Including Conversational Agents into Structured Hybrid 3D Virtual Environments

Structured Hybrid 3D Virtual Environments are 3D virtual spaces where staff (organisational) software agents support human users in their task achievement. These systems are characterized by: i) being hybrid, so that humans and software agents can interact; and ii) being structured and task oriented, so that interactions are regulated by a subjacent Organisation Centered Multi Agent System (OCMAS)-an Electronic Institution (EI). The contribution of this paper is to include task-oriented conversational staff bots (i.e. the embodiment of staff agents in the 3D environment) that communicate with users by using natural language. With this aim, we extend the Artificial Intelligence Mark-up Language (AIML) with special tags to enable complex task-oriented conversations whose flow needs to consider both the states of the conversation and the ontology related to the task. We evaluate the usability of our conversational proposal and compare it to a previous command-based interaction system. Results show the conversational approach presents a higher user satisfaction than the command-based one. Moreover, in average, it also performs better in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and errors

Estudio y mejora de la usabilidad de un mundo virtual híbrido: interacción humano-agente

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Informàtica, Facultat de Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2013, Director: Inmaculada Rodriguez Santiago i Pablo Almajano FrancoyNowadays, due to the increasing use of the Internet and the improvements in the field of 3D graphics virtual worlds have reached a high popularity. A virtual world is a 3D simulation that features a real or imaginary world where the users, represented by avatars, interact with each other and the environment. These open 3D environments are attractive for their immersiveness and the enjoyment they offer, as well as for the social aspect that they bring by joining multiple users together in a common environment and engaging them to participate together. Taking into account not only their popularity but the many practical uses a virtual world has, serious virtual worlds arise. Their aim is to regulate the behaviors in the virtual world in order to allow certain tasks to be done, which can be for example procedures related to e-Government or e-Learning. In this project we have conducted a usability study of v-mWater, a serious and hybrid (where both humans and bots interact) virtual world. With the results that have been obtained from the study, we have implemented the most beneficial improvement of v-mWater, that has consisted in using AIML to allow the bots of v-mWater to process natural language, turning them into conversational bots

Structuring Interactions in a Hybrid Virtual Environment: Infrastructure & Usability

Humans in the Digital Age are continuously exploring different forms of socializing on-line. Social 3D Virtual Worlds provide an alternative that are gaining in popularity. They constitute virtual environments where people freely socialize by participating in open-ended activities. Moreover, Virtual Worlds can also be used to engage humans in e-* (e-government, e-learning, e-commerce) applications, the so called Serious Virtual Worlds. Implicitly, these serious applications have specific goals that require structured environments where participants play specific roles and perform activities by following well-defined protocols and norms. In this paper we advocate for the use of Virtual Institutions to provide explicit structure to current Social 3D Virtual Worlds. We refer to the resulting system as hybrid (participants can be both human and software agents) and structured Virtual Environment. Specifically, we present v-mWater (a water market, an e-government application deployed as a Virtual Institution), the infrastructure that supports participants’ interactions, and the evaluation of its usability.Peer reviewe