Sharing emotions and space - empathy as a basis for cooperative spatial interaction

Boukricha H, Nguyen N, Wachsmuth I. Sharing emotions and space - empathy as a basis for cooperative spatial interaction. In: Kopp S, Marsella S, Thorisson K, Vilhjalmsson HH, eds. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2011). LNAI. Vol 6895. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011: 350-362.Empathy is believed to play a major role as a basis for humans’ cooperative behavior. Recent research shows that humans empathize with each other to different degrees depending on several modulation factors including, among others, their social relationships, their mood, and the situational context. In human spatial interaction, partners share and sustain a space that is equally and exclusively reachable to them, the so-called interaction space. In a cooperative interaction scenario of relocating objects in interaction space, we introduce an approach for triggering and modulating a virtual humans cooperative spatial behavior by its degree of empathy with its interaction partner. That is, spatial distances like object distances as well as distances of arm and body movements while relocating objects in interaction space are modulated by the virtual human’s degree of empathy. In this scenario, the virtual human’s empathic emotion is generated as a hypothesis about the partner’s emotional state as related to the physical effort needed to perform a goal directed spatial behavior

A formal model of emotional-response, inspired from human cognition and emotion systems

In this paper, we used the formalisms of decision-making theory and theories in psychology, physiology and cognition to proposing a macro model of human emotional-response. We believe that using such formalism can fill the gap between psychology, cognitive science and AI, and can be useful in the design of human-like agents. This model can be used in a wide variety of applications such as artificial agents, user interface, and intelligent tutoring systems. Using the proposed model, we can provide for human behaviors like mood, personality and biological response in machines. This capability will enable such systems, to adapt their responses and behaviors. In situations where there are multiple ways for performing an action, this model can help with the decision making process

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

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

In pursuit of satisfaction and the prevention of embarrassment : affective state in group recommender systems

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