Very short notice of an outstanding CFP deadline (next Tuesday!) regarding use of planning techniques in games. So if anyone out there just happens to have a paper on planning sitting on their hard drive looking for an audience, here you go:
ICAPS06 Workshop
AI Planning for Computer Games and Synthetic Characters
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(To be held on June 6th or 7th, in the English Lake District, UK)
Dead-line for submission of papers Feb 28th
Overview
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The application of AI technologies in general to computer games and graphical characters is an expanding field, as witness the first in a series of international conferences on AI and Interactive Digital Media in June 2005, the International Conference on Computer Games and AI, now in its 6th year, the growth of the conference Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), and the development of sometimes affectively-driven autonomous synthetic characters in projects in Europe, the US and Asia.
However though AI Planning has much to contribute to both these fields, particularly in producing more convincing Non-Player Characters and autonomous intelligent characters, few AI planning researchers have been involved in this work, and the technology, where applied at all, has often been used in a somewhat ad hoc way. In addition, games company use of AI planning has so far been limited - A*-based motion planning the main exception - with practitioners feeling that the technology is too computationally expensive or risky for integration into computer games.
This workshop aims to bring together researchers already applying AI planning technology to these domains so as to look at what has been done and what could be done; researchers who would like to apply their work to these areas; and anyone interested in what the main research challenges to AI planning are and what contributions it can make with respect to both domains.
Scope
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The workshop aims to bridge the gap that currently exists between the in the abstract very efficient P&S technology and its application to computer games and synthetic characters. Papers submitted should either present theoretical / practical work or report experiences with applications (describing projects or applications, the difficulties they had to overcome, some lessons learned,
etc.) on the following topics:
* Interactive planning
* Continuous planning
* Real-time and any-time planning
* Plan recognition
* Planning for language and action
* Planning and believability
* Linking planning and animation
* Planning stories and scenarios
* Planning and interactive narrative
* Integrating planning and affective systems
Workshop format
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The workshop will be structured to allow ample time for discussion and interactions; we hope to put on a demo session both for contributers'
systems and for "interesting" games; we plan a panel looking at the key issues in applying AI planning to these domains Important Dates
* Deadline for submission of papers: Feb 17th, 2006
* Notification of acceptance/rejection: March 17th, 2005
* Deadline for receipt of camera-ready copy: March 31st, 2005
* Workshop date: 6th or 7th June
Submission Instructions
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Authors are encouraged to submit papers electronically in PDF format. Papers should be no more than 10 pages and formatted using the AAAI style template.
Please send submissions by e-mail to Ruth Aylett (ruth@macs.hw.ac.uk ) no later than February 17, 2006
Organizing Committee
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Workshop Chairs
* Ruth Aylett, MACS, Heriot-Watt University
* Michael Young, Liquid Narrative Group,University of North Carolina
Program Committee
* Marc Cavazza, Teeside University, UK
* Carlos Delgado-Mata, University of Bonaterra, Mexico
* Joao Dias, INESC-ID, Portugal
* Nick Hawes, Birmingham University, UK
* Eric Jacopin, CREC Saint-Cyr, France
* Gal Kaminka, Bar Ilan University, Israel
* Brian Magerko, Michigan State University,US
* Hector Munoz-Avila, Lehigh University, US
* Alexander Nareyek, CEO/CTO, Digital Drama Studios
* Jeff Orkin, MIT Media Lab, US
* Mark Riedl, University of Southern California, US
* Jesus Savage, UNAM, Mexico
If you would like to submit a paper, but cannot make the deadline, contact Ruth Aylett right away to discuss options. ruth@macs.hw.ac.uk