Seventh International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems

Event Notification Type: 
Call for Papers
Abbreviated Title: 
IWSDS-2016
Location: 
Riekonlinna
Wednesday, 13 January 2016 to Saturday, 16 January 2016
Country: 
Finland
City: 
Saariselkä
Submission Deadline: 
Wednesday, 23 September 2015

IWSDS-2016
The Seventh International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems

Special theme: Dialogues with Social Robots – Enablements, Analyses,
and Evaluation

January 13 - 16, 2016
Riekonlinna, Saariselkä, Finland
(http://www.laplandhotels.com/EN/hotels-and-restaurants/saariselka/laplan...)

Introduction
------------

Following the success of IWSDS 2009 (Irsee, Germany), IWSDS 2010
(Gotemba Kogen Resort, Japan), IWSDS 2011 (Granada, Spain), IWSDS 2012
(Paris, France), IWSDS 2014 (Napa, USA), and IWSDS 2015 (Busan, South
Korea), the Seventh International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System
(IWSDS 2016) will be held in Saariselkä, Finland, on January 13-16, 2016.
The IWSDS 2016 will be the northernmost spoken dialogue workshop ever,
and it allows you to enjoy the workshop as well as beautiful winter
scenes and activities in Finnish Lapland.

The IWSDS series provides an international forum for the presentation
of research and applications, and for lively discussion among researchers
as well as industrialists, with a special interest in the practical
implementation of spoken dialogue systems in everyday applications.
IWSDS 2016 designates
"Dialogues with Social Robots: Enablements, Analyses, and Evaluation"
as a special theme of discussion.

Workshop Themes
---------------

Within the main theme, we invite submissions especially on the
following topics:

* Robot dialogues and smooth communication

* Engagement and emotion in human-robot interactions

* Symbiosis between robots and humans

* Educational and healthcare robot applications

* Digital resources for interactive applications

* Multi-modal and machine learning methods

* Companions, personal assistants and dialogue systems

* Proactive and anticipatory interactions

* Dialogue systems and reasoning

* Big data and large scale spoken dialogue systems

The workshop will feature three special sessions, for which submissions
are encouraged. The papers to the special sessions will be evaluated
according to the same quality standards as the main conference papers
but the authors should indicate that their paper is for the special
session so that one of the reviewers can be assigned as a representative
of the special session theme.

* Dialogue State Tracking Challenge
organisers: Luis F. D’Haro, Seokhwan Kim, Rafael E.Banchs,
Matthew Henderson, Jason Williams

* Evaluation of Human-Robot Dialog in Social Robotics
organisers: Laurence Devillers, Kristiina Jokinen, Joseph Mariani,
Haizhu Li, Alex Waibel, Wolfgang Minker

* Socio-cognitive Language Processing
organisers: Björn Schuller, Michael McTear

However, submissions are not limited to these topics, and submission
of papers in all areas of spoken dialogue systems is encouraged. We
particularly welcome papers that can be illustrated by a demonstration,
and will organize the conference in order to best accommodate these
papers, whatever their category.

As usual, a selection of accepted papers will be published in a book
by Springer following the conference (Springer LNEE series, SCOPUS
and other important indexed, see http://www.springer.com/series/7818).

Important dates
---------------

Long and short paper submission:
September 23, 2015

Notification of acceptance:
October 31, 2015

Demo submission:
November 2, 2015

Camera ready due:
November 16, 2015

Early registration deadline: November 16, 2015

IWSDS 2016 workshop:
January 13 - 16, 2016

Long, Short and Demo Papers
---------------------------

Authors are requested to submit PDF files of their manuscripts using
the EasyChair paper submission system (will open in August).
Paper Submission Site (EasyChair):
https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?key=25937793.8WvhuPy9ypZKMoMo

We distinguish between the following categories of submissions:

* Long Research Papers are reserved for reports on mature research
results. The expected length of a long paper should be in the range
of 8-12 pages, including references.

* Short Research Papers should be in the range of 4-6 pages, including
references. Authors may choose this category if they wish to report on
smaller case studies or ongoing but interesting and original research
efforts.

* Position Papers deal with novel research ideas or view-points which
describe trends or fruitful starting points for future research and
elicit discussion and are not much researched. They should be 2 pages
long, excluding references.

* Demo Submissions - System Papers: Authors who wish to demonstrate
their system may choose this category and provide a description of
their system and demo. System papers should not exceed 6 pages in
total.

IWSDS 2016 requires that all authors wishing to present a paper take
into account:
- The paper is substantially original and will not be submitted to
any other conference or journal during the IWSDS 2016 review period.

- The paper does not contain any plagiarism.

- The paper will be presented by one of the authors in person at
the conference site according to the schedule published. Any
paper accepted in the technical program, but not presented on
site will be withdrawn from the official conference proceedings.

Templates for formatting
------------------------

Latex Style and Template
www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.iwsds2011/files/svmult.zip

Word Template
www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.iwsds2012/files/T1-book.zip

Art Guidelines
http://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.iwsds2011/files/Art_...

The file Art Guidelines.pdf explains the requirements for submitting
figures that are acceptable. Please pay particular attention to the
guidelines about colour figures.
Art Guidelines.pdf

Steering Committee
------------------

Gary Geunbae Lee – POSTECH, Pohang, Korea
Ramón López-Cózar – University of Granada, Spain
Joseph Mariani – LIMSI & IMMI-CNRS, Orsay, France
Wolfgang Minker – Ulm University, Germany
Satoshi Nakamura – NAIST, Nara, Japan

Conference Chair
----------------

Kristiina Jokinen – University of Helsinki

Local Arrangements Committee
----------------------------

Katri Hiovain – University of Helsinki
Mikko Kurimo – Aalto University
Niklas Laxström – University of Helsinki
Juho Leinonen – Aalto University
Ilona Rauhala – University of Helsinki
Markku Turunen – University of Tampere
Graham Wilcock – University of Helsinki

Programme Committee
-------------------
To be confirmed

Sponsors and endorsements
-------------------------

Tieteellisten seurain valtuuskunta (Federation of Finnish Learned Societies)
DigiSámi –project
SIGDial
Suomen Robotiikkayhdistys (Finnish Association of Robotics)
AIRO Island (AI-Robotics)