2nd Announcement
(we apologize if you receive this message more than once)
*** International CLASS Workshop ***
on
Natural, Intelligent and Effective Interaction in
Multimodal Dialogue Systems
Copenhagen, Denmark
28-29 June 2002
Detailed and more up to date information
may be found at the workshop webpage:
http://www.class-tech.org/events/NMI_workshop2.html
Invited Speakers/Contributors (nearly all confirmed):
Tim Bickmore and Justine Cassell (MIT Media Lab), Phil Cohen (Oregon
Graduate Institute), Ronald Cole (University of Colorado at Boulder),
Bjoern Granstroem (KTH, Stockholm), Dominic Massaro (UCSC), Candy Sidner
(MERL, Cambridge, MA), Oliviero Stock (ITC-IRST), Wolfgang Wahlster
(DFKI), Yorick Wilks (University of Sheffield),
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Following up on the CLASS workshop in Verona (Italy, 14-15 December 2001),
this workshop will concentrate on innovative and challenging approaches on
natural, intelligent and effective interaction in multimodal dialogue
systems. The aim of the workshop is to bring together theoretically and
practically oriented researchers from both academia and industry with the
purpose of having a thorough, fruitful and representative discussion of
the topic area in an international setting.
The workshop is sponsored by the European CLASS project
(http://www.class-tech.org/) which was initiated on the request of the
European Commission with the purpose of supporting and stimulating
collaboration within and among Human Language Technology (HLT) projects,
as well as between HLT projects and relevant projects outside Europe.
Currently, CLASS comprises 42 projects and 220 registered members.
TOPICS OF INTEREST
We welcome papers describing theoretical or practical research on
multimodal dialogue systems. The focus of the workshop is on natural,
intelligent and effective multimodal interaction. Topics of interest
include:
- Multimodal Signal Processing
Models for multimodal signal recognition and synthesis,
including combinations of speech (emotional speech and
meaningful intonation for speech), text, graphics, music,
gesture, face and facial expression, and (embodied)
animated or anthropomorphic conversational agents.
- Multimodal Communication Management
Dialogue management models for mixed initiative
conversational and user-adaptive natural and multimodal
interaction, including models for collaboration and multi-
party conversation.
- Multimodal Miscommunication Management
Multimodal strategies for handling or preventing
miscommunication, in particular multimodal repair and
correction strategies, clarification strategies for
ambiguous or conflicting multimodal information, and
multimodal grounding and feedback strategies.
- Multimodal Interpretation and Response Planning
Interpretation and response planning on the basis of
multimodal dialogue context, including (context-semantic)
models for the common representation of multimodal
content, as well as innovative concepts/technologies on
the relation between multimodal interpretation and
generation.
- Reasoning in Intelligent Multimodal Dialogue Systems
Non-monotonic reasoning techniques required for
intelligent interaction in various types of multimodal
dialogue systems, including techniques needed for
multimodal input interpretation, for reasoning about the
user(s), and for the coordination and integration of
multimodal input and output.
- Choice and Coordination of Media and Modalities
Diagnostic tools and technologies for choosing the
appropriate media and input and output modalities for the
application and task under consideration, as well as
theories and technologies for natural and effective
multimodal response presentation.
- Multimodal Corpora, Tools and Schemes
Training corpora, testsuites and benchmarks for multimodal
dialogue systems, including corpus tools and schemes
for multilevel and multimodal coding and annotation.
- Architectures for Multimodal Dialogue Systems
New architectures for multimodal interpretation and
response planning, including issues of reusability and
portability, as well as architectures for the next
generation of multi-party conversational interfaces to
distributed information.
- Evaluation of Multimodal Dialogue Systems
Current practice and problematic issues in the
standardization of subjective and objective multimodal
evaluation metrics, including evaluation models allowing
for adequate task fulfilment measurements, comparative
judgements across different domain tasks, as well as
models showing how evaluation translates into targeted,
component-wise improvements of systems and aspects.
WORKSHOP FORMAT
Although the workshop has an open character implying that plenty of room
is available for the presentation of papers from researchers from all over
the world, the workshop will contain invited contributions from a group of
10 specially qualified researchers with a balanced composition of
workshop-relevant expertise. Part of the group is selected from the broad
CLASS community; part of them are internationally leading researchers from
outside CLASS. Invited contributors will also participate in the panel
session organized by the co-chairs of the workshop program committee.
SUBMISSION OF FULL AND SHORT PAPERS
In addition to papers for full plenary presentation, we encourage the
submission of short papers in combination with a very short presentation
in the plenary session followed by a poster presentation. Full papers must
be no longer than 10 pages, including references, examples, algorithms,
graphical representations, etc. Short papers should be 4 pages maximally.
Full and short papers should be sent electronically to the e-mail address
classworkshop2002@ims.uni-stuttgart.de and must be received no later than
31 March 2002.
Stylefiles are available at the workshop webpage:
http://www.class-tech.org/events/NMI_workshop2.html.
Papers should be submitted in pdf or postscript format.
The title page should include the following information (no separate
title page is needed):
- Title
- Authors' names, affiliations, and email addresses
- Abstract (up to 15 lines)
- List of relevant keywords
IMPORTANT DATES
| Submission of full and short papers: | 31 March 2002 |
| Notification of acceptance: | 30 April 2002 |
| Final submissions: | 31 May 2002 |
| Workshop: | 28-29 June 2002 |
WORKSHOP PUBLICATIONS
Full papers and short papers will be published in the workshop
proceedings.
In addition to the group of invited contributors, authors of a selected
number of papers accepted for the workshop proceedings will be asked to
send in an extended and updated version of their paper for publication in
a book that will be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers (TLTB book
series). In order to guarantee full coherence of the book, we might invite
some workshop-external researchers to contribute a chapter to the book as
well.
PANEL SESSIONS
In addition to the presentation of full and short papers in the plenary
session, we will organize the following panel discussion on the main theme
of the workshop:
Natural Multimodal Interaction: Current Practice and
Future Research
Members of this panel session will be invited contributors. Panellists
will be asked to send in a short position abstract before the workshop.
After the workshop, a written summary of this panel session will be
available at the CLASS sub-website on Natural and Multimodal Interactivity
(http://www.class-tech.org/nmi/). We intend to make available a video or
audio recording as well.
Further, we strongly encourage proposals for a second panel session
related to the main topic of the workshop or some special subtopic. The
deadline for panel session proposals is 30 April 2002. Proposals can also
be sent to the workshop e-mail address
(classworkshop2002@ims.uni-stuttgart.de) and should contain the following
information:
- title of the proposed panel session
- a brief description of the suggested topic of the panel
session, including an explanation of why this topic is
relevant for the field
- a list of suggested panellists
Questions on panel session proposals may be directed to
the chairs of the workshop program committee at
classworkshop2002@ims.uni-stuttgart.de
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Co-Chairs
- Niels Ole Bernsen (NISLab, Odense University)
- Jan van Kuppevelt (University of Stuttgart)
Reviewers (nearly all confirmed)
- Elisabeth Andre (University of Augsburg)
- Tim Bickmore and Justine Cassell (MIT Media Lab)
- Louis Boves (Nijmegen University)
- Phil Cohen (Oregon Graduate Institute)
- Ronald Cole (University of Colorado at Boulder)
- John Dowding (RIACS)
- Laila Dybkjaer (NISLab, Odense University)
- Bjoern Granstroem (KTH, Stockholm),
- Jean-Claude Martin (LIMSI-CNRS)
- Dominic Massaro (UCSC)
- Catherine Pelachaud (University of Rome "La Sapienza")
- Thomas Rist (DFKI)
- Alex Rudnicky (Carnegie Mellon University)
- Candy Sidner (MERL, Cambridge, MA)
- Mark Steedman (University of Edinburgh)
- William Swartout (ICT, USC)
- Oliviero Stock (ITC-IRST)
- Wolfgang Wahlster (DFKI)
- Alex Waibel (Carnegie Mellon University)
- Yorick Wilks (University of Sheffield)
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Niels Ole Bernsen, Laila Dybkjaer, Jan van Kuppevelt.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Questions about submission
and review process:
Jan van Kuppevelt
kuppevelt@ims.uni-stuttgart.de
Questions about local issues:
Laila Dybkjaer
laila@nis.sdu.dk
Miscellaneous:
Niels Ole Bernsen
nob@nis.sdu.dk
Formal Colloquium
Diversity in Language: Why does it arise and persist?
Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Time: 15h45
Place: Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik
Big Conference Room (1.53)
Wundtlaan 1
6525 XD Nijmegen
http://www.mpi.nl/world/colloquia/col-program.html
FC Donders Lectures on Cognitive Neuroscience
Marcus E. Raichle (Washington University, St. Louis)
The Resting Brain
Time: 15.45
Date Friday March 15, 2002
Place: Spinoza Building
Lecture Hall 2
Montessorilaan 3
Nijmegen
| contact
us at Trans 10,
3512 JK Utrecht, telephone: (+31) (0)30-2536006 |