People are increasingly finding themselves interacting with computerized agents, such as autonomous and tele-presence robots in homes, healthcare, or in search and rescue, or virtual characters in the expanding gaming industry or for serious games, sometimes representing other people through on-line social and interactive meeting places. Although these broad areas have their own unique research challenges, there is a clear commonality to be addressed in the investigation of how people interact with agents, whether they have physical or virtual embodiments, or represent remote people or an AI algorithm, a commonality that requires explicit consideration.

The Second International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI 2014) aims to be the premier interdisciplinary venue for discussing and disseminating state-of-the-art research and results that have implications across conventional interaction boundaries including robots, software agents and digitally-mediated human-human communication. HAI will gather researchers from fields spanning engineering, computer science, psychology and sociology, and will cover diverse topics, including human-robot interaction, affective computing, computer-supported collaborative work, gaming and serious games, artificial intelligence, and more.

The theme of this year’s conference is “equations and theories relating robots, avatars, and virtual characters.”