Generation of multi-modal dialogue for a net environment

In this paper an architecture and special purpose markup language for simulated affective face-to-face communication is presented. In systems based on this architecture, users will be able to watch embodied conversational agents interact with each other in virtual locations on the internet. The markup language, or Rich Representation Language (RRL), has been designed to provide an integrated representation of speech, gesture, posture and facial animation

ANGELICA : choice of output modality in an embodied agent

The ANGELICA project addresses the problem of modality choice in information presentation by embodied, humanlike agents. The output modalities available to such agents include both language and various nonverbal signals such as pointing and gesturing. For each piece of information to be presented by the agent it must be decided whether it should be expressed using language, a nonverbal signal, or both. In the ANGELICA project a model of the different factors influencing this choice will be developed and integrated in a natural language generation system. The application domain is the presentation of route descriptions by an embodied agent in a 3D environment. Evaluation and testing form an integral part of the project. In particular, we will investigate the effect of different modality choices on the effectiveness and naturalness of the generated presentations and on the user's perception of the agent's personality

Towards responsive Sensitive Artificial Listeners

This paper describes work in the recently started project SEMAINE, which aims to build a set of Sensitive Artificial Listeners – conversational agents designed to sustain an interaction with a human user despite limited verbal skills, through robust recognition and generation of non-verbal behaviour in real-time, both when the agent is speaking and listening. We report on data collection and on the design of a system architecture in view of real-time responsiveness

Conversational Agents, Humorous Act Construction, and Social Intelligence

Humans use humour to ease communication problems in human-human interaction and \ud in a similar way humour can be used to solve communication problems that arise\ud with human-computer interaction. We discuss the role of embodied conversational\ud agents in human-computer interaction and we have observations on the generation\ud of humorous acts and on the appropriateness of displaying them by embodied\ud conversational agents in order to smoothen, when necessary, their interactions\ud with a human partner. The humorous acts we consider are generated spontaneously.\ud They are the product of an appraisal of the conversational situation and the\ud possibility to generate a humorous act from the elements that make up this\ud conversational situation, in particular the interaction history of the\ud conversational partners

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

Real time multimodal interaction with animated virtual human

This paper describes the design and implementation of a real time animation framework in which animated virtual human is capable of performing multimodal interactions with human user. The animation system consists of several functional components, namely perception, behaviours generation, and motion generation. The virtual human agent in the system has a complex underlying geometry structure with multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs). It relies on a virtual perception system to capture information from its environment and respond to human user's commands by a combination of non-verbal behaviours including co-verbal gestures, posture, body motions and simple utterances. A language processing module is incorporated to interpret user's command. In particular, an efficient motion generation method has been developed to combines both motion captured data and parameterized actions generated in real time to produce variations in agent's behaviours depending on its momentary emotional states