Advanced Content and Interface Personalization through Conversational Behavior and Affective Embodied Conversational Agents

Abstract

Conversation is becoming one of the key interaction modes in HMI. As a result, the conversational agents (CAs) have become an important tool in various everyday scenarios. From Apple and Microsoft to Amazon, Google, and Facebook, all have adapted their own variations of CAs. The CAs range from chatbots and 2D, carton-like implementations of talking heads to fully articulated embodied conversational agents performing interaction in various concepts. Recent studies in the field of face-to-face conversation show that the most natural way to implement interaction is through synchronized verbal and co-verbal signals (gestures and expressions). Namely, co-verbal behavior represents a major source of discourse cohesion. It regulates communicative relationships and may support or even replace verbal counterparts. It effectively retains semantics of the information and gives a certain degree of clarity in the discourse. In this chapter, we will represent a model of generation and realization of more natural machine-generated output.

Multilingual Chatbots to Collect Patient-Reported Outcomes

“…A fully articulated ECA was deployed for all six languages in order to implement more natural human-machine interaction, where the EVA realization framework transforms the co-verbal descriptions contained in EVA events into articulated movement generated by the expressive virtual entity. The EVA-Script language is actually applied onto the articulated 3D model EVA in the form of animated movement [43]. Trustworthiness is a clinical value, which has a significant impact on adherence mitigating pervasive threats to health [64].…”

“…Embodiments can be designed as virtual human characters, animals, or robots [40][41][42]. Such fully symmetric interaction opens up the opportunity to introduce human-like qualities and significantly improves the believability of the humanmachine interfaces [43]. ECAs in healthcare can be used for the treatment of mood disorders, anxiety, psychotic disorders, autism, substance use disorders, etc.…”

Multilingual Conversational Systems to Drive the Collection of Patient-Reported Outcomes and Integration into Clinical Workflows

“…The EVA framework is capable of capturing various contexts in the "data" and providing the basis to analytically investigate various multidimensional correlations among co-verbal behavior features. The role of the EVA realization framework is to transform the co-verbal descriptions contained in EVA events into articulated movement generated by the expressive virtual entity, e.g., to apply the EVA-Script language onto the articulated 3D model EVA in the form of animated movement [43]. Also, multilingual properties of our ECAs differentiates it from other similar ECAs.…”

“…Embodiments can be designed as virtual human characters [40], animals [41], or robots [42]. In general, the fully symmetric interaction opens up the opportunity to introduce human-like qualities, significantly improving the believability of the interfaces [43]. The main areas of ECAs in healthcare are the treatment of mood disorders, anxiety, psychotic disorders, autism, and substance use disorders [44].…”