Exploring the Design Space of Robot Appearance and Behavior in an Attention-Seeking Living Room Scenario for a Robot Companion

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Practical aspects of designing and developing a multimodal embodied agent

2021 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis reviews key elements that went into the design and construction of the CSU CwC Embodied agent, also known as the Diana System. The Diana System has been developed over five years by a joint team of researchers at three institutions – Colorado State University, Brandeis University and the University of Florida. Over that time, I contributed to this overall effort and in this thesis, I present a practical review of key elements involved in designing and constructing the system. Particular attention is paid to Diana's multimodal capabilities that engage asynchronously and concurrently to support realistic interactions with the user. Diana can communicate in visual as well as auditory modalities. She can understand a variety of hand gestures for object manipulation, deixis, etc. and can gesture in return. Diana can also hold a conversation with the user in spoken and/or written English. Gestures and speech are often at play simultaneously, supplementing and complementing each other. Diana conveys her attention through several non-verbal cues like slower blinking when inattentive, keeping her gaze on the subject of her attention, etc. Finally, her ability to express emotions with facial expressions adds another crucial human element to any user interaction with the system. Central to Diana's capabilities is a blackboard architecture coordinating a hierarchy of modular components, each controlling a part of Diana's perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities. The modular design facilitates contributions from multiple disciplines, namely VoxSim/VoxML with Text-to-speech/Automatic Speech Recognition systems for natural language understanding, deep neural networks for gesture recognition, 3D computer animation systems, etc. – all integrated within the Unity game engine to create an embodied, intelligent agent that is Diana. The primary contribution of this thesis is to provide a detailed explanation of Diana's internal working along with a thorough background of the research that supports these technologies

Migrating characters: effective user guidance in instrumented environments

The work at hand deals with the conceptual design as well as with the realization of virtual characters, which, unlike previous works in this research area, are not limited to a use in virtual worlds. The presented Migrating Character approach on the contrary allows virtual characters to act and interact with the physical world. Different technical solutions allowing a Migrating Character to move throughout physical space, either completely autonomously or in conjunction with a user, are introduced and discussed as well as resulting implications for the characters behavior. While traditional virtual characters are acting in a well defined virtual world, Migrating Characters need to adapt to changing environmental setups in a very flexible way. A Migrating Character must be capable of determining these environmental changes by means of sensors. Furthermore, based on this data, an adequate adaptation of the characters behavior has to be realized. Apart from a theoretical discussion of the necessary enhancements of a virtual character when taking the step from virtual to real worlds, different exemplary Migrating Character implementations are introduced in the course of the work.Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem konzeptuellen Entwurf und der technischen Realisierung von virtuellen Charakteren, die im Gegensatz zu bisherigen Arbeiten auf diesem Gebiet nicht auf den Einsatz in virtuellen Welten beschränkt sind. Der vorgestellte Migrating Character Ansatz erlaubt virtuellen Charakteren vielmehr in der physikalischen Welt zu agieren und zu interagieren. Verschiedene technische Lösungen, welche es einem Migrating Character ermöglichen sich in der physikalischen Welt autonom bzw. in Abhängigkeit vom Benutzer zu bewegen, sind ebenso Gegenstand der Arbeit wie eine ausführliche Diskussion der daraus für das Verhalten des virtuellen Charakters resultierenden Implikationen. Während sich traditionelle virtuelle Charaktere in einer wohl definierten virtuellen Umgebung bewegen, muss ein Migrating Character flexibel auf sich ändernde Umgebungsbedingungen reagieren. Aus sensorischer Sicht benötigt ein Migrating Character also die Fähigkeit eine sich ändernde physikalische Situation zu erkennen. Basierend auf diesen Daten muss weiterhin eine adäquate Anpassung des Verhaltens des Migrating Characters geschehen. Neben einer theoretischen Diskussion der notwendigen Erweiterungen eines virtuellen Charakters beim übergang von virtueller zu realer Umgebung werden auch exemplarische Migrating Character Implementierungen vorgestellt

A Phenomenological-Hermeneutic Study of Adept Practitioners\u27 Experiences of Focusing

This study presents a qualitative analysis of six accounts of focusing, a method of embodied reflection. Six expert practitioners were interviewed, and each participant`s account was brought under two rounds of analysis. First, a modified descriptive phenomenological analysis was performed on a portion of the interview in which the participant described a particular focusing experience. This was followed by an interpretive phenomenological analysis of the participant`s interview as a whole. Analyses resulted in the identification of explicit and implicit themes that were constitutive of focusing experiences across participants. Several themes that were identified include: the importance of social support and validation for experiences that depart from the norms and values of materialist culture, the exquisite gentleness and receptivity of the focusers` attitude toward their experiences, and the dialogical qualities of the practice. The details and significance of the dialogue, which is a synesthetic exchange between the focuser and responses arising in her perceptual field, is explored in the discussion. Attention is paid to the fluid and at times ambiguous self-other experience suggested by the dialogue, and an archetypal framework for interpreting this dialogue is introduced. Additionally, the two phenomenological methods employed are reviewed and compared for their relative merit in the study of focusing

Abstracts: HASTAC 2017: The Possible Worlds of Digital Humanities

The document contains abstracts for HASTAC 2017

HARLEY QUINN COMICS AND ADOLESCENT FEMALE READERS: AN ANALYSIS OF GENDER REPRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION

With roots that can be traced back to the pulp and dime novels of the past, comics are a uniquely American creation that interconnect word with image and allow for multiple ways of reading and interpreting, which results in multiple ways of knowing and understanding. As comics continue to grow in popularity in mainstream culture, it is important to consider the messages being interpreted from these texts by readers. This qualitative study explored how female adolescent readers experience and understand their gender through the comics of the popular character Harley Quinn (of DC Comics) and how Quinn is seen as performing gender within her stories. Using the lenses of critical literacy, feminism, and transactional theory, this investigation was conducted using content analysis of texts and language-in-use analysis of transcripts from interviews and a readers response meeting with five adolescent females. The data collected indicated gender to be more influential on Quinn’s characterization and storylines than anything else, including her superpowered nature; and participants saw Quinn as enacting the socially recognizable identity of “American Female.” Overall, the results showed Quinn to be more in alignment with cultural gender norms than not and, thus, she reinforced existing hegemonic patriarchal narratives seen in comics. It is only through recognition and knowledge of what exists in comic texts that readers can demand changes with these narratives and promote gender equity

Realizing Audio-Visually triggered ELIZA-like non-verbal Behaviors

We are studying how to create social physical agents, i.e., humanoids, that perform actions empowered by real-time audio-visual tracking of multiple talkers. Social skills require complex perceptual and motor capabilities as well as communicating ones. It is critical to identify primary features in designing building blocks for social skills, because performance of social interaction is usually evaluated as a whole system but not as each component. We investigate the minimum functionalities for social interaction, supposed that a humanoid is equipped with auditory and visual perception and simple motor control but not with sound output. Real-time audio-visual multiple-talker tracking system is implemented on the humanoid, SIG, by using sound source localization, stereo vision, face recognition, and motor control. It extracts either auditory or visual streams and associates audio and visual streams by the proximity in localization. Socially-oriented..