520 research outputs found
Generating expressive speech for storytelling applications
Work on expressive speech synthesis has long focused on the expression of basic emotions. In recent years, however, interest in other expressive styles has been increasing. The research presented in this paper aims at the generation of a storytelling speaking style, which is suitable for storytelling applications and more in general, for applications aimed at children. Based on an analysis of human storytellers' speech, we designed and implemented a set of prosodic rules for converting "neutral" speech, as produced by a text-to-speech system, into storytelling speech. An evaluation of our storytelling speech generation system showed encouraging results
Touch Technology in Affective Human, Robot, Virtual-Human Interactions: A Survey
Given the importance of affective touch in human interactions, technology designers are increasingly attempting to bring this modality to the core of interactive technology. Advances in haptics and touch-sensing technology have been critical to fostering interest in this area. In this survey, we review how affective touch is investigated to enhance and support the human experience with or through technology. We explore this question across three different research areas to highlight their epistemology, main findings, and the challenges that persist. First, we review affective touch technology through the humanâcomputer interaction literature to understand how it has been applied to the mediation of humanâhuman interaction and its roles in other human interactions particularly with oneself, augmented objects/media, and affect-aware devices. We further highlight the datasets and methods that have been investigated for automatic detection and interpretation of affective touch in this area. In addition, we discuss the modalities of affective touch expressions in both humans and technology in these interactions. Second, we separately review how affective touch has been explored in humanârobot and real-humanâvirtual-human interactions where the technical challenges encountered and the types of experience aimed at are different. We conclude with a discussion of the gaps and challenges that emerge from the review to steer research in directions that are critical for advancing affective touch technology and recognition systems. In our discussion, we also raise ethical issues that should be considered for responsible innovation in this growing area
From trust in caregivers' support to exploration : the role of openness to negative affect and self-regulation
Attachment theory assumes that trust in caregivers' support and exploration are closely related. Little research tried to investigate this link, nor focuses on mechanisms that might explain this association. The present studies examined whether trust is related to exploration through a serial indirect effect of openness to negative affect and self-regulation. In Study 1, 212 children, aged 8-13, completed questionnaires assessing trust, openness to negative affect, self-regulation and exploration. The results showed that trust predicted exploration, but only to the extent to which openness to negative affect and self-regulation were involved too. Study 2 refined these findings (n = 59, aged 9-12) using a behavioral measure of openness to negative affect and exploration, and with mother-reported self-regulation. Replicating this serial indirect effect of openness to negative affect and self-regulation with multiple informants and methods, the present studies advance our understanding of how trust might foster exploration in preadolescence
Decay-assisted collinear resonance ionization spectroscopy: Application to neutron-deficient francium
This paper reports on the hyperfine-structure and radioactive-decay studies
of the neutron-deficient francium isotopes Fr performed with the
Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) experiment at the ISOLDE
facility, CERN. The high resolution innate to collinear laser spectroscopy is
combined with the high efficiency of ion detection to provide a
highly-sensitive technique to probe the hyperfine structure of exotic isotopes.
The technique of decay-assisted laser spectroscopy is presented, whereby the
isomeric ion beam is deflected to a decay spectroscopy station for alpha-decay
tagging of the hyperfine components. Here, we present the first
hyperfine-structure measurements of the neutron-deficient francium isotopes
Fr, in addition to the identification of the low-lying states of
Fr performed at the CRIS experiment.Comment: Accepted for publication with Physical Review
Laser spectroscopy of francium isotopes at the borders of the region of reflection asymmetry
The magnetic dipole moments and changes in mean-square charge radii of the
neutron-rich isotopes were measured with the
newly-installed Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) beam line at
ISOLDE, CERN, probing the to atomic
transition. The values for
and follow the observed increasing
slope of the charge radii beyond . The charge radii odd-even
staggering in this neutron-rich region is discussed, showing that
has a weakly inverted odd-even staggering while
has normal staggering. This suggests that both isotopes
reside at the borders of a region of inverted staggering, which has been
associated with reflection-asymmetric shapes. The value supports a shell model configuration for the
ground state. The values support the tentative
spin, and point to a intruder ground state configuration.Comment: Accepted for publication with Physical Review
Social behavior modeling based on Incremental Discrete Hidden Markov Models
12 pagesInternational audienceModeling multimodal face-to-face interaction is a crucial step in the process of building social robots or users-aware Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA). In this context, we present a novel approach for human behavior analysis and generation based on what we called "Incremental Discrete Hidden Markov Model" (IDHMM). Joint multimodal activities of interlocutors are first modeled by a set of DHMMs that are specific to supposed joint cognitive states of the interlocutors. Respecting a task-specific syntax, the IDHMM is then built from these DHMMs and split into i) a recognition model that will determine the most likely sequence of cognitive states given the multimodal activity of the in- terlocutor, and ii) a generative model that will compute the most likely activity of the speaker given this estimated sequence of cognitive states. Short-Term Viterbi (STV) decoding is used to incrementally recognize and generate behav- ior. The proposed model is applied to parallel speech and gaze data of interact- ing dyads
Continuous Interaction with a Virtual Human
Attentive Speaking and Active Listening require that a Virtual Human be capable of simultaneous perception/interpretation and production of communicative behavior. A Virtual Human should be able to signal its attitude and attention while it is listening to its interaction partner, and be able to attend to its interaction partner while it is speaking â and modify its communicative behavior on-the-fly based on what it perceives from its partner. This report presents the results of a four week summer project that was part of eNTERFACEâ10. The project resulted in progress on several aspects of continuous interaction such as scheduling and interrupting multimodal behavior, automatic classification of listener responses, generation of response eliciting behavior, and models for appropriate reactions to listener responses. A pilot user study was conducted with ten participants. In addition, the project yielded a number of deliverables that are released for public access
Isomer shift and magnetic moment of the long-lived 1/2 isomer in Zn: signature of shape coexistence near Ni
Collinear laser spectroscopy has been performed on the Zn
isotope at ISOLDE-CERN. The existence of a long-lived isomer with a few hundred
milliseconds half-life was confirmed, and the nuclear spins and moments of the
ground and isomeric states in Zn as well as the isomer shift were
measured. From the observed hyperfine structures, spins and
are firmly assigned to the ground and isomeric states. The magnetic moment
(Zn) = 1.1866(10) , confirms the spin-parity
with a shell-model configuration, in excellent
agreement with the prediction from large scale shell-model theories. The
magnetic moment (Zn) = 1.0180(12) supports a
positive parity for the isomer, with a wave function dominated by a 2h-1p
neutron excitation across the shell gap. The large isomer shift
reveals an increase of the intruder isomer mean square charge radius with
respect to that of the ground state:
= +0.204(6) fm, providing first evidence of shape coexistence.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, Accepeted by Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016
Additively Manufactured Ferroelectric Particulate Composites for Antimicrobial Applications
A polarized ferroelectric material can initiate the micro-electrolysis of water molecules which leads to the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in an aqueous solution resulting in selective bacteria killing. This study presents the fabrication, characterization, and antimicrobial performance of poled ferroelectric particulate composites. Barium calcium zirconate titanate (BCZT) micro-powder is synthesized by a solid-state reaction and mechanically mixed with polycaprolactone (PCL) to be subsequently fed into the 3D bioprinter for the fabrication of porous PCL-BCZT structures at four different ceramic loadings (0, 10, 20, 30 wt%). For the examination of material's capacity to handle extremely high contamination, the composites are exposed to a high inoculum of bacteria (Escherichia coli ATCC 25922) â70% of E. coli degradation is recorded at the end of 15 min without any external intervention. The surface selective bacterial degradation can be attributed to the generated reactive oxygen species, the large surface area of the porous samples and polymer matrix's hydrophobic nature, behavior which can be reflected in the composites with 30 wt% of BCZT loading exhibiting the best antimicrobial performance among the other state-of-the-art ferroelectrics. Overall, these results indicate that the poled composites have a great potential as antimicrobial materials and surfaces
Home Butler Creating a Virtual Home Assistant
Virtual butlers, or virtual companions, try to imitate the behaviour of human beings in a believable way. They interact with the user through speech, understand spoken requests, are able to converse with the user, and show some form of emotion and personality. Virtual companions are also able to remember past conversations, and build some sensible knowledge about the user. One major problem with virtual companions is the need to manually create dialogues. We shall introduce a system which automatically creates dialogues using television series scripts.peer-reviewe
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