IEEE VR 2024 2nd Annual Workshop on Multi-modal Affective and Social Behavior Analysis and Synthesis in Extended Reality (MASSXR)
March 16-17, 2024 (Orlando, FL, USA)
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NEWS
NEWS
The workshop will take place in room Fantasia C.
Please check out the workshop program.
Registration is now open. Early registration ends on February 14th.
MASSXR 2024 Workshop will take place on March 17th.
Check out the website of MASSXR Workshop @ IEEEVR 2023 for the last year's program.
The workshop will feature three invited keynote speakers.
We will organize a panel as part of the MASSXR workshop.
Introduction
Introduction
We are excited to announce the 2nd Annual Workshop on Multi-modal Affective and Social Behavior Analysis and Synthesis in Extended Reality. This year, we explore deeper into the intersection of immersive technologies and social-affective computing, with a focus on the advances and challenges in creating truly user-aware interaction systems within XR environments.
As the field continues to advance, we focus on key research questions and emerging topics such as:
What are the newest developments in using XR sensors to capture users' affective and social states? How can these methods be made more accurate and sensitive?
What are the current best practices for ethically and responsibly collecting user interaction data in XR?
How can we improve the generation of nuanced affective and social cues for digital avatars? What roles do advanced dialogue, voice modulation, and non-verbal behaviors play?
How can we create individualized, trustworthy, and believable social and affective interactions in XR? What are the latest methodologies and techniques in this area?
Our objective remains to bring together a diverse group of researchers and practitioners from fields like AI, 3D computer vision/graphics, computer animation, and social-affective computing. We aim to discuss the current state, future directions, challenges, and opportunities in developing immersive embodied intelligence. This year, we particularly emphasize the integration of recent AI advancements with XR technologies to forge more immersive, responsive, and human-centric experiences. We encourage innovative perspectives, experimental results, and theoretical advancements in these areas. We believe that the workshop will continue providing collaboration opportunities for researchers and set the stage for future innovations in social XR.
We look forward to your contributions and to another year of insightful discussions.
Location and date
Location and date
The workshop IEEE-MASSXR will take place during the first two days of the 31st IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR) held in March 16-20, 2024 | Orlando, Florida USA
IEEE-MASSXR is a half-day and in-person workshop.
Workshop format
Workshop format
The workshop will have three keynote speakers, a few research papers, and a panel discussion including the keynote speakers, organizers, and the audience in an interactive manner.
KEYNOTE Speakers
KEYNOTE Speakers
Name: Carlos Busso (The University of Texas at Dallas)
Title: Multimodal generation of data-driven human-like behaviors for socially interactive agents
Abstract: Nonverbal behaviors externalized through head, face and body movements for socially interactive agents (SIAs) play an important role in human computer interaction (HCI). Believable movements for SIAs have to be meaningful and natural. Previous studies mainly relied on rule-based or speech-driven approaches. This presentation will discuss our effort to bridge the gap between these two approaches overcoming their limitations. These multimodal models have opened opportunities to generate characteristic behaviors associated with a given discourse class learning the rules from the data. These models capture principled temporal relationships and dependencies between speech and gestures that are carefully taken into account. The talk will also discuss strategies to quantify entrainment with the user to increase engagement and close the loop in the interaction. The advances in this area will lead to SIAs that can express meaningful human-like gestures that are timely synchronized with speech, enabling novel venues for artificial agents in human-machine interaction.
Bio: Carlos Busso is a Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, where he is also the director of the Multimodal Signal Processing (MSP) Laboratory. His research interest is in human-centered multimodal machine intelligence and application, with a focus on the broad areas of speech processing, affective computing, and machine learning methods for multimodal processing. He has worked on speech emotion recognition, multimodal behavior modeling for socially interactive agents, and robust multimodal speech processing. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award. In 2014, he received the ICMI Ten-Year Technical Impact Award. In 2015, his student received the third prize IEEE ITSS Best Dissertation Award (N. Li). He also received the Hewlett Packard Best Paper Award at the IEEE ICME 2011 (with J. Jain), and the Best Paper Award at the AAAC ACII 2017 (with Yannakakis and Cowie). He received the Best of IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing Paper Collection in 2021 (with R. Lotfian) and the Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing in 2022 (with Yannakakis and Cowie). In 2023, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award in the Mid-Career/Academia category by the Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI) at the University of Southern California. He received in 2023 the ACM ICMI Community Service Award. He is currently serving as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. He is a member of the ISCA, and AAAC and a senior member of ACM. He is an IEEE Fellow.
Name: Eakta Jain (University of Florida)
Title: Privacy in XR: Perspectives from the Eye Tracking Front lines
Abstract: Eye tracking provides critical cues for compelling XR experiences. Research has shown how gaze data is central to functional advances such as foveated rendering as well as user-centric advances such as communicating affect and personality in virtual avatars. At the same time, both research and practice have brought up vulnerabilities associated with large scale eye tracking data collection. In this talk, I will discuss some of these tradeoffs as well as open gaps for future research.
Bio: Dr. Eakta Jain is an Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. She received her PhD and MS degrees in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and her B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. She has industry experience at Texas Instruments R&D labs, Disney Research Pittsburgh, and the Walt Disney Animation Studios. Dr. Jain is interested in the safety, privacy and security of data gathered for user modeling, particularly eye tracking data. Her areas of work include graphics and virtual reality, generation of avatars, human factors in the future of work and transportation. Her research has been nominated for multiple best paper awards and been funded through faculty research awards from Meta and Google, federal funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, US Department of Transportation, and state funding from the Florida Department of Transportation. Dr. Jain is an ACM Senior Member. She served as the Technical Program Chair for ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research (2020) and Applications and ACM/Eurographics Symposium on Applied Perception (2021). She serves on the ACM SAP Steering Committee (2022-2024) and as a Director on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee (2022-2025)
Name: Michael Neff (University of California Davis)
Title: The Challenge of Synthesizing Nonverbal Behavior
Abstract: There is growing evidence that embodiment brings substantial value to VR experiences. For first person users, this generates a tracking problem: how can a person's motion be accurately tracked and projected into VR in real time. For nonplayer characters or anyone who cannot be reasonably tracked, it generates a synthesis problem: how can appropriate motion be synthesized to match desired dialog and context. In this talk, I will review some of our recent work on gesture synthesis and use it as a basis for talking more broadly about the many open challenges in synthesizing appropriate nonverbal behavior.
Bio: Michael Neff is a Professor in Computer Science and Cinema & Digital Media at the University of California, Davis where he leads the Motion Lab, an interdisciplinary research effort in character animation and embodied interaction. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is also a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. His research focus has been on character animation, especially modeling expressive movement, nonverbal communication, gesture and applying performing arts knowledge to animation. Additional interests include human computer interaction related to embodiment, motion perception, character-based applications, motor control and VR/XR. Select distinctions include an NSF CAREER Award, the Alain Fournier Award and several paper awards. He is the former Chair of the Department of Cinema and Digital Media at UC Davis and current Chair of the Graduate Group in Computer Science.
PANELISTs
PANELISTs
Google Labs, USA
Scope
Scope
This workshop invites researchers to submit original, high-quality research, survey, or position papers related to multi-modal affective and social behavior analysis and synthesis in XR. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:
Analysis and synthesis of multi-modal social and affective cues in XR
Data-driven expressive character animation (e.g., face, gaze, gestures, ...)
AI algorithms for modeling social interactions with avatars and virtual humans
Machine learning for dyadic and multi-party interactions
Generating diverse, personalized, and style-based body motions
Music-driven animation (e.g., dance, instrument playing)
Multi-modal data collection and annotation in and for XR (e.g., using VR/AR headsets, microphones, motion capture devices, and 4D scanners)
Efficient and novel machine learning methods (e.g., transfer learning, self-supervised and few-shot learning, generative and graph models)
Subjective and objective analysis of data-driven algorithms for XR
Applications in healthcare, education, culture, and entertainment (e.g., sign language)
Important Dates
Important Dates
Submission deadline: January 10, 2024 (Anywhere on Earth)
Notifications: January 19, 2024
Camera-ready deadline: January 24, 2024
Conference date: March 16-20, 2024
Workshop date: March 16-17, 2024 (GMT-5)
PROGRAM
PROGRAM
08:00 - 08:10 Introduction and Welcome
08:10 - 08:50 Invited Speaker: Carlos Busso (30 mins + 10mins Q&A)
08:50 - 09:30 Invited Speaker: Eakta Jain (30 mins + 10 mins Q&A)
09:30 - 10:00 Paper presentations – Session 1 (10 mins including presentation + Q&A)
09:30 - 09:40 Towards Understanding Personality Expression via Body Motion, Sinan Sonlu, Yalım Doğan, Arçin Ülkü Ergüzen, Musa Ege Ünalan, Serkan Demirci, Funda Durupinar, Ugur Gudukbay
09:40 - 09:50 Physiological Data Collection to Detect Emotional State During XR Experiences: A Pilot Study in Military Education, Serena Ricci, Simone Grassini, Francesca Ghigliazza, Ludovica Viola, Stian Kjeksrud, Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland
09:50 - 10:00 Automatic Recognition of Gesture Qualities in Speech Delivery in VR, Tomasz Skrzek, Filip Malawski, Slawomir Konrad Tadeja, Daniela Hekiert, Daria Joanna Hemmerling, Magdalena Igras-Cybulska
10:00 - 10:30 Break
10:30 - 10:50 Paper presentations – Session 2 (10 mins each including presentation + Q&A)
10:30 - 10:40 Using LLMs to Animate Interactive Story Characters with Emotions and Personality, Aline Normoyle, João Sedoc, Funda Durupinar
10:40 - 10:50 Chill or Warmth: Exploring Temperature’s Impact on Interpersonal Boundaries in VR, Laura Battistel, Matt Gottsacker, Greg Welch, Gerd Bruder, Massimiliano Zampini, Riccardo Parin
10:50 - 11:30 Invited Speaker: Michael Neff (30 mins + 10 mins Q&A)
11:30 - 12:25 Panel discussion with keynote speakers and organizers
12:25 - 12:30 Closing
All times are Florida, USA local time (UTC-4). See further details here.
Submission Instructions
Submission Instructions
Authors are invited to submit research, survey, work-in-progress, or position papers:
Research or survey papers: 4-6 pages + references
Work-in-progress papers: 2-3 pages + references
Position papers: 1-2 pages + references
Papers will be included in the IEEE Xplore library. Authors are encouraged to submit videos to aid the program committee in reviewing their submissions. Please anonymize your submissions, as the workshop uses a double-blind review process. Authors of accepted papers are expected to register and present their papers at the workshop.
Papers should use the IEEE VR formatting guidelines and be submitted through the IEEE VR 2024 Precision Conference System (PCS).
When starting your submission, please make sure to select the relevant track for the workshop "IEEE VR 2024 - Multi-modal Affective and Social Behavior Analysis and Synthesis in Extended Reality".
Organizing Committee
Organizing Committee
University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
King's College, London
CWI and TU Delft, The Netherlands
Purdue University, USA
TU Delft, The Netherlands
Bryn Mawr College, USA
INTERNATIONAL Program Committee
INTERNATIONAL Program Committee
Abdallah El Ali, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Uttaran Bhattacharya, Adobe Inc, USA
Mark Billinghurst, ITMS, University of South Australia, Australia
Claudia Esteves, Universidad de Guanajuato, México
Ugur Gudukbay, Bilkent University, Turkey
Sophie Joerg, University of Bamberg, Germany
Stefan Kopp, Bielefeld University, Germany
Nguyen Tan Viet Tuyen, University of Southampton, UK
Katja Zibrek, Inria, France
Contact
Contact
If you have any questions or remarks regarding this workshop, please contact Funda Durupinar (funda.durupinarbabur[at]umb.edu) or Zerrin Yumak (Z.Yumak[at]uu.nl).
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