The Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (AAAI-15) was held in January 2015 in Austin, Texas (USA) The conference program was cochaired by Sven Koenig and Blai Bonet. This report contains reflective summaries of the main conference, the robotics program, the AI and robotics workshop, the virtual agent exhibition, the what's hot track, the competition panel, the senior member track, student and outreach activities, the student abstract and poster program, the doctoral consortium, the women's mentoring event, and the demonstrations program.

The AAAI-15 organizing committee of about 60 researchers arranged many of the traditional AAAI events, including the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI) Conference, tutorials, workshops, the video competition, senior member summary talks (on well-developed bodies of research or important new research areas), and What's Hot talks (on research trends observed in other AIrelated conferences and, for the first time, competitions). Innovations of AAAI-15 included software and hardware demonstration programs, a virtual agent exhibition, a computer-game showcase, a funding information session with program directors from different funding agencies, and Blue Sky Idea talks (on visions intended to stimulate new directions in AI research) with awards funded by the CRA Computing Community Consortium. Seven invited talks surveyed AI research in academia and industry and its impact on society. Attendees kept track of the program through a smartphone app as well as social media channels.

Narrative generation represents an application domain for AI planning where plan quality is related to properties such as shape of plan trajectory. In our work we have developed a plan-based approach to narrative generation that uses character relationships as a key determinant in controlling plan shape (relationships are key in genres such as serial dramas and soaps). Our approach is implemented in a demonstration Interactive Narrative, called NetworkING, set in the medical drama genre. The system features a user-friendly mechanism for specifying relationships between virtual characters, via a social network and real-time visualisation of generated narratives on a 3D stage.

The Ninth Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) was held October 14–18, 2013, at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Workshops were held on the two days prior to the start of the main conference, giving attendees a chance to hold in-depth discussions on topics that complement the themes of the main conference program. This year the workshops included the First Workshop on AI and Game Aesthetics (1 day), The Second Workshop on AI in the Game Design Process (1 day), The Second International Workshop on Musical Metacreation (2 day), The Sixth Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies (2 day).

The workshop was accompanied by an evening Games are unique in that their components event, DAGGER, which drew together local game developers (from the rules and goals of the game to the appearance and academic research projects. Acting both of avatars and their dialogue) must encompass as an exhibition and as an informal gathering, the both functional and aesthetic prerequisites. Artificial DAGGER event allowed attendees to interact directly intelligence usually focuses on the functional quality with a wide variety of game types and technologies, of such game components, for example, ensuring as well as with their developers. As events such that an avatar can traverse a level in minimal time or as DAGGER help bridge the gap between theoretical that AI can win over any human in a strategy game. The papers avatar, or level would appeal to a particular player. of the workshop were published as AAAI Technical The Workshop on AI and Game Aesthetics provided Report WS-13-19.