[CogSci] [Call for papers] IDC 2021 Workshop on Children, Robots, and Virtual Agents: Present and Future Challenges

[Marta Couto]

*IDC 2021 Workshop on Children, Robots, and Virtual Agents:

Present and Future Challenges*


*KEY DATES*

Deadline for Paper Submission: 12 April 2021

Paper Acceptance Notification: 26 April 2021

Camera-ready Paper: 10 May 2021

Workshop Date: 26 June 2021 or 27 June 2021

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*LOCATION*

[Online] Athens, Worldwide

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*WORKSHOP WEBSITE*

https://www.techresearch4children.com/

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*ABSTRACT*

Research on child-agent interaction is rapidly expanding. It is, therefore,
necessary to converge our collective efforts to broaden our understanding
and perspectives of how virtual agents, affect and potentially improve the
well-being of children.

“Children, Robots and Virtual Agents: Present and Future Challenges"
follows our International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR) 2020
workshop on child-robot interactions. In this full-day workshop, we will
focus on the unique technical and empirical challenges of designing and
conducting child-agent interactions. In light of the current pandemic
situation, we will also address the challenges and adaptations of
conducting research under the “new normal" to understand how researchers
overcome these challenges and what we can learn and keep in the future. We
also aim to join the virtual agents and robotics communities to learn from
each other and discuss both areas' common and specific challenges.

Our primary goal is to provide an opportunity for an interdisciplinary
debate about the present and future of child-agent interactions. We want to
bring together researchers, practitioners and pioneers from relevant
disciplines and create collaboration opportunities.

As part of the workshop, we will have a collaborative activity where our
participants will work together and brainstorm about intelligent agents in
different time frames (past, present and future). We will also have a panel
of experts discussing the topics of this workshop and answering
participants questions.


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* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION AND TOPICS OF INTEREST*


This full-day workshop will focus on the unique challenges of child-agent
interaction and provide a venue for participants to have in-depth
discussions about designing interactions with children in mind, now and in
the future. Moreover, we want to discuss and collect insights from the
adaptations made to keep researching during a pandemic. Our main goal is to
establish an interdisciplinary debate and create networking opportunities.

This workshop follows from our ICSR 2020 workshop on child-robot
interactions, expanding it to include non embodied agents and adaptations
made to accommodate the “new normal".

Topics of Interest



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   Design and deployment challenges.



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   Adapting to the "new normal".



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   Experiments involving children and agents.



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   Challenges of safe child-agent interaction.



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   Children’s involvement in design and development.



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   Children’s perception (measuring, evaluating, and interpreting).



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   Expectations for future interactions.



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   The impact of the agents on children’s cognitive development.



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   Ethical Concerns.


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* PUBLICATIONS*

Accepted short papers and position papers will be published on the website.
We plan to publish a workshop report that focuses on the findings from our
activity and panel session on SIGIR Forum or similar platforms.

Moreover, we are organising a special issue on Interaction Studies - Social
Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems and we
invite participants to submit their work*.

*Authors are requested to submit their full research papers, complying with
the general scope of the journal. The submitted papers will undergo the
standard peer-review process before they can be accepted.

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* PANELISTS*

Jill Lehman

Iolanda Leite

Maarten Van Mechelen

Shuli Gilutz https://sites.google.com/site/shuligilutz/home



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*ORGANISING COMMITTEE *


Elmira Yadollahi

Dr. Shruti Chandra

Dr. Marta Couto

Dr. Angelica Lim

Dr. Anara Sandygulova

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*CONTACT*

All questions about submissions should be emailed to the workshop

organizers at (child.robot.future at gmail.com)

_______________________________________________
Marta Couto

GAIPS - INESC-ID
Investigador/Researcher
IST TagusPark
Av. Prof. Dr. Cavaco Silva
Room 2N9.9
2780-990 Porto Salvo
Portugal
marta.couto at gaips.inesc-id.pt
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