A person memory for an artificial interaction partner

Mattar N, Wachsmuth I. A person memory for an artificial interaction partner. In: Proceedings of KogWis 2010. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam; 2010: 69-70

Ich, Du, Wir - Ein Personengedächtnis für einen künstlichen Gesprächspartner

Mattar N. Ich, Du, Wir - Ein Personengedächtnis für einen künstlichen Gesprächspartner. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University; 2014

Wind and warmth in virtual reality: implementation and evaluation

Hülsmann F, Fröhlich J, Mattar N, Wachsmuth I. Wind and warmth in virtual reality: implementation and evaluation. In: VRIC '14: Proceedings of the Virtual Reality International Conference: Laval Virtual. ACM; 2014.One possibility to make virtual worlds more immersive is to address as many human senses as possible. This paper presents the development of a system for creating wind and warmth simulations in Virtual Reality (VR). Therefore, suitable hardware and an implemented software model are described. Technical evaluations of the hardware and of the software components demonstrate the usability of the system in VR Applications. Furthermore, a user study underlines users’ acceptance and indicates a positive influence of wind and warmth stimuli on perceived presence

Strangers and friends: Adapting the conversational style of an artificial agent

Mattar N, Wachsmuth I. Strangers and friends: Adapting the conversational style of an artificial agent. In: Kurosu M, ed. Human-Computer Interaction: Towards Intelligent and Implicit Interaction. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 8008. Berlin: Springer; 2013: 102-111

Let’s get personal: Assessing the impact of personal information in human-agent conversations

Mattar N, Wachsmuth I. Let’s get personal: Assessing the impact of personal information in human-agent conversations. In: Kurosu M, ed. Human-Computer Interaction. Advanced Interaction Modalities and Techniques. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 8511. Berlin [u.a.]: Springer; 2014: 450-461.Agents that are able to build relationships with the people they are interacting with are envisioned to be more successful in long-term interactions. Small talk about impersonal topics has been found an adequate tool in human-agent interactions for manipulation of such relationships. We suspect that an agent and the interaction with it will be evaluated even more positively when the agent talks about personal information it remembers about its interlocutor from previous encounters. In this paper a model of person memory that provides virtual agents with information needed in social conversations is presented. An interaction study demonstrates the impact of personal information in human-agent conversations and validates the performance of our model

Simulating wind and warmth in virtual reality: conception, realization and evaluation for a CAVE environment

Hülsmann F, Mattar N, Fröhlich J, Wachsmuth I. Simulating wind and warmth in virtual reality: conception, realization and evaluation for a CAVE environment. JVRB - Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting. 2014;11(10).Wind and warmth sensations proved to be able to enhance users' state of presence in Virtual Reality applications. Still, only few projects deal with their detailed effect on the user and general ways of implementing such stimuli. This work tries to fill this gap: After analyzing requirements for hardware and software concerning wind and warmth simulations, a hardware and also a software setup for the application in a CAVE environment is proposed. The setup is evaluated with regard to technical details and requirements, but also - in the form of a pilot study - in view of user experience and presence. Our setup proved to comply with the requirements and leads to satisfactory results. To our knowledge, the low cost simulation system (approx. 2200 Euro) presented here is one of the most extensive, most flexible and best evaluated systems for creating wind and warmth stimuli in CAVE-based VR applications

Interactive Human-Guided Optimization for Logistics Planning

Mattar N, Kulms P, Kopp S. Interactive Human-Guided Optimization for Logistics Planning. In: Pielot M, ed. Mensch und Computer 2015 – Tagungsband. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG; 2015: 183-192.Logistics planning is an important problem in industry, where goods have to be parceled appropriately to meet delivery dates or reduce shipping costs. This optimization problem is classically solved offline using standard algorithms and focused heuristics, e.g. bin packing or route planning. However, in practical work environments constraints may change flexibly (e.g. when custom-tailored goods with variable size have to be handled) and it is often not clear what an optimal solution looks like. Further, logistics planning consists of multiple steps that often are handled by different human employees in different departments. In this paper we propose an interactive approach using human-guided optimization, where solution spaces can be interactively explored, manipulated, and constrained at runtime. Based on an analysis of the problem of multi-step logistics planning, we present a system that supports users in solving this optimization problem, and we report first evaluation results obtained in the first two iterations of an user-centered design process

Small talk is more than chit-chat: Exploiting structures of casual conversations for a virtual agent

Mattar N, Wachsmuth I. Small talk is more than chit-chat: Exploiting structures of casual conversations for a virtual agent. In: Glimm B, Krüger A, eds. KI 2012: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 7526. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg; 2012: 119-130

Exploration von sozialen Netzwerken im 3D Raum am Beispiel von SONAR für Last.fm

Bluhm A, Eickmeyer J, Feith T, Mattar N, Pfeiffer T. Exploration von sozialen Netzwerken im 3D Raum am Beispiel von SONAR für Last.fm. In: Virtuelle und Erweiterte Realität: 6. Workshop der GI-Fachgruppe VR/AR. Aachen: Shaker Verlag; 2009: 269-280.Die Portale für soziale Netzwerke im Internet gehen mittlerweile deutlich über die Verwaltung einfacher Bekanntschaftsbeziehungen hinaus. Ihnen liegen immer reichhaltigere Datenmodelle zu Grunde. Darstellung und Exploration dieser Netzwerke sind eine grosse Herausforderung für die Entwickler, wenn beides nicht zu einer solchen für die Benutzer werden soll. Im Rahmen eines studentischen Projektes wurde die dritte Dimension für die Darstellung des komplexen sozialen Netzwerkes von Last.fm nutzbar gemacht. Durch die entwickelte Anwendung SoNAR wird das Netzwerk interaktiv und intuitiv sowohl am Desktop, als auch in der Immersion einer dreiseitigen CAVE explorierbar. Unterschiedliche Relationen des sozialen Graphen können parallel exploriert und damit Zusammenhänge zwischen Individuen intuitiv erfahren werden. Eine Suchfunktion erlaubt dabei die fexible Komposition verschiedener Startknoten für die Exploration

Wind and warmth in virtual reality - requirements and chances

Hülsmann F, Mattar N, Fröhlich J, Wachsmuth I. Wind and warmth in virtual reality - requirements and chances. In: Latoschik ME, Staadt O, Steinicke F, eds. Proceedings of the Workshop Virtuelle & Erweiterte Realität 2013. Aachen: Shaker Verlag; 2013: 133-144.Wind and warmth are often ignored in Virtual Reality systems – even though studies suggest that they are able to improve users’ presence as well as task performance for certain challenges. In this work, requirements of a wind and warmth system are analyzed and the hardware setup used to create this kind of sensations is described. According to requirements identified, a system able to create wind and warmth in a CAVE environment is presented. Special challenges as a possible disruptive influence of specialized hardware on user tracking and their solutions are faced. Furthermore an approach of how to integrate wind and warmth in Virtual Reality applications is described and discussed