Emergent Story Generation: Lessons from Improvisational Theater

An emergent approach to story generation by computer is characterized by a lack of predetermined plot and a focus on character interaction forming the material for stories. A potential problem is that no interesting story emerges. However, improvisational theater shows that – at least for human actors – a predetermined plot is not necessary for creating a compelling story. There are some principles that make a successful piece of improvisational theater more than a random interaction, and these principles may inform the type of computational processes that an emergent narrative architecture draws from. We therefore discuss some of these principles, and show how these are explicitly or implicitly used in story generation and interactive storytelling research. Finally we draw lessons from these principles and ask attention for two techniques that have been little investigated: believably incorporating directives, and late commitment

The Virtual Storyteller: story generation by simulation

The Virtual Storyteller is a multi-agent framework that generates stories based on a concept called emergent narrative. In this paper, we describe the motivation and approach of the Virtual Storyteller, and give an overview of the computational processes involved in the story generation process. We also discuss some of the challenges posed by our chosen approach

Late commitment: virtual story characters that can frame their world

Our long-term aim is to build virtual agents that can partake together with human interactors as characters in a story, which emerges from their interactions wich each other and with the story world (the emergent narrative approach). Improvisational theatre -- as a real-life example -- suggests an extension of the current approach to emergent narrative: the event sequence of a story does not emerge based on a fixed story world setting, but the event sequence and the story world setting underlying it, emerge together. We propose a model of this idea, which we call late commitment, meaning that choices about aspects of the story world setting are delayed until they become useful for story progression. We discuss possibilities and issues concerning the use of this technique in the context of action planning and goal adoption for character agents

A Tabletop Board Game Interface for Multi-User Interaction with a Storytelling System

The Interactive Storyteller is an interactive storytelling system with a multi-user tabletop interface. Our goal was to design a generic framework combining emergent narrative, where stories emerge from the actions of autonomous intelligent agents, with the social aspects of traditional board games. As a visual representation of the story world, a map is displayed on a multi-touch table. Users can interact with the story by touching an interface on the table surface with their fingers and by moving tangible objects that represent the characters. This type of interface, where multiple users are gathered around a table with equal access to the characters and the story world, offers a more social setting for interaction than most existing interfaces for AI-based interactive storytelling

Innovative coatings for anti-bacterial surfaces

Bacterial adhesion is the main cause of implant failure, despite the existence of numerous preventive strategies and use of antibiotics. Procedures regarding the sterile environment in the operating theatre have been optimized to a near maximum and due to the fading discovery of new and better antibiotics, combined with the rise of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains, there are decreasing options for treatment. Surface coating of materials has been applied as a biomaterial surface modification to prevent the adhesion of bacteria, the first step in biofilm formation. In this thesis we describe surface modifications to prevent bacterial adhesion using two approaches; 1) by creating surfaces with a repulsive nature towards bacteria, while also presenting regions adhesive to the native human cells, 2) using coated enzymes to bacteria and biofilms. Additionally, even though the initial adhesion of bacteria is a main focus in the prevention of biomaterial associated infections and the number of potential strategies developed to fight bacterial adhesion is increasing, the exact mechanisms remain poorly understood. Therefore, we studied the friction forces between surfaces and bacteria, in order to gain knowledge about the role of lateral forces in the adhesion process. Secondly, we studied the influence of specific interactions between bacteria and surfaces on the lateral forces that arise when bacteria move along the surface