Say Hi to Eliza. An Embodied Conversational Agent on the Web

The creation and support of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) has been quite challenging, as features required might not be straight-forward to implement and to integrate in a single application. Furthermore, ECAs as desktop applications present drawbacks for both developers and users; the former have to develop for each device and operating system and the latter must install additional software, limiting their widespread use. In this paper we demonstrate how recent advances in web technologies show promising steps towards capable web-based ECAs, through some off-the-shelf technologies, in particular, the Web Speech API, Web Audio API, WebGL and Web Workers. We describe their integration into a simple fully functional web-based 3D ECA accessible from any modern device, with special attention to our novel work in the creation and support of the embodiment aspects.Comment: 4 Pages, 1 figure, 17th International Conference Intelligence Virtual Agents (IVA

Rule-based lip-syncing algorithm for virtual character in voice chatbot

Virtual characters changed the way we interact with computers. The underlying key for a believable virtual character is accurate synchronization between the visual (lip movements) and the audio (speech) in real-time. This work develops a 3D model for the virtual character and implements the rule-based lip-syncing algorithm for the virtual character's lip movements. We use the Jacob voice chatbot as the platform for the design and implementation of the virtual character. Thus, audio-driven articulation and manual mapping methods are considered suitable for real-time applications such as Jacob. We evaluate the proposed virtual character using hedonic motivation system adoption model (HMSAM) with 70 users. The HMSAM results for the behavioral intention to use is 91.74%, and the immersion is 72.95%. The average score for all aspects of the HMSAM is 85.50%. The rule-based lip-syncing algorithm accurately synchronizes the lip movements with the Jacob voice chatbot's speech in real-time