Virtual characters as study guides : Evolution towards a virtual collaborative learning environment

An analysis of the characteristics of the use of virtual characters in hypermedia study materials is carried out. The results of using characters in study materials for the introductory course to Computer Science majors are presented. Instructor and student characters act as companion buddies during the study, providing indications, guidance, and eliciting questions. The research lines required for transferring these characters to a virtual environment that is "intelligent" and collaborative are described.Presentado en el VIII Workshop Tecnología Informática aplicada en Educación (WTIAE)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Affect and Metaphor Sensing in Virtual Drama

We report our developments on metaphor and affect sensing for several metaphorical language phenomena including affects as external entities metaphor, food metaphor, animal metaphor, size metaphor, and anger metaphor. The metaphor and affect sensing component has been embedded in a conversational intelligent agent interacting with human users under loose scenarios. Evaluation for the detection of several metaphorical language phenomena and affect is provided. Our paper contributes to the journal themes on believable virtual characters in real-time narrative environment, narrative in digital games and storytelling and educational gaming with social software

Virtual characters as study guides : Evolution towards a virtual collaborative learning environment

An analysis of the characteristics of the use of virtual characters in hypermedia study materials is carried out. The results of using characters in study materials for the introductory course to Computer Science majors are presented. Instructor and student characters act as companion buddies during the study, providing indications, guidance, and eliciting questions. The research lines required for transferring these characters to a virtual environment that is "intelligent" and collaborative are described.Presentado en el VIII Workshop Tecnología Informática aplicada en Educación (WTIAE)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

A conceptual framework for interactive virtual storytelling

This paper presents a framework of an interactive storytelling system. It can integrate five components: management centre, evaluation centre, intelligent virtual agent, intelligent virtual environment, and users, making possible interactive solutions where the communication among these components is conducted in a rational and intelligent way. Environment plays an important role in providing heuristic information for agents through communicating with the management centre. The main idea is based on the principle of heuristic guiding of the behaviour of intelligent agents for guaranteeing the unexpectedness and consistent themes

Affect and believability in game characters:a review of the use of affective computing in games

Virtual agents are important in many digital environments. Designing a character that highly engages users in terms of interaction is an intricate task constrained by many requirements. One aspect that has gained more attention recently is the effective dimension of the agent. Several studies have addressed the possibility of developing an affect-aware system for a better user experience. Particularly in games, including emotional and social features in NPCs adds depth to the characters, enriches interaction possibilities, and combined with the basic level of competence, creates a more appealing game. Design requirements for emotionally intelligent NPCs differ from general autonomous agents with the main goal being a stronger player-agent relationship as opposed to problem solving and goal assessment. Nevertheless, deploying an affective module into NPCs adds to the complexity of the architecture and constraints. In addition, using such composite NPC in games seems beyond current technology, despite some brave attempts. However, a MARPO-type modular architecture would seem a useful starting point for adding emotions

Interacting with Intelligent Characters in AR

In this paper, we explore interacting with virtual characters in AR along real-world environments. Our vision is that virtual characters will be able to understand the real-world environment and interact in an intelligent and realistic manner with it. For example, a character can walk around uneven stairs and slopes, or be pushed away by collisions with real-world objects like a ball. We describe how to automatically animate a new character, and imbue it’s motion with adaption to environments and reactions to perturbations from the real world

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

FearNot! An Anti-Bullying Intervention: Evaluation of an Interactive Virtual Learning Environment

Original paper can be found at: http://www.aisb.org.uk/publications/proceedings.shtm