In recent years, we have witnessed an explosive growth in multimediacomputing, communication and applications. This revolution istransforming the way people live, work and interact with each other, and is impacting the way business, government services, education, entertainment and health care operate. This important book summarizes recent research topics, focusing onfour major areas: (1) intelligent content-based information retrievaland virtual world, (2) quality-of-services of multimedia data, (3)intelligent techniques for distance education, and (4) intelligentagents for e-commerc

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2011, held in Reykjavik, Island, in September 2011. The 18 revised full papers and 27 revised short papers presented together with 25 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 91 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on social and dramatic interaction; guides and relational agents; nonverbal behavior; adaptation and coordination; listening and feedback; frameworks and tools; cooperation and copresence; emotion; poster abstracts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2012, held in Santa Cruz, CA, USA, in September 2012. The 17 revised full papers presented together with 31 short papers and 18 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on IVAs on learning environments; emotion and personality; evaluation and empirical studies; multimodal perception and expression; narrative and interactive applications; social interaction; authoring and tools; conceptual frameworks.

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.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2013, held in Edinburgh, UK, in August 2013. There was a total of 94 submissions. The 18 full and 18 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. In addition, the volume lists the 34 posters which were on display during the conference. The papers are organized in topical sections named: cognitive models; applications; dialogue, language, speech; non-verbal behaviour; and social, cultural models and agents.

Smart VR/AR/MR Systems for Professionals is a comprehensive guide that explores the ground-breaking applications of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) in various industries. This book aims to equip practicing professionals with the knowledge and insights they need to harness the full potential of these immersive technologies in their respective fields. Through this book, the authors aim to explore the experimental breakthroughs and cutting-edge methodologies that have emerged in the realm of VR/AR/MR. The book delves deeper into the profound impact these technologies have had on the design process, computer-aided design, healthcare product development, manufacturing, human-robot collaboration, medical imaging, rehabilitation, and even phobia therapy. In each chapter of this book, we delve into specific topics, uncovering the principles, methodologies, and best practices that professionals can adopt. Examples of these topics range from empowering design processes with virtual reality to revolutionizing computer-aided design, and from exploring AR/VR/MR technologies in healthcare to transforming manufacturing with digital twins and metrology in VR. The book aims to provide practitioners with valuable insights, real-world examples, and practical guidance to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of VR/AR/MR systems.

th Welcome to the proceedings of the 10 International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), held 20-22 September, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Intelligent Virtual Agents are interactive characters that exhibit human-like qualities and communicate with humans or with each other using natural human modalities such as behavior, gesture, and speech. IVAs are capable of real-time perception, cognition, and action that allow them to participate in a dynamic physical and social environment. IVA 2010 is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main forum for prese- ing research on modeling, developing, and evaluating Intelligent Virtual Agents with a focus on communicative abilities and social behavior. The development of IVAs - quires expertise in multimodal interaction and several AI fields such as cognitive modeling, planning, vision, and natural language processing. Computational models are typically based on experimental studies and theories of human-human and hum- robot interaction; conversely, IVA technology may provide interesting lessons for these fields. Visualizations of IVAs require computer graphics and animation te- niques, and in turn supply significant realism problem domains for these fields. The realization of engaging IVAs is a challenging task, so reusable modules and tools are of great value. The fields of application range from robot assistants, social simulation, and tutoring to games and artistic exploration. The enormous challenges and diversity of possible applications of IVAs have - sulted in an established annual conference.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2006. The book presents 24 revised full papers and 11 revised short papers together with 3 invited talks and the abstracts of 19 poster papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on social impact of IVAs, IVAs recognizing human behavior, human interpretation of IVA behavior, embodied conversational agents, characteristics of nonverbal behavior and more.

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.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Smart Graphics, SG 2004, held in Banff, Canada in May 2004. The 10 revised full papers and 8 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for presentation. The papers address smart graphics issues from the points of view of computer graphics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and fine art; they are organized in topical sections on virtual characters and environments, tangible and hybrid interfaces, and graphical interfaces.