205 research outputs found
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
Affective Computing
This book provides an overview of state of the art research in Affective Computing. It presents new ideas, original results and practical experiences in this increasingly important research field. The book consists of 23 chapters categorized into four sections. Since one of the most important means of human communication is facial expression, the first section of this book (Chapters 1 to 7) presents a research on synthesis and recognition of facial expressions. Given that we not only use the face but also body movements to express ourselves, in the second section (Chapters 8 to 11) we present a research on perception and generation of emotional expressions by using full-body motions. The third section of the book (Chapters 12 to 16) presents computational models on emotion, as well as findings from neuroscience research. In the last section of the book (Chapters 17 to 22) we present applications related to affective computing
Example Based Caricature Synthesis
The likeness of a caricature to the original face image is an essential and often overlooked part of caricature
production. In this paper we present an example based caricature synthesis technique, consisting of shape
exaggeration, relationship exaggeration, and optimization for likeness. Rather than relying on a large training set
of caricature face pairs, our shape exaggeration step is based on only one or a small number of examples of facial
features. The relationship exaggeration step introduces two definitions which facilitate global facial feature
synthesis. The first is the T-Shape rule, which describes the relative relationship between the facial elements in an
intuitive manner. The second is the so called proportions, which characterizes the facial features in a proportion
form. Finally we introduce a similarity metric as the likeness metric based on the Modified Hausdorff Distance
(MHD) which allows us to optimize the configuration of facial elements, maximizing likeness while satisfying a
number of constraints. The effectiveness of our algorithm is demonstrated with experimental results
Interactive storytelling engines
Writing a good story requires immense patience, creativity and work from the author,
and the practice of writing a story requires a good grasp of the readers' psychology to create
suspense and thrills and to merge the readers' world with that of the story. In the digital
writing space, authors can still adhere to these rules of thumb while being aware of the
disappearance of certain constraints due to the added possibility of narrating in a nonlinear
fashion.
There are many overlapping approaches to interactive storytelling or authoring, but
each of the approaches has its own strengths and weaknesses. The motivation for this
research arises from the perceived need for a new hybrid approach that coalesces and
extends existing approaches. Since each of the approaches empowers certain aspects of
the storytelling and narration process, the result forces a new research direction which
eliminates certain weaknesses exhibited by a single approach, due to the synergistic
nature of the various approaches. We have developed: 1) a Hybrid Evolutionary-Fuzzy
Time-based Interactive (HEFTI) storytellling engine that generates dynamic stories from
a set of authored story constructs given by human authors; 2) a set of authoring tools that
allow authors to generate the needed story constructs; and, 3) a storytelling environment
for them to orchestrate a digital stage play with computer agents and scripts.
We have conducted a usability study and system evaluation to evaluate the performance
of the engine. Our experiments and usability study have shown that the authoring
environment abstracted the complexity of authoring an interactive, dynamic story from
the authors with the use of windows-based interfaces to help them visualize various aspects of a story. This reduces the amount of learning and knowledge required to start
having the pleasure of authoring dynamic stories. The studies also revealed certain features
and tools that may be reflected by authoring tools in the future to automate various
aspects of the authoring process so that the authors may spend more time thinking rather
than writing (or programming) their stories
Emotions, behaviour and belief regulation in an intelligent guide with attitude
Abstract unavailable please refer to PD
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