Download or read book Embodied Conversational Agents written by Justine Cassell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes research in all aspects of the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied conversational agents as well as details of specific working systems. Embodied conversational agents are computer-generated cartoonlike characters that demonstrate many of the same properties as humans in face-to-face conversation, including the ability to produce and respond to verbal and nonverbal communication. They constitute a type of (a) multimodal interface where the modalities are those natural to human conversation: speech, facial displays, hand gestures, and body stance; (b) software agent, insofar as they represent the computer in an interaction with a human or represent their human users in a computational environment (as avatars, for example); and (c) dialogue system where both verbal and nonverbal devices advance and regulate the dialogue between the user and the computer. With an embodied conversational agent, the visual dimension of interacting with an animated character on a screen plays an intrinsic role. Not just pretty pictures, the graphics display visual features of conversation in the same way that the face and hands do in face-to-face conversation among humans. This book describes research in all aspects of the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied conversational agents as well as details of specific working systems. Many of the chapters are written by multidisciplinary teams of psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, artists, and researchers in interface design. The authors include Elisabeth Andre, Norm Badler, Gene Ball, Justine Cassell, Elizabeth Churchill, James Lester, Dominic Massaro, Cliff Nass, Sharon Oviatt, Isabella Poggi, Jeff Rickel, and Greg Sanders.
Download or read book From Brows to Trust written by Zsófia Ruttkay and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-02-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are autonomous software entities with human-like appearance and communication skills. These agents can take on a number of different roles, for example, as an assistant, tutor, information provider, or customer service agent. They may also simply represent or entertain a user. The precise nature and benefits of different characteristics of ECAs requires careful investigation. Questions range from the function of an eyebrow raise to mechanisms for assessing and improving ECA trustworthiness. This book will help experts and designers in the specification and development of applications incorporating ECAs. Part 1 provides guidelines for evaluation methodologies and the identification of design and evaluation parameters. Part 2 demonstrates the importance of considering the user's perspective and interaction experience. Part 3 addresses issues in fine-tuning design parameters of ECAs and verifying the perceived effect. Finally, in Part 4 lessons learned from a number of application case studies are presented. The book is intended for both ECA researchers in academia and industry, and developers and designers interested in applying the technology.
Download or read book Intelligent Virtual Agents written by Thomas Rist and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-09-09 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, containing the proceedings of IVA 2003, held at Kloster Irsee, in Germany, September 15–17, 2003, is testimony to the growing importance of IntelligentVirtualAgents(IVAs) asaresearch?eld.Wereceived67submissions, nearly twice as many as for IVA 2001, not only from European countries, but from China, Japan, and Korea, and both North and South America. As IVA research develops, a growing number of application areas and pl- forms are also being researched. Interface agents are used as part of larger - plications, often on the Web. Education applications draw on virtual actors and virtual drama, while the advent of 3D mobile computing and the convergence of telephones and PDAs produce geographically-aware guides and mobile - tertainment applications. A theme that will be apparent in a number of the papers in this volume is the impact of embodiment on IVA research – a char- teristic di?erentiating it to some extent from the larger ?eld of software agents.
Download or read book The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents written by Birgit Lugrin and published by ACM Books. This book was released on 2021-09-17 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents provides a comprehensive overview of the research fields of Embodied Conversational Agents, Intelligent Virtual Agents, and Social Robotics. Socially Interactive Agents (SIAs), whether virtually or physically embodied, are autonomous agents that are able to perceive an environment including people or other agents, reason, decide how to interact, and express attitudes such as emotions, engagement, or empathy. They are capable of interacting with people and one another in a socially intelligent manner using multimodal communicative behaviors, with the goal to support humans in various domains. Written by international experts in their respective fields, the book summarizes research in the many important research communities pertinent for SIAs, while discussing current challenges and future directions. The handbook provides easy access to modeling and studying SIAs for researchers and students, and aims at further bridging the gap between the research communities involved. In two volumes, the book clearly structures the vast body of research. The first volume starts by introducing what is involved in SIAs research, in particular research methodologies and ethical implications of developing SIAs. It further examines research on appearance and behavior, focusing on multimodality. Finally, social cognition for SIAs is investigated using different theoretical models and phenomena such as theory of mind or pro-sociality. The second volume starts with perspectives on interaction, examined from different angles such as interaction in social space, group interaction, or long-term interaction. It also includes an extensive overview summarizing research and systems of human-agent platforms and of some of the major application areas of SIAs such as education, aging support, autism, and games.
Download or read book Conversational Agents and Natural Language Interaction Techniques and Effective Practices written by Perez-Marin, Diana and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is a reference guide for researchers entering the promising field of conversational agents, providing an introduction to fundamental concepts in the field, collecting experiences of researchers working on conversational agents, and reviewing techniques for the design and application of conversational agents"--
Download or read book Advances in Natural Multimodal Dialogue Systems written by Jan van Kuppevelt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-12-06 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main topic of this volume is natural multimodal interaction. The book is unique in that it brings together a great many contributions regarding aspects of natural and multimodal interaction written by many of the important actors in the field. Topics addressed include talking heads, conversational agents, tutoring systems, multimodal communication, machine learning, architectures for multimodal dialogue systems, systems evaluation, and data annotation.
Download or read book Teaching Skills with Virtual Humans written by Marissa Bond and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights current research into virtual tutoring software and presents a case study of the design and application of a social tutor for children with autism. Best practice guidelines for developing software-based educational interventions are discussed, with a major emphasis on facilitating the generalisation of skills to contexts outside of the software itself, and on maintaining these skills over time. Further, the book presents the software solution Thinking Head Whiteboard, which provides a framework for families and educators to create unique educational activities utilising virtual character technology and customised to match learners’ needs and interests. In turn, the book describes the development and evaluation of a social tutor incorporating multiple life-like virtual humans, leading to an exploration of the lessons learned and recommendations for the future development of related technologies.
Download or read book Multimodal Intelligent Information Presentation written by Oliviero Stock and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent Multimodal Information Presentation relates to the ability of a computer system to automatically produce interactive information presentations, taking into account the specifics about the user, such as needs, interests and knowledge, and engaging in a collaborative interaction that helps the retrieval of relevant information and its understanding on the part of the user. The volume includes descriptions of some of the most representative recent works on Intelligent Information Presentation and a view of the challenges ahead.
Download or read book Affective Dialogue Systems written by Elisabeth Andre and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-06-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human conversational partners are able, at least to a certain extent, to detect the speaker’s or listener’s emotional state and may attempt to respond to it accordingly. When instead one of the interlocutors is a computer a number of questions arise, such as the following: To what extent are dialogue systems able to simulate such behaviors? Can we learn the mechanisms of emotional be- viors from observing and analyzing the behavior of human speakers? How can emotionsbeautomaticallyrecognizedfromauser’smimics,gesturesandspeech? What possibilities does a dialogue system have to express emotions itself? And, very importantly, would emotional system behavior be desirable at all? Given the state of ongoing research into incorporating emotions in dialogue systems we found it timely to organize a Tutorial and Research Workshop on A?ectiveDialogueSystems(ADS2004)atKlosterIrseein GermanyduringJune 14–16, 2004. After two successful ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshops on Multimodal Dialogue Systems at the same location in 1999 and 2002, we felt that a workshop focusing on the role of a?ect in dialogue would be a valuable continuation of the workshop series. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the workshop attracted submissions from researchers with very di?erent backgrounds and from many di?erent research areas, working on, for example, dialogue processing, speech recognition, speech synthesis, embodied conversational agents, computer graphics, animation, user modelling, tutoring systems, cognitive systems, and human-computer inter- tion.
Download or read book Social Signal Processing written by Judee K. Burgoon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-08 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Signal Processing is the first book to cover all aspects of the modeling, automated detection, analysis, and synthesis of nonverbal behavior in human-human and human-machine interactions. Authoritative surveys address conceptual foundations, machine analysis and synthesis of social signal processing, and applications. Foundational topics include affect perception and interpersonal coordination in communication; later chapters cover technologies for automatic detection and understanding such as computational paralinguistics and facial expression analysis and for the generation of artificial social signals such as social robots and artificial agents. The final section covers a broad spectrum of applications based on social signal processing in healthcare, deception detection, and digital cities, including detection of developmental diseases and analysis of small groups. Each chapter offers a basic introduction to its topic, accessible to students and other newcomers, and then outlines challenges and future perspectives for the benefit of experienced researchers and practitioners in the field.
Download or read book Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XVI written by Tony Allen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-06-07 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swallowing sound recognition is an important task in bioengineering that could be employed in systems for automated swallowing assessment and diagnosis of abnormally high rate of swallowing (aerophagia) [1], which is the primary mode of ingesting excessive amounts of air, and swallowing dysfunction (dysphagia) [2]-[5], that may lead to aspiration, choking, and even death. Dysphagia represents a major problem in rehabilitation of stroke and head injury patients. In current clinical practice videofluoroscopic swallow study (VFSS) is the gold standard for diagnosis of swallowing disorders. However, VFSS is a ti- consuming procedure performed only in a clinical setting. VFSS also results in some radiation exposure. Therefore, various non-invasive methods are proposed for swallowing assessment based on evaluation of swallowing signals, recorded by microphones and/or accelerometers and analyzed by digital signal processing techniques [2]-[5]. Swallowing sounds are caused by a bolus passing through pharynx. It is possible to use swallowing sounds to determine pharyngeal phase of the swallow and characteristics of the bolus [2].
Download or read book Conversational AI written by Michael McTear and published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive introduction to Conversational AI. While the idea of interacting with a computer using voice or text goes back a long way, it is only in recent years that this idea has become a reality with the emergence of digital personal assistants, smart speakers, and chatbots. Advances in AI, particularly in deep learning, along with the availability of massive computing power and vast amounts of data, have led to a new generation of dialogue systems and conversational interfaces. Current research in Conversational AI focuses mainly on the application of machine learning and statistical data-driven approaches to the development of dialogue systems. However, it is important to be aware of previous achievements in dialogue technology and to consider to what extent they might be relevant to current research and development. Three main approaches to the development of dialogue systems are reviewed: rule-based systems that are handcrafted using best practice guidelines; statistical data-driven systems based on machine learning; and neural dialogue systems based on end-to-end learning. Evaluating the performance and usability of dialogue systems has become an important topic in its own right, and a variety of evaluation metrics and frameworks are described. Finally, a number of challenges for future research are considered, including: multimodality in dialogue systems, visual dialogue; data efficient dialogue model learning; using knowledge graphs; discourse and dialogue phenomena; hybrid approaches to dialogue systems development; dialogue with social robots and in the Internet of Things; and social and ethical issues.
Download or read book Human Computer Interaction Multimodal and Natural Interaction written by Masaaki Kurosu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-10 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three-volume set LNCS 12181, 12182, and 12183 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Human Computer Interaction thematic area of the 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2020, which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in July 2020.* A total of 1439 papers and 238 posters have been accepted for publication in the HCII 2020 proceedings from a total of 6326 submissions. The 145 papers included in these HCI 2020 proceedings were organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: design theory, methods and practice in HCI; understanding users; usability, user experience and quality; and images, visualization and aesthetics in HCI. Part II: gesture-based interaction; speech, voice, conversation and emotions; multimodal interaction; and human robot interaction. Part III: HCI for well-being and Eudaimonia; learning, culture and creativity; human values, ethics, transparency and trust; and HCI in complex environments. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Download or read book Intelligent Virtual Agents written by Jan Allbeck and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-09-03 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: th Welcome to the proceedings of the 10 International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), held 20-22 September, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Intelligent Virtual Agents are interactive characters that exhibit human-like qualities and communicate with humans or with each other using natural human modalities such as behavior, gesture, and speech. IVAs are capable of real-time perception, cognition, and action that allow them to participate in a dynamic physical and social environment. IVA 2010 is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main forum for prese- ing research on modeling, developing, and evaluating Intelligent Virtual Agents with a focus on communicative abilities and social behavior. The development of IVAs - quires expertise in multimodal interaction and several AI fields such as cognitive modeling, planning, vision, and natural language processing. Computational models are typically based on experimental studies and theories of human-human and hum- robot interaction; conversely, IVA technology may provide interesting lessons for these fields. Visualizations of IVAs require computer graphics and animation te- niques, and in turn supply significant realism problem domains for these fields. The realization of engaging IVAs is a challenging task, so reusable modules and tools are of great value. The fields of application range from robot assistants, social simulation, and tutoring to games and artistic exploration. The enormous challenges and diversity of possible applications of IVAs have - sulted in an established annual conference.
Download or read book Handbook of Conversation Design for Instructional Applications written by Luppicini, Rocci and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2008-01-31 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the rapid growth of computer-mediated communication, there is an ever-broadening range of social interactions. With conversation as the bedrock on which social interactions are built, there is growing recognition of the important role conversation has in instruction, particularly in the design and development of technologically advanced educational environments. The Handbook of Conversation Design for Instructional Applications presents key perspectives on the evolving area of conversation design, bringing together a multidisciplinary body of work focused on the study of conversation and conversation design practices to inform instructional applications. Offering multimodal instructional designers and developers authoritative content on the cutting-edge issues and challenges in conversation design, this book is a must-have for reference library collections worldwide.
Download or read book Coverbal Synchrony in Human Machine Interaction written by Matej Rojc and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodied conversational agents (ECA) and speech-based human-machine interfaces can together represent more advanced and more natural human-machine interaction. Fusion of both topics is a challenging agenda in research and production spheres. The important goal of human-machine interfaces is to provide content or functionality in the form of a dialo
Download or read book Multimodal Distinctive Behavior for Expressive Embodied Conversational Agents written by Maurizio Mancini and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are a new type of computer interface which have human-like bodies and conversational skills. Users interacting with agents will be more engaged and participative if the agents exhibit behaviors which look coherent across different situations and emotional states. In the present work, we aim at increasing agents' believability by looking at two main aspects of the problem: - an agent must be able to show its emotional state and communicative intentions not only through specific facial expressions, gestures, etc., but also by varying the quality of its movements (e.g., their speed, amplitude, etc.) and the choice of the modalities that are used to communicate; - the agent must maintain a distinctive behavior, that is, its global behavior tendency has to remain apparent during any communication. We have developed a model to solve the two above issues. We have evaluated the realism and believability of the resulting agent's behaviors through perceptual tests and application scenario. The resulting system is highly extensible and configurable. It can also be used as a research tool to study human communication.
