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

Reusable, Interactive, Multilingual Online Avatars

This paper details a system for delivering reusable, interactive multilingual avatars in online children’s games. The development of these avatars is based on the concept of an intelligent media object that can be repurposed across different productions. The system is both language and character independent, allowing content to be reused in a variety of contexts and locales. In the current implementation, the user is provided with an interactive animated robot character that can be dressed with a range of body parts chosen by the user in real-time. The robot character reacts to each selection of a new part in a different manner, relative to simple narrative constructs that define a number of scripted responses. Once configured, the robot character subsequently appears as a help avatar throughout the rest of the game. At time of writing, the system is currently in beta testing on the My Tiny Planets website to fully assess its effectiveness

Rapid Development Environments for Therapy Games: Looking Glass Therapy Games for Cerebral Palsy Treatment Utilizing the Kinect

Cerebral palsy is a group of neurological disorders that impair body movement, muscle coordination, hearing, vision, and cognitive function. Symptoms vary but can include muscle weakness, muscle and joint tightness, abnormal or unsteady gait, seizures, learning disabilities, speech problems, as well as hearing or vision problems [1]. Although cerebral palsy cannot be cured, treatments such as physical and occupational therapy can greatly help affected children develop motor skills needed to increase mobility and foster independence [2]. Computer based therapy games have shown promise in helping stroke survivors recover from stroke [3]. Initially, stroke therapy games developed in Looking Glass utilized Nintendo Wii remotes (informally known as Wiimotes) to sense user’s movements. Challenges unfolded with stroke patients who were unable to grasp Wiimotes, thereby limiting and inhibiting game development and the user experience [3]. In this paper, I describe my efforts to integrate the Microsoft Kinect with Looking Glass and build therapy games that utilize the Kinect to track user movements. I detail the Kinect integration and discuss its advantages of seated skeletal tracking with no hand held devices required by the user

Real-time generation and adaptation of social companion robot behaviors

Social robots will be part of our future homes. They will assist us in everyday tasks, entertain us, and provide helpful advice. However, the technology still faces challenges that must be overcome to equip the machine with social competencies and make it a socially intelligent and accepted housemate. An essential skill of every social robot is verbal and non-verbal communication. In contrast to voice assistants, smartphones, and smart home technology, which are already part of many people's lives today, social robots have an embodiment that raises expectations towards the machine. Their anthropomorphic or zoomorphic appearance suggests they can communicate naturally with speech, gestures, or facial expressions and understand corresponding human behaviors. In addition, robots also need to consider individual users' preferences: everybody is shaped by their culture, social norms, and life experiences, resulting in different expectations towards communication with a robot. However, robots do not have human intuition - they must be equipped with the corresponding algorithmic solutions to these problems. This thesis investigates the use of reinforcement learning to adapt the robot's verbal and non-verbal communication to the user's needs and preferences. Such non-functional adaptation of the robot's behaviors primarily aims to improve the user experience and the robot's perceived social intelligence. The literature has not yet provided a holistic view of the overall challenge: real-time adaptation requires control over the robot's multimodal behavior generation, an understanding of human feedback, and an algorithmic basis for machine learning. Thus, this thesis develops a conceptual framework for designing real-time non-functional social robot behavior adaptation with reinforcement learning. It provides a higher-level view from the system designer's perspective and guidance from the start to the end. It illustrates the process of modeling, simulating, and evaluating such adaptation processes. Specifically, it guides the integration of human feedback and social signals to equip the machine with social awareness. The conceptual framework is put into practice for several use cases, resulting in technical proofs of concept and research prototypes. They are evaluated in the lab and in in-situ studies. These approaches address typical activities in domestic environments, focussing on the robot's expression of personality, persona, politeness, and humor. Within this scope, the robot adapts its spoken utterances, prosody, and animations based on human explicit or implicit feedback.Soziale Roboter werden Teil unseres zukünftigen Zuhauses sein. Sie werden uns bei alltäglichen Aufgaben unterstützen, uns unterhalten und uns mit hilfreichen Ratschlägen versorgen. Noch gibt es allerdings technische Herausforderungen, die zunächst überwunden werden müssen, um die Maschine mit sozialen Kompetenzen auszustatten und zu einem sozial intelligenten und akzeptierten Mitbewohner zu machen. Eine wesentliche Fähigkeit eines jeden sozialen Roboters ist die verbale und nonverbale Kommunikation. Im Gegensatz zu Sprachassistenten, Smartphones und Smart-Home-Technologien, die bereits heute Teil des Lebens vieler Menschen sind, haben soziale Roboter eine Verkörperung, die Erwartungen an die Maschine weckt. Ihr anthropomorphes oder zoomorphes Aussehen legt nahe, dass sie in der Lage sind, auf natürliche Weise mit Sprache, Gestik oder Mimik zu kommunizieren, aber auch entsprechende menschliche Kommunikation zu verstehen. Darüber hinaus müssen Roboter auch die individuellen Vorlieben der Benutzer berücksichtigen. So ist jeder Mensch von seiner Kultur, sozialen Normen und eigenen Lebenserfahrungen geprägt, was zu unterschiedlichen Erwartungen an die Kommunikation mit einem Roboter führt. Roboter haben jedoch keine menschliche Intuition - sie müssen mit entsprechenden Algorithmen für diese Probleme ausgestattet werden. In dieser Arbeit wird der Einsatz von bestärkendem Lernen untersucht, um die verbale und nonverbale Kommunikation des Roboters an die Bedürfnisse und Vorlieben des Benutzers anzupassen. Eine solche nicht-funktionale Anpassung des Roboterverhaltens zielt in erster Linie darauf ab, das Benutzererlebnis und die wahrgenommene soziale Intelligenz des Roboters zu verbessern. Die Literatur bietet bisher keine ganzheitliche Sicht auf diese Herausforderung: Echtzeitanpassung erfordert die Kontrolle über die multimodale Verhaltenserzeugung des Roboters, ein Verständnis des menschlichen Feedbacks und eine algorithmische Basis für maschinelles Lernen. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit ein konzeptioneller Rahmen für die Gestaltung von nicht-funktionaler Anpassung der Kommunikation sozialer Roboter mit bestärkendem Lernen entwickelt. Er bietet eine übergeordnete Sichtweise aus der Perspektive des Systemdesigners und eine Anleitung vom Anfang bis zum Ende. Er veranschaulicht den Prozess der Modellierung, Simulation und Evaluierung solcher Anpassungsprozesse. Insbesondere wird auf die Integration von menschlichem Feedback und sozialen Signalen eingegangen, um die Maschine mit sozialem Bewusstsein auszustatten. Der konzeptionelle Rahmen wird für mehrere Anwendungsfälle in die Praxis umgesetzt, was zu technischen Konzeptnachweisen und Forschungsprototypen führt, die in Labor- und In-situ-Studien evaluiert werden. Diese Ansätze befassen sich mit typischen Aktivitäten in häuslichen Umgebungen, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dem Ausdruck der Persönlichkeit, dem Persona, der Höflichkeit und dem Humor des Roboters liegt. In diesem Rahmen passt der Roboter seine Sprache, Prosodie, und Animationen auf Basis expliziten oder impliziten menschlichen Feedbacks an

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Gender in 21st century animated children's cinema

This e-book is the product of the activities carried out in the elective MA course 'Gender Studies: New Sexualities/New Textualities', taught in the Autumn/Winter semester of the academic year 2020-21, within the MA in Advanced English Studies of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. This collective volume authored by the students is focused on how gender is represented in current 21st century Anglophone animated children's cinema. The 57 films dealt with cover the period 2001-2020, from 'Monsters Inc' to 'Onward', and include analyses of film by Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Illumination Studios, Laika Studios, Blue Sky Studios and others

Software-based dialogue systems: Survey, taxonomy and challenges

The use of natural language interfaces in the field of human-computer interaction is undergoing intense study through dedicated scientific and industrial research. The latest contributions in the field, including deep learning approaches like recurrent neural networks, the potential of context-aware strategies and user-centred design approaches, have brought back the attention of the community to software-based dialogue systems, generally known as conversational agents or chatbots. Nonetheless, and given the novelty of the field, a generic, context-independent overview on the current state of research of conversational agents covering all research perspectives involved is missing. Motivated by this context, this paper reports a survey of the current state of research of conversational agents through a systematic literature review of secondary studies. The conducted research is designed to develop an exhaustive perspective through a clear presentation of the aggregated knowledge published by recent literature within a variety of domains, research focuses and contexts. As a result, this research proposes a holistic taxonomy of the different dimensions involved in the conversational agents’ field, which is expected to help researchers and to lay the groundwork for future research in the field of natural language interfaces.With the support from the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia and the European Social Fund. The corresponding author gratefully acknowledges the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Banco Santander for the inancial support of his predoctoral grant FPI-UPC. This paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under project / funding scheme PID2020-117191RB-I00 / AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft