIVATION:

The body shapes the mind: bodily representations structure the way
humans perceive the world and the way they perceive other
people. Cognitive sciences and social sciences altogether have
stressed the importance of embodiment in social interaction,
highlighting how interacting with others influences how we behave,
perceive and think. As the sense of embodiment can be defined as the
ensemble of sensations that arise in conjunction with being inside,
having, and controlling a body, it definitely influences
self-perceptions and actions regarding one's own avatar, but also our
social behaviours with embodied intelligent agents such as virtual
humans and robots.

The topic is multidisciplinary by nature: embodiment can affect both
human-human and human-agent (either virtual or robotic) interactions
and this influence can arise through different sensory modalities. For
instance, in virtual environments, users may experience what is known
as the Proteus effect, a well-known phenomenon where the appearance of
users' avatars influence their behaviour, but whose underlying
cognitive processes are still not clear. In human-robot and
human-agent interactions, the level of anthropomorphism can impact
human reactions and behaviours during the interaction (e.g., uncanny
valley of visual appearance or motions that disturb responses and
sense of presence in virtual reality). These phenomena are not only of
interest for the design of artificial characters, either virtual or
robotic, but could also help to shed light on social behaviour and
cognition, providing new tools and experimental perspectives.

The ACE workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners and
experts on the topic of embodiment, to analyse and foster discussion
on its effects on user behaviour in multi-modal interaction
contexts. Objectives are to stimulate multidisciplinary discussions on
the topic, to share recent progress, and to provide participants with
a forum to debate current and future challenges. Contributions from
computational, neuroscientific and psychological perspectives, as well
as technical applications, will be welcomed.

 

We welcome both technical and theoretical contributions around the
role of embodiment on multi-modal interaction. Their focus can be
either on the user embodying an avatar or on one or several embodied
artificial agents interacting with the user. We encourage researchers
from different domains such as Computer Science, Psychology,
Neuroscience, Computer Graphics to submit their work and attend the
workshop. The type of contributions include but are not limited to:

* Review of existing work on the topic;

* Human behaviour studies in social context with virtual agents
(virtual humans and robots);

* Cognitive models of sense of embodiment and telepresence, sense of
agency, Proteus effect;

* Evaluation studies on the effect of embodiment on multi-modal
interaction;

* Novel techniques for multi-sensory integration, including original
perspectives (e.g., haptic, olfactory embodiment;

* Use cases and field applications.

 

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

We invite submissions of both long papers (8 pages max., double
column) and short papers (4 pages max., double column) formatted
according to ICMI guidelines (please check
https://icmi.acm.org/2023/guidelines-for-authors/ for more details).

To submit to the workshop, please upload your manuscript to our
EasyChair submission website here:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ace2023

Each manuscript will be sent to at least two expert reviewers and will
have one of the organisers assigned as editor. Please note that
submissions are double-blind so all information giving away who the
authors are must be eliminated from the submitted paper. Proceedings
will be published as adjunct proceedings to the 25th ACM International
Conference on Multimodal Interaction.

 

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

* Domna Banakou, from New York University Abu Dhabi will present her
most recent work about immersive virtual reality and people's
responses to events within these environments. Her main focus is the
bodily representation in virtual reality, and the correlations between
these body ownership illusions and their perceptions by the users.

 

ORGANISERS

*        Beatrice Biancardi (CESI LINEACT), bbiancardi@cesi.fr

*        Thomas Janssoone (Enchanted Tools)

*        Eleonora Ceccaldi (CasaPaganini InfoMus, University of Genoa)

*        Sara Falcone (University of Twente)

*        Geoffrey Gorisse (LAMPA, Arts et Métiers Institute of Technology)

*        Pierre Raimbaud (ENISE, Ecole Centrale de Lyon)

*        Anna Martin Coesel (CESI LINEACT)

*        Silvia Ferrando (CasaPaganini InfoMus, University of Genoa)