Connectionists: Second Call for Papers: SIGdial 2020 Special Session on Situated Dialogue with Virtual Agents and Robots (RoboDial 2.0)

[Aguas Lopes, Jose David]

Second Call for Papers: SIGdial 2020 Special Session on Situated
Dialogue with Virtual Agents and Robots (RoboDial 2.0)

SIGdial main conference submissions due March 6.
Late-breaking, work-in-progress, and position papers due May 15.

**Introduction**
Recent technologies have brought conversational robots out of the lab
and into the homes and workplaces of real users. Dialogue is now
actively taking place between people and agents to operate, navigate,
visualize, and interact in physical or virtual spaces. *Situated
dialogue* distinguishes itself from other forms of dialogue in that it
(1) takes place in an environment (real or simulated), (2) refers to
the shared surroundings of interlocutors, and (3) involves an embodied
agent (e.g., a robot or device). There is a growing need for
bi-directional dialogue work to be showcased that supports the body of
research on language grounding, vision and language, as well as
dialogue that will allow situated agents, like robots, to ask for
clarification and provide updates on their internal states.

Our objectives in this special session are to showcase recent and
ongoing work on situated dialogue, and to identify paths forward in
this space from research across communities including dialogue,
robotics, virtual agents, computer vision, NLP, and AI. The special
session will feature oral presentations and a poster session. We
welcome submissions on any topic related to situated dialogue,
including but not limited to:
- Interaction studies with smart-home devices and virtual agents
- Learning from demonstration through natural language dialogue
- Explainable AI in physical and virtual spaces
- Representations of physical surroundings / world modeling to support
grounded communication
- Embodied visual question answering and/or generation
- Empirical studies of human-robot dialogue (Wizard-of-Oz based,
simulated, or semi-autonomous)
- Computational models of dialogue management and/or turn-taking with
physical or virtual agents
- Methods of building or leveraging common ground with physical agents
in real-world or simulated environments
- Corpora of situated dialogue (Wizard-of-Oz based, simulated, or
semi-autonomous)
- Corpus analysis of situated dialogue
- Multimodal information processing to support dialogue (including
speech, gaze, gesture)
- Physical embodiment, voice, or personification of robots and its
effect on human-robot dialogue
- Communicating feedback from robots using affordances in addition to speech
- Machine learning methods for embodied dialogue systems
- Dialogue-based collaborative human-robot interaction
- Spoken language generation for situated dialogue
- Spoken language / speech processing technologies to support situated dialogue

**Call for Papers**

Researchers may choose to submit:
*Long papers and short papers* will present original research and go
through the same peer review process by the SIGdial program committee
as papers submitted to the main SIGdial track. These papers will
appear in the main SIGdial proceedings and are presented with the main
track. Long papers must be no longer than eight pages, including
title, text, figures and tables, along with two additional pages for
example discourses or dialogues and algorithms, and an extra page is
allowed in the final version to address reviewers' comments. Short
papers should be no longer than four pages including title, text,
figures and tables, along with one additional page for example
discourses or dialogues and algorithms, and an extra page is allowed
in the final version to address reviewers' comments. An unlimited
number of pages are allowed for references.

*Late-breaking and work-in-progress papers* will showcase ongoing work
and focused, relevant contributions. Submissions need not present
original work. Late-breaking and work-in-progress papers should be no
longer than four pages including title, text, figures and tables, and
references. These will be reviewed by the special session organizers
and posted on the special session website. These papers will be
presented as lightning talks or posters during the session. Authors
will retain the copyright to their work so that they may submit to
other venues as their work matures.

*Position papers* will give voice to authors who wish to take a
position on a topic listed above or the field of spoken, situated
dialogue on robots at large. Submissions need not present original
work. These will be reviewed by the special session organizers and
posted on the special session website.  These papers will be presented
as lightning talks or posters during the session. Authors will retain
the copyright to their work so that they may submit to other venues.

Important Dates

**Long and short paper submission deadline: March 6**
To submit a long or short paper, please go to the SIGdial 2020 START
page (https://www.softconf.com/l/sigdial2020/). When submitting,
indicate “Special Session Paper (RoboDial 2.0)” under the “Submission
Type” category. All long and short submissions must follow the SIGdial
2020 format.

**Late-breaking and work-in-progress paper deadline: May 15**
To submit a late-breaking or work-in-progress paper, please email a
2-4 page PDF (including references) formatted using the SIGdial 2020
format guidelines, to: robodial at googlegroups.com<mailto:robodial at googlegroups.com> by May 15. You will
receive a confirmation of your submission and notification before the
Early Bird Registration deadline.

**Position paper deadline: May 15**
To submit a position paper, please email a 4-6 page PDF (including
references) formatted using the SIGdial 2020 format guidelines, to:
robodial at googlegroups.com<mailto:robodial at googlegroups.com> by May 15. You will receive a confirmation
of your submission and notification before the Early Bird Registration
deadline.

**List of Organizers**
Jose David Lopes, Heriot Watt University
Stephanie Lukin, Army Research Lab
Matthew Marge, Army Research Lab
Vikram Ramanarayanan, Educational Testing Service
Matthias Scheutz, Tufts University
Casey Kennington, Boise State University
Cynthia Matuszek, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Contact: robodial at googlegroups.com<mailto:robodial at googlegroups.com>

**Website**
For more information and updates please check the special session
website at https://robodial.github.io
________________________________

Founded in 1821, Heriot-Watt is a leader in ideas and solutions. With campuses and students across the entire globe we span the world, delivering innovation and educational excellence in business, engineering, design and the physical, social and life sciences. This email is generated from the Heriot-Watt University Group, which includes:

  1.  Heriot-Watt University, a Scottish charity registered under number SC000278
  2.  Heriot- Watt Services Limited (Oriam), Scotland's national performance centre for sport. Heriot-Watt Services Limited is a private limited company registered is Scotland with registered number SC271030 and registered office at Research & Enterprise Services Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS.

The contents (including any attachments) are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of its contents is strictly prohibited, and you should please notify the sender immediately and then delete it (including any attachments) from your system.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20200227/fc749667/attachment.html>