Improving conversational dynamics with reactive speech synthesis

The active exchange of ideas and/or information is a crucial feature of human-human conversation. Yet it is a skill that present-day ‘conversational’ interfaces are lacking, which effectively hampers the dynamics of interaction and makes it feel artificial. In this paper, we present a reactive speech synthesis system that can handle user’s interruptions. Initial results of evaluation of our interactive experiment indicate that participants prefer a reactive system to a non-reactive one. Based on participants’ feedback, we suggest potential applications for reactive speech synthesis systems (i.e. interactive tutor and adventure game) and propose further interactive user experiments to evaluate them. We anticipate that the reactive system can offer more engaging and dynamic interaction and improve user experience by making it feel more like a natural human-human conversation

Continuous Interaction with a Virtual Human

Attentive Speaking and Active Listening require that a Virtual Human be capable of simultaneous perception/interpretation and production of communicative behavior. A Virtual Human should be able to signal its attitude and attention while it is listening to its interaction partner, and be able to attend to its interaction partner while it is speaking – and modify its communicative behavior on-the-fly based on what it perceives from its partner. This report presents the results of a four week summer project that was part of eNTERFACE’10. The project resulted in progress on several aspects of continuous interaction such as scheduling and interrupting multimodal behavior, automatic classification of listener responses, generation of response eliciting behavior, and models for appropriate reactions to listener responses. A pilot user study was conducted with ten participants. In addition, the project yielded a number of deliverables that are released for public access

Deciding when to react to incremental user input in human-robot interaction

Abstract -  GCG implementation was believed will help companies and countries which were in a cricis condition rising towards to a better conditions, competitive and restore the investor confidences. Therefore, the improvement of GCG implementation in Indonesia, especially for Publicly Listed Companies became main priority because it was one of the companies’ key to successful growth as well as giving long term benefits for the companies to win the bussiness competition. Many efforts were made to improve awareness of all parties about the importance of GCG implementation in Indonesia, as well as IDX which always try to improve GCG implementation of Listed Companies.This research was done to find out the impact of GCG implementation to the market performance of the companies which listed in IDX. GCG implementation will be proxied by the value of Corporate Governance Perception Index (CGPI). While company’s market performance will be proxied by PBV ratio. Besides, this research also try to find out the impact of fundamental factors, such as ROE, ROA, DER, growth and firm size to PBV. It was done to know what should be done by IDX to improve GCG implementation of the Listed Companies. This research uses multiple regression model in SPSS to test the correlation of GCG implementation, fundamental factors and company’s market performance. The samples are companies which listed in IDX from 2010-2013, have complete financial datas, and have CGPI value which released by The Indonesia Institute of Corporate Governance (IICG) from 2010-2013. The result shows that only ROE and DER variables which have significant impact to PBV at the level of significance (α) 10%. While CGPI, ROA, growth and firm size variables do not have significant impact to PBV. Those  results show that the benefit of GCG implementation to create added value to the stakeholders is still can be reflected well yet in Indonesia because of the variation of the GCG implementation that caused by the lack of strict legal rules regarding to the GCG implementation and also lack of awareness about the need of GCG implementation. Hence, IDX as one of the regulator in Indonesian Capital Market is expected to have a strict rule regarding to GCG implementation of Listed Companies and able to improve the awareness of Listed Companies, investors, and all parties in Indonesian Capital Market about the importance of GCG implementation through educational programs, seminars, and the other forms of coaching as well as incentive and reward programs. The budget to implement those plans could use budget of routine activities as well as budget specialized for workshop or seminar activities in IDX. Keywords: Good Corporate Governance (GCG), Corporate Governance Perception Index (CGPI), ROE, DER, Multiple Regression , Bursa Efek Indonesia (IDX)

Expert operator's associate: A knowledge based system for spacecraft control

The Expert Operator's Associate (EOA) project is presented which studies the applicability of expert systems for day-to-day space operations. A prototype expert system is developed, which operates on-line with an existing spacecraft control system at the European Space Operations Centre, and functions as an 'operator's assistant' in controlling satellites. The prototype is demonstrated using an existing real-time simulation model of the MARECS-B2 telecommunication satellite. By developing a prototype system, the extent to which reliability and effectivens of operations can be enhanced by AI based support is examined. In addition the study examines the questions of acquisition and representation of the 'knowledge' for such systems, and the feasibility of 'migration' of some (currently) ground-based functions into future spaceborne autonomous systems

The ‘responsibility’ factor in imagining the future of education in China

Design and creativity have been a considerable force for improving life conditions. A lot of effort has been invested in explaining the design process and creativity mainly through the design thinking methodology, but design accountability and responsible actions in the design process are, yet, to be fully explored. The concept of design ethics is now increasingly scrutinized on both the level of business organization and of the individual designer. A 4-day design workshop that involved creativity techniques provided the base to explore responsibility in the fuzzy front end of the design process. The future of education in 2030 was defined as the workshop's theme and fifty-six students from China were asked to create detailed alternative scenarios. A number of imagination exercises, implementation of technological innovations and macro-environment evolutions employed in the workshop are discussed. The aim was to incite moral and responsible actions among students less familiar with creative educational contexts of student-led discovery and collaborative learning. This paper reflects on the use of creativity methods to stimulate anticipation in (non)design students

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace vehicle Design (IPAD). Volume 4: IPAD system design

The computing system design of IPAD is described and the requirements which form the basis for the system design are discussed. The system is presented in terms of a functional design description and technical design specifications. The functional design specifications give the detailed description of the system design using top-down structured programming methodology. Human behavioral characteristics, which specify the system design at the user interface, security considerations, and standards for system design, implementation, and maintenance are also part of the technical design specifications. Detailed specifications of the two most common computing system types in use by the major aerospace companies which could support the IPAD system design are presented. The report of a study to investigate migration of IPAD software between the two candidate 3rd generation host computing systems and from these systems to a 4th generation system is included

Better Driving and Recall When In-car Information Presentation Uses Situationally-Aware Incremental Speech Output Generation

Kennington C, Kousidis S, Baumann T, Buschmeier H, Kopp S, Schlangen D. Better Driving and Recall When In-car Information Presentation Uses Situationally-Aware Incremental Speech Output Generation. In: AutomotiveUI 2014: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications. Seattle, Washington, USA; 2014: 7:1-7:7.It is established that driver distraction is the result of sharing cognitive resources between the primary task (driving) and any other secondary task. In the case of holding conversations, a human passenger who is aware of the driving conditions can choose to interrupt his speech in situations potentially requiring more attention from the driver, but in-car information systems typically do not exhibit such sensitivity. We have designed and tested such a system in a driving simulation environment. Unlike other systems, our system delivers infor- mation via speech (calendar entries with scheduled meetings) but is able to react to signals from the environment to interrupt when the driver needs to be fully attentive to the driving task and subsequently resume its delivery. Distraction is measured by a secondary short-term memory task. In both tasks, drivers perform significantly worse when the system does not adapt its speech, while they perform equally well to control conditions (no concurrent task) when the system intelligently interrupts and resumes