ECA Perspectives - Requirements, Applications, Technology

In the last years we have developed a platform for the realization of embodied (conversational) agents, in a distributed logic programming framework. In this paper we will present an overview of our work, by discussing the requirements that acted as our guidelines for design decisions during development, some of the applications that have served as target demonstrators for developing and testing new functionality, and the (distributed logic programming) technology which we used for the realization of the platform and the implementation of our STEP scripting language. Although the focus of our paper will primarily be our own DLP+X3D platform, we believe that our discussion along the perspectives of requirements, applications and technology might be more generally worthwhile in establishing the relative merits of the operational use of ECA-technology. At the end of this paper, we will moreover provide some hints of how to approach the experimental validation of the (possible) benefits of embodied conversational agents in user applications

PANORAMA - Explorations in the aesthetics of social awareness

In this paper we reflect on our experiences in developing PANORAMA, a playful application meant to promote and support social awareness in a work environment, through art-inspired visualisations of social processes and personal contributions. With respect to the design of PANORAMA, we found common notions of visual semiotics helpful in determining the overall composition of the screen layout. More in general, however, the development of PANORAMA proved to be an exercise in interaction aesthetics, which as we will argue in this paper may greatly benefit from common notions in interactive video game play. In this paper we will only briefly discuss technical and deployment issues, since our main contribution here is to establish the relation between the aesthetics of interaction and game play

SIM : a C++ library for Discrete Event Simulation

In this report we give a full description of sim, a C++ library for discrete event simulation. The sim library supports both an event and process-oriented approach to developing simulations. Events as well as entities (which may be considered as events with states signifying episodes in its life-time) are provided as abstract classes that must be refined by the application programmer to define the actual events and entities participating in the simulation. The sim library is integrated with the hush library, thus offering powerful graphic and animation facilities. However, the sim library may also be used independently, on both Unix and MS-Dos platforms. This report presents an overview of the classes constituting the sim library (including the classes event, entity, generator, resource, queue, histogram and analysis) as well as two standard examples illustrating the deployment of the classes in writing simulation programs. Also, an example is given of how to create a graphical anima..

Reusable Gestures for Interactive Web Agents

In this paper we present an approach to define reusable gestures for embodied web agents, given according to the H-anim standard for VRML. We identify the dimensions to compare gestures and criteria to circumscribe a set of gestures an avatar should be endowed with. Based on these dimensions and criteria, we propose a uniform way to define a wide range of gestures that may be adapted to particular circumstances and personal style. We have implemented our gesture library in STEP, which is a scripting language for humanoids based on dynamic logic. We will discuss the example of conducting music, to explain our approach to the parameterized definition and control of gestures. We conclude by briefly discussing issues for future research

A platform for Embodied Conversational Agents based on Distributed Logic Programming

In this paper we will outline the requirements for a software platform supporting embodied conversational agents. These requirements encompass computational concerns as well as presentation facilities, providing a suitably rich environment for applications deploying conversational agents

04121 Working Group 2 -- Design criteria, techniques and case studies for creating and evaluating interactive experiences for virtual humans

How does one go about designing a human? With the rise in recent years of virtual humans this is no longer purely a philosophical question. Virtual humans are intelligent agents with a body, often a human-like graphical body, that interact verbally and non-verbally with human users on a variety of tasks and applications. Our working group approached this question from the perspective of interactivity. Specifically, how can one design effective interactive experiences involving a virtual human, and what constraints does this goal place on the form and function of an embodied conversational agent. Our group grappled with several related questions: What ideals should designers aspire to, what sources of theory and data will best lead to this goal and what methodologies can inform and validate the design process? A longer article (.pdf) summarizes the output of this WG and suggests a specific framework, borrowed from interactive media design, as a vehicle for advancing the state of interactive experiences with virtual humans