Towards Believable Behavior Generation for Embodied Conversational Agents

Corradini, Andrea; Fredriksson, Morgan; Mehta, Manish; Königsmann, Jürgen; Bernsen, Niels Ole; Johannesson, Lasse

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-24688-6_121

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In a first approach, similarly to [21], the RG replaces non-verbal behavior references with bookmarks that can be dealt with by a text-to-speech component. Then, the entire string containing the TTS bookmarks is sent to the TTS, which synthesizes the verbal output.…”

Section: Now Tell Me [Point] Your [/Point] Valuable Opinion About Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animating an interactive conversational character for an educational game system

Corradini

Mehta

Bernsen

et al. 2005

Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

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Within the framework of the project NICE (Natural Interactive Communication for Edutainment) [2], we have been developing an educational and entertaining computer game that allows children and teenagers to interact with a conversational character impersonating the fairy tale writer H.C. Andersen (HCA). The rationale behind our system is to make kids learn about HCA's life, fairy tales and historical period while playing and having fun. We report on the character's generation and realization of both verbal and 3D graphical non-verbal output behaviors, such as speech, body gestures and facial expressions. This conveys the impression of a human-like agent with relevant domain knowledge, and distinct personality. With the educational goal in the foreground, coherent and synchronized output presentation becomes mandatory, as any inconsistency may undermine the user's learning process rather than reinforcing it.

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Section: Now Tell Me [Point] Your [/Point] Valuable Opinion About Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animating an interactive conversational character for an educational game system

Corradini

Mehta

Bernsen

et al. 2005

Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

Self Cite

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“…COMIC is a system developed for bathroom design using speech and gesture input/output, in collaboration with an avatar with facial emotions (Catizone, Setzer, & Wilks, 2003). NICE provides embodied historical and literary characters capable of natural, fun and experientially rich communication with children and adolescents (Corradini et al, 2004). …”

Section: Embodied Conversational Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of spoken dialogue systems

López-Cózar

Callejas

Griol

et al. 2014

loquens

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Spoken dialogue systems are computer programs developed to interact with users employing speech in order to provide them with specific automated services. The interaction is carried out by means of dialogue turns, which in many studies available in the literature, researchers aim to make as similar as possible to those between humans in terms of naturalness, intelligence and affective content.In this paper we describe the fundaments of these systems including the main technologies employed for their development. We also present an evolution of this technology and discuss some current applications. Moreover, we discuss development paradigms, including scripting languages and the development of conversational interfaces for mobile apps.The correct modelling of the user is a key aspect of this technology. This is why we also describe affective, personality and contextual models. Finally, we address some current research trends in terms of verbal communication, multimodal interaction and dialogue management.Keywords: dialogue; language understanding; dialogue management; natural language generation; speech synthesis. RESUMEN:Sistemas de diálogo: una revisión.-Los sistemas de diálogo son programas de ordenador desarrollados para interaccionar con los usuarios mediante habla, con la finalidad de proporcionarles servicios automatizados. La interacción se lleva a cabo mediante turnos de un tipo de diálogo que, en muchos estudios existentes en la literatura, los investigadores intentan que se parezca lo más posible al diálogo real que se lleva a cabo entre las personas en lo que se refiere a naturalidad, inteligencia y contenido afectivo.En este artículo describimos los fundamentos de esta tecnología, incluyendo las tecnologías básicas que se utilizan para implementar este tipo de sistemas. También presentamos una evolución de la tecnología y comentamos algunas aplicaciones actuales. Asimismo, describimos paradigmas de interacción, incluyendo lenguajes de script y desarrollo de interfaces conversacionales para aplicaciones móviles.Un aspecto clave de esta tecnología consiste en realizar un correcto modelado del usuario. Por este motivo, discutimos diversos modelos afectivos, de personalidad y contextuales. Finalmente, comentamos algunas líneas de investigación actuales relacionadas con la comunicación verbal, interacción multimodal y gestión del diálogo.Palabras clave: diálogo; comprensión del lenguaje; gestión del diálogo; generación del lenguaje natural; síntesis del habla.

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“…However, the precise meaning attributed to the word “behavior” varies among different researchers. Several works tend to focus on the behavior as a way of expression of a robotic or virtual agent’s internal state by communicative means such as gaze (Poel et al, 2009), facial expression (Sloan et al, 2009), (Malatesta et al, 2009), gesture and posture (Corradini et al, 2004), or a synthesis of multiple means (Bevacqua et al, 2007) (Niewiadomski et al, 2008). In a virtual storytelling context, works such as (Ho & Dautenhahn, 2008), (Riedl and Young, 20032005) argue about the narrative aspect of believability, both in terms of plot coherence and character believability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavior believability in virtual worlds: agents acting when they need to

2013

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Believability has been a perennial goal for the intelligent virtual agent community. One important aspect of believability largely consists in demonstrating autonomous behavior, consistent with the agent’s personality and motivational state, as well as the world conditions. Autonomy, on behalf of the agent, implies the existence of an internal structure and mechanism that allows the agent to have its own needs and interests, based on which the agent will dynamically select and generate goals that will in turn lead to self-determined behavior. Intrinsic motivation allows the agent to function and demonstrate behavior, even when no external stimulus is present, due to the constant change of its internal emotional and physiological state. The concept of motivation has already been investigated by research works on intelligent agents, trying to achieve autonomy. The current work presents an architecture and model to represent and manage internal driving factors in intelligent virtual agents, using the concept of motivations. Based on Maslow and Alderfer’s bio-psychological needs theories, we present a motivational approach to represent human needs and produce emergent behavior through motivation synthesis. Particular attention is given to basic, physiological level needs, which are the basis of behavior and can produce tendency to action even when there is no other interaction with the environment.

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Towards Believable Behavior Generation for Embodied Conversational Agents

Cited by 8 publications

References 14 publications

Animating an interactive conversational character for an educational game system

Animating an interactive conversational character for an educational game system

Review of spoken dialogue systems

Behavior believability in virtual worlds: agents acting when they need to

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