Developing enhanced conversational agents for social virtual worlds

In This Paper, We Present A Methodology For The Development Of Embodied Conversational Agents For Social Virtual Worlds. The Agents Provide Multimodal Communication With Their Users In Which Speech Interaction Is Included. Our Proposal Combines Different Techniques Related To Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Affective Computing, And User Modeling. A Statistical Methodology Has Been Developed To Model The System Conversational Behavior, Which Is Learned From An Initial Corpus And Improved With The Knowledge Acquired From The Successive Interactions. In Addition, The Selection Of The Next System Response Is Adapted Considering Information Stored Into User&#39 S Profiles And Also The Emotional Contents Detected In The User&#39 S Utterances. Our Proposal Has Been Evaluated With The Successful Development Of An Embodied Conversational Agent Which Has Been Placed In The Second Life Social Virtual World. The Avatar Includes The Different Models And Interacts With The Users Who Inhabit The Virtual World In Order To Provide Academic Information. The Experimental Results Show That The Agent&#39 S Conversational Behavior Adapts Successfully To The Specific Characteristics Of Users Interacting In Such Environments.Work partially supported by the Spanish CICyT Projects under grant TRA2015-63708-R and TRA2016-78886-C3-1-R

Meetings and Meeting Modeling in Smart Environments

In this paper we survey our research on smart meeting rooms and its relevance for augmented reality meeting support and virtual reality generation of meetings in real time or off-line. The research reported here forms part of the European 5th and 6th framework programme projects multi-modal meeting manager (M4) and augmented multi-party interaction (AMI). Both projects aim at building a smart meeting environment that is able to collect multimodal captures of the activities and discussions in a meeting room, with the aim to use this information as input to tools that allow real-time support, browsing, retrieval and summarization of meetings. Our aim is to research (semantic) representations of what takes place during meetings in order to allow generation, e.g. in virtual reality, of meeting activities (discussions, presentations, voting, etc.). Being able to do so also allows us to look at tools that provide support during a meeting and at tools that allow those not able to be physically present during a meeting to take part in a virtual way. This may lead to situations where the differences between real meeting participants, human-controlled virtual participants and (semi-) autonomous virtual participants disappear

A Proposal to Create Learning Environments in Virtual Worlds Integrating Advanced Educative Resources

Social Networking has been a global consumer phenomenon during the last few years. Online communities are changing the way people behave, share and interact within their daily lives. Most of such communities are mainly focused on sharing contents and communicating using a traditional web interface. However, social virtual worlds are computer-simulated environments that the users can "inhabit" and in which they can interact and create objects. Education is one of the most interesting applications of virtual worlds, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. In this paper, we highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. We have implemented the proposal in a learning system for several subjects of the Computer Science degree in our university and show that it fostered engagement and collaboration and helped the students to better understand complex concepts.Research funded by projects CICYT TIN 2011-28620-C02-01, CICYT TEC 2011-28626 C02-02, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485), and DPS 2008-07029-C02-02.Enviad

An approach to develop intelligent learning environments by means of immersive virtual worlds

Merging Immersive Virtual Environments, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence techniques provides a number of advantages to develop Intelligent Environments for multiple applications. This paper is focused on the application of these technologies to develop intelligent learning environments. Education is one of the most interesting applications of immersive virtual environments, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. We highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. Our proposal has been applied in several subjects of the Computer Science degree in the Carlos III University of Madrid. The results of the evaluation show that developed learning environment fosters engagement and collaboration and helps students to better understand complex concepts.This work was supported in part by Projects MINECO TEC2012-37832-C02-01, CICYT TEC2011-28626-C02-02, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485).Publicad

The future of information systems-using social systems to create protocols for the virtual environment (systems analysis through social analysis)

Information is the medium for communication, power-play, politics, and the building block for knowledge systems. It is associated with social interaction, and can be mediated by technology use. The paper argues that the key to understanding the impact of future technologies lies in the interaction between the social and technical environment. It suggests that future technologies such as virtual reality make necessary a move away from traditional methods of systems analysis and design. The interactive nature of such technology requires a validation in the social environment. The paper proposes the creation of protocols (a set of universally applicable standards) for the virtual environment. It suggests that information systems are split into three protocols: physical, learning, and cultural protocols. Finally it illustrates that their influence over each other can be understood by applying structuration theor

An approach to develop intelligent learning environments by means of immersive virtual worlds

Merging Immersive Virtual Environments, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence techniques provides a number of advantages to develop Intelligent Environments for multiple applications. This paper is focused on the application of these technologies to develop intelligent learning environments. Education is one of the most interesting applications of immersive virtual environments, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. We highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. Our proposal has been applied in several subjects of the Computer Science degree in the Carlos III University of Madrid. The results of the evaluation show that developed learning environment fosters engagement and collaboration and helps students to better understand complex concepts.Spanish Government TEC2012-37832-C02-01Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CICYT) TEC2011-28626-C02-02Project CAM CONTEXTS S2009/TIC-148

Adaptive fuzzy knowledge-based systems for control metabots' mobility on virtual environments

The confluence of three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds with social networks imposes on software agents, in addition to conversational functions, the same behaviours as those common to human-driven avatars. In this paper, we explore the possibilities of the use of metabots (metaverse robots) with motion capabilities in complex virtual 3D worlds and we put forward a learning model based on the techniques used in evolutionary computation for optimizing the fuzzy controllers which will subsequently be used by metabots for moving around a virtual environment

Conversational Agents in Education – A Systematic Literature Review

Conversational Agents (CAs) are widely spread in a variety of domains, such as health and customer service. There is a recent trend of increasing publications and implementations of CAs in education. We conduct a systematic literature review to identify common methodologies, pedagogical CA roles, addressed target groups, the technologies and theories behind, as well as human-like design aspects. The initially found 3329 records were systematically reduced to 252 fully coded articles. Based on the analysis of the codings, we derive further research streams. Our results reveal a research gap for long-term studies on the use of CAs in education, and there is insufficient holistic design knowledge for pedagogical CAs. Moreover, target groups other than academic students are rarely considered. We condense our findings in a morphological box and conclude that pedagogical CAs have not yet reached their full potential of long-term practical application in education

Conceptualisation and development of the admin-avatar taxonomy : antecedents, attitudinal and behavioural consequences

Academics and practitioners have increasingly acknowledged the significance of the consumer–brand relationship in both traditional and online contexts. However, the impersonal nature of the online environment is considered to be a hindrance in the development of the brand–consumer relationship. The literature suggests that strong relationship outcomes depend on successful relationship marketing tactics. Admin-avatar concept is a new concept -firstly emerged in this research- which can be used as a technological and marketing tactic. Admin-avatar can embody consumer-facing employees and mimic their real-life roles on companies’ websites, thereby playing a key role in enhancing the relationships between consumers and brands in the online environment. Despite the importance of this technology, very little attention has been paid to the investigation of the admin-avatar concept from a marketing perspective. Following a systematic review of the literature found in 10 major electronic databases and published between 1993 and 2013, significant gaps in literature were identified. Specifically, this research examines the nature of the admin-avatar concept, including its main characteristics, dimensions, and conditions as well as the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of admin-avatar users.Adopting the mixed methods design, a taxonomy was developed from interviews (qualitative phase) which laid the foundation for the development of the admin-avatar framework. Spiggle’s (1994) framework was adopted for the qualitative data analysis. A conceptual framework was developed and built on the theoretical foundations of reasoned action theory (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The admin-avatar framework was empirically tested through a series of lab-based experiments (quantitative phase). Following a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to purify the scales, determine the dimensionality of the constructs and support their convergent and discriminant validity. The context used for this study was the university admissions admin-avatar. propositions were tested using repeated measures (first experimental deign study), factorial design (second experimental deign study) and serial mediation techniques for both experimental studies. The results mostly support the taxonomy developed from the qualitative phase.This thesis contributes to the new technology in marketing and practice, specifically by: (1) providing a clear and comprehensive definition of the admin-avatar concept, (2) developing a comprehensive taxonomy of admin-avatar that enriches the area of new technology in marketing by the further investigations by applying the taxonomy to other contexts (e.g., schools, banks, retails and other commercial companies), and (3) confirming the notion that the addition of an admin-avatar will transform the consumer attitude towards the website and the brand. Furthermore, the addition of an admin-avatar will prompt consumers to engage in voluntary behaviours such as saying positive things about the organisation/brand (word of mouth) and recommending the brand and its products to other potential consumers (recommendation). In other words, adding the admin-avatar on the brand website will significantly change the attitudes of brand’s consumers. These positive attitudes will encourage consumers to do voluntary behviours for the brand. From a practical perspective, these findings offer practitioners a clearer and richer understanding of the admin-avatar, facilitating appropriate designs for admin-avatar(s). The findings of this research also give practitioners clear insights into the main advantages of the admin-avatar, such as the degree of its convenience (e.g., quickness and effortless), hedonism (excitement) and attractiveness