Call for Papers

GW 2009 - the 8th International Gesture Workshop
Gesture in Embodied Communication and Human-Computer Interaction

February 25-27, 2009
ZiF - Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University
Bielefeld, Germany

Organisers:
Stefan Kopp, Sociable Agents Groups, Bielefeld University
Ipke Wachsmuth, Artificial Intelligence Group & ZiF, Bielefeld University

The International Gesture Workshop is an interdisciplinary event for researchers working on gestural interaction, who want to meet and exchange their ideas and newest research. GW 2009 aims to bring together researchers from computer science, engineering, and the humanities in order to connect recent theoretical discoveries about the embodied bases of human verbal and nonverbal communication with approaches taken to developing interactive systems that exploit gesture as a means of interacting with machines. The workshop will be the 8th in the Gesture Workshop series initiated in 1996.

Confirmed invited speakers:
Antonio Camurri (DIST-University of Genova)
Asli Özyürek (MPI Psycholinguistics & Radboud Univ. Nijmegen, Koc Univ. Istanbul)
Alex Waibel (Carnegie Mellon Univ., Univ. of Karlsruhe)


Scope and Topics
Under the focus of gesture-based human-computer interaction, we invite submissions of original work that addresses, but is not limited to, one or more of the following aspects:

Concepts, models, architectures
  • Theoretical aspects of gestural communication and interaction
  • Gesture and speech, gaze, or other natural modalities
  • Gesture and embodied cognition
  • Gesture and sociality
  • Gesture and multimodal dialogue
  • Gesture expressivity
  • Gesture development and learning
  • Sensori-motor aspects of gesture
  • Sign language processing
  • Gesture recognition and analysis
  • Gesture production and synthesis
  • Fusion and fission of gesture with other modalities
  • Systematic and idiosyncratic aspects of gesture
Applications
  • User issues, usability studies, application paradigms
  • Vision-based gesture recognition
  • Gesture in virtual and augmented reality
  • Gesture in embodied conversational agents
  • Gesture in mobile computing
  • Gesture in tangible and haptic interfaces
  • Gesture for gaming and entertainment
  • Gesture for audio-visual applications
  • Gesture for therapy and rehabilitation
  • Gesture for music and performing arts
  • Gesture for education

Submission Procedure and Publication
Authors are encouraged to submit original scientific contributions to GW 2009 in the form of extended abstracts of up to 2 pages. Abstract headings must include title, authors, and keywords, according to Springer formatting guidelines (see example document). Upon review and acceptance by the GW 2009 PC, authors will be asked to present their work either orally, as a poster, or in form of a technical demonstration (where applicable). Submitted abstracts must be in English and should, to the extent possible, use language that will be understood across disciplines i.e. avoids unnecessary jargon.
Submissions should be sent electronically in PDF to the following e-mail address: gw2009@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de

Presenting authors will be invited after the workshop to submit a full paper on the topic of their talk. All papers will be peer-reviewed and compiled into a high-quality publication typically published by Springer-Verlag (see list of previous proceedings).

Important Dates
Submission of extended abstracts: September 12, 2008
Notification of acceptance/rejection: October 15, 2008
Submission of final versions of extended abstracts: November 4, 2008
Workshop: February 25-27, 2009

About the Venue
GW 2009 will be held at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University. Bielefeld is located in North Germany on the flanks of the wooded hills of the Teutoburg Forest. As the regional center of East Westphalia, Bielefeld is easily reached on an hourly schedule by way of IC, ICE, and EC trains on the route Dortmund- Hannover. The nearest airports with hourly train connections are Hannover (115 km), Dortmund-Wickede (110 km), Duesseldorf (190 km), and Frankfurt (320 km). The regional airports Paderborn-Lippstadt (50 km) and Muenster-Osnabrueck (75 km) can be reached by airport shuttles.

www.gw2009.de