Elckerlyc in practice - on the integration of a BML Realizer in real applications

Building a complete virtual human application from scratch is a daunting task, and it makes sense to rely on existing platforms for behavior generation. When building such an interactive application, one needs to be able to adapt and extend the capabilities of the virtual human offered by the platform, without having to make invasive modications to the platform itself. This paper describes how Elckerlyc, a novel platform for controlling a virtual human, offers these possibilities

Elckerlyc goes mobile - Enabling natural interaction in mobile user interfaces

The fast growth of computational resources and speech technology available on mobile devices makes it possible to entertain users of these devices in having a natural dialogue with service systems. These systems are sometimes perceived as social agents and this can be supported by presenting them on the interface by means of an animated embodied conversational agent. To take the full advantage of the power of embodied conversational agents in service systems it is important to support real-time, online and responsive interaction with the system through the embodied conversational agent. The design of responsive animated conversational agents is a daunting task. Elckerlyc is a model-based platform for the specification and animation of synchronised multi-modal responsive animated agents. This paper presents a new light-weight PictureEngine that allows to run this platform in mobile applications. We describe the integration of the PictureEngine in the user interface of two different coaching applications and discuss the findings from user evaluations. We also conducted a study to evaluate an editing tool for the specification of the agent’s communicative behaviour. Twenty one participants had to specify the behaviour of an embodied conversational agent using the PictureEngine. We may conclude that this new lightweight back-end engine for the Elckerlyc platform makes it easier to build embodied conversational interfaces for mobile devices