Special issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics

Special issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics / Call for submissions / Nov. 3, 2005

Achieving Human-Like Qualities in Interactive Virtual and Physical Humanoids

Special issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijhr/ijhr.shtml

Guest editors: Catherine Pelachaud and Lola Cañamero


This special issue is concerned with the simulation/recreation of
human-like capabilities for human-machine / human-robot interaction.
Making the machine more human-like rather than making the user more
robot-like is recurrently perceived as a requisite for humans to accept
artifacts as (social) partners in everyday life, and to achieve socially
meaningful and engaging interactions with them. To advance the state of
the art towards new paradigms of increasingly human-like interaction, we
propose to investigate which aspects of human communication schemes are
needed and interesting to recreate in interactions with artifacts. The
type of interactions we are interested in this issue use some form of
embodiment through humanoid robots or virtual agents. However, achieving
human-like qualities in interaction is not limited to the physical
aspects of the embodiment but cover a wide range of aspects such as:
- Behavior: the behaviors that the robot or virtual agent must display
are tightly linked to features of communication and dialog management as
well as to emotion. By essence, these behaviors are multimodal.
- Expression in interaction: what are the different expressive elements
needed to create a socially meaningful and engaging interaction? While
the previous topic looks at behavioral aspects of the communication,
this one looks at the functions of communication.
- Creation of bonds: interaction requires at least 2 participants and
usually involves the exchange of different types of information.
However, information exchange is not enough: interaction also requires
the establishment of some sort of link between the participants,
otherwise no exchange could happen. Under this link we investigate the
notion of engagement among the interacting partners, and the social and
affective aspects of the relationship.
- Developmental and evolutionary models: studying the underlying
mechanisms and processes by which interactions form and develop is of
paramount importance in order to understand their nature and their
present form. This can also greatly improve the establishment of
long-term interactions with artifacts.
- Presence: ECAs and robots have impact on the interaction by their
presence as well as their behavior and communication style and function.
Is there any differences between physical and virtual presence of these
human-like entities? Is their presence different from human presence?
What is the role of embodiment in presence?
- Agency: what are the types of interaction and features that virtual
and physical artifacts must show in order to be perceived as "agents" by
humans? Do we perceive those agents as being "like us"? How does this
affect the interaction?
- Architectures: which architectures are better suited to build such
human-like capabilities for interaction?

To investigate these issues, we seek high-quality, original
contributions from relevant disciplines, including (but not limited to)
Embodied Conversational Agents, Virtual Humans, Humanoid, Social, and
Epigenetic Robotics, Psychology, Sociology, and Philosophy.

Important dates:

– Submission deadline: November 3, 2005
– Notification to authors: January 18, 2006
– Camera-ready versions: April 3, 2006
– Target publication date: September 2006