Daniel Ballin – författare

This volume, containing the proceedings of IVA 2003, held at Kloster Irsee, in Germany, September 15–17, 2003, is testimony to the growing importance of IntelligentVirtualAgents(IVAs) asaresearch?eld.Wereceived67submissions, nearly twice as many as for IVA 2001, not only from European countries, but from China, Japan, and Korea, and both North and South America. As IVA research develops, a growing number of application areas and pl- forms are also being researched. Interface agents are used as part of larger - plications, often on the Web. Education applications draw on virtual actors and virtual drama, while the advent of 3D mobile computing and the convergence of telephones and PDAs produce geographically-aware guides and mobile - tertainment applications. A theme that will be apparent in a number of the papers in this volume is the impact of embodiment on IVA research – a char- teristic di?erentiating it to some extent from the larger ?eld of software agents.

The origin of the Intelligent Virtual Agents conference dates from a successful workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments held in Brighton at the 13th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'98). This workshop was followed by a second one held in Salford in Manchester in 1999. Subsequent events took place in Madrid, Spain in 2001 and Irsee, Germany in 2003 and attracted participants from both sides of the Atlantic as well as Asia. th This volume contains the proceedings of the 5 International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2005, held on Kos Island, Greece, September 12–14, 2005, which highlighted once again the importance and vigor of the research field. A half-day workshop under the title “Socially Competent IVA’s: We are not alone in this (virtual) world!” also took place as part of this event. IVA 2005 received 69 submissions from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia. The papers published here are the 26 full papers and 14 short papers presented at the conference, as well as one-page descriptions of the 15 posters and the descriptions of the featured invited talks by Prof. Justine Cassell, of Northwestern University and Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn, of the University of Hertfordshire. We would like to thank a number of people that have contributed to the success of this conference. First of all, we thank the authors for their high-quality work and their willingness to share their ideas.

The origin of the Intelligent Virtual Agents conference dates from a successful workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments held in Brighton at the 13th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI''98). This workshop was followed by a second one held in Salford in Manchester in 1999. Subsequent events took place in Madrid, Spain in 2001 and Irsee, Germany in 2003 and attracted participants from both sides of the Atlantic as well as Asia. th This volume contains the proceedings of the 5 International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2005, held on Kos Island, Greece, September 12–14, 2005, which highlighted once again the importance and vigor of the research field. A half-day workshop under the title “Socially Competent IVA’s: We are not alone in this (virtual) world!” also took place as part of this event. IVA 2005 received 69 submissions from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia. The papers published here are the 26 full papers and 14 short papers presented at the conference, as well as one-page descriptions of the 15 posters and the descriptions of the featured invited talks by Prof. Justine Cassell, of Northwestern University and Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn, of the University of Hertfordshire. We would like to thank a number of people that have contributed to the success of this conference. First of all, we thank the authors for their high-quality work and their willingness to share their ideas.

The origin of the Intelligent Virtual Agents conference dates from a successful workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments held in Brighton, UK at the 13th European Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (ECAI’98). This workshop was followed by a second one held in Salford in Manchester, UK in 1999.Subsequent events took place in Madrid, Spain in 2001, Isree, Germany in 2003 and Kos, Greece in 2005. Starting in 2006, Intelligent Virtual Agents moved from being a biennial to an annual event and became a full ?edged international conference, hosted in California. This volume contains the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2006, held in Marina del Rey, California, USA from August 21–23.For the second year in a row,IVA also hosted the Gathering of Animated Lifelike Agents (GALA 2006), an annual festival to showcase the latest animated lifelike agents created by university students and academic or industrial research groups. IVA 2006 received 73 submissions from Europe, the AmericasandAsia.Thepaperspublishedherearethe24fullpapersand11short papers presented at the conference, as well as one-page descriptions of posters and the featured invited talks by Brian Parkinson of Oxford University, Rod Humble of Electronic Arts, and Michael Mateas of the University of California, Santa Cruz and Andrew Stern of Procedural Arts.

The origin of the Intelligent Virtual Agents conference dates from a successful workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments held in Brighton, UK at the 13th European Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (ECAI’98). This workshop was followed by a second one held in Salford in Manchester, UK in 1999.Subsequent events took place in Madrid, Spain in 2001, Isree, Germany in 2003 and Kos, Greece in 2005. Starting in 2006, Intelligent Virtual Agents moved from being a biennial to an annual event and became a full ?edged international conference, hosted in California. This volume contains the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2006, held in Marina del Rey, California, USA from August 21–23.For the second year in a row,IVA also hosted the Gathering of Animated Lifelike Agents (GALA 2006), an annual festival to showcase the latest animated lifelike agents created by university students and academic or industrial research groups. IVA 2006 received 73 submissions from Europe, the AmericasandAsia.Thepaperspublishedherearethe24fullpapersand11short papers presented at the conference, as well as one-page descriptions of posters and the featured invited talks by Brian Parkinson of Oxford University, Rod Humble of Electronic Arts, and Michael Mateas of the University of California, Santa Cruz and Andrew Stern of Procedural Arts.

This volume, containing the proceedings of IVA 2003, held at Kloster Irsee, in Germany, September 15–17, 2003, is testimony to the growing importance of IntelligentVirtualAgents(IVAs) asaresearch?eld.Wereceived67submissions, nearly twice as many as for IVA 2001, not only from European countries, but from China, Japan, and Korea, and both North and South America. As IVA research develops, a growing number of application areas and pl- forms are also being researched. Interface agents are used as part of larger - plications, often on the Web. Education applications draw on virtual actors and virtual drama, while the advent of 3D mobile computing and the convergence of telephones and PDAs produce geographically-aware guides and mobile - tertainment applications. A theme that will be apparent in a number of the papers in this volume is the impact of embodiment on IVA research – a char- teristic di?erentiating it to some extent from the larger ?eld of software agents.

Predicting the future is a risky game, and can often leave egg on one’s face. However when the organizers of the Intelligent Virtual Environments workshop at the European Conference on AI predicted that the field of Intelligent Virtual Agents would grow and mature rapidly, they were not wrong. From this small workshop spawned the successful one on Intelligent Virtual Agents, held in Manchester in 1999. This volume comprises the proceedings of the much larger third workshop held in Madrid, September 10 11, 2001, which successfully achieved the aim of taking a more international focus, bringing together researchers from all over the world. We received 35 submissions from 18 different countries in America, Asia, and Africa. The 16 papers presented at the conference and published here show the high quality of the work that is currently being done in this field. In addition, five contributions were selected as short papers, which were presented as posters at the workshop. This proceedings volume also includes the two prestigious papers presented at the workshop by our keynote speakers: Daniel Thalmann, Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne and Director of the Computer Graphics Lab., who talked about The Foundations to Build a Virtual Human Society. Jeff Rickel, Project Leader at the Information Sciences Institute and a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, who debated about Intelligent Virtual Agents for Education and Training: Opportunities and Challenges.