scholarly journals Embodied Conversational Characters: Wandering between the Digital and the Physical World (Digitale Weltenwanderer: Synthetische Charaktere zwischen Realität und Virtualität)

2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth André ◽  
Klaus Dorfmüller-Ulhaas ◽  
Thomas Rist
Keyword(s):  
Social Behaviors ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agents ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agent

SummaryThe objective to develop more human-centered, personalized, and at the same time more entertaining interfaces immediately leads to the metaphor of an embodied conversational agent that employs gestures, mimics, and speech to communicate with the human user. Looking at past and current projects, the current paper discusses an ongoing and manifold evolution of embodied conversational agents from conversational settings with single presenters to interactive performances where the user may participate both as an observer and a presenter. We report on new trends, such as the integration of characters in mixed realities as well as endeavours to endow characters with social behaviors.

Embodied Conversational Agents

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole C. Krämer ◽  
Gary Bente ◽  
Felix Eschenburg ◽  
Heide Troitzsch
Keyword(s):  
User Acceptance ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agents ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Biometric System ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agent ◽  
Biometric Security ◽  
Fundamental Research ◽  
New Research

It was analyzed whether an embodied conversational agent (ECA) has specific advantages when employed with privacy invading technologies such as a biometric security system. The study compares the effects of an ECA interface with the effects of conventional text-based and voice-based interfaces on user acceptance and usability. An additional variable was whether the biometric system falsely rejected the user twice or whether it directly accepted him/her. Results of the 2 × 3 between-subjects design indicated that, although overall the text interface is rated most positive, voice and ECA yield distinct social effects: They have more advantageous consequences when problems arise – i.e., when the user is rejected repeatedly. The implications for social psychology in terms of applicability of new research methods as well as insights concerning fundamental research are discussed.

scholarly journals Embodied Conversational Agents for H5N1 Pandemic Crisis

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ong Sing Goh ◽  
◽  
Chun Che Fung ◽  
Kok Wai Wong ◽  
Arnold Depickere
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agent ◽  
Natural Language Query ◽  
Tremendous Amount ◽  
Automated Knowledge ◽  
Task Oriented ◽  
Extraction Agent

This paper presents a novel framework for modeling embodied conversational agent for crisis communication focusing on the H5N1 pandemic crisis. Our system aims to cope with the most challenging issue on the maintenance of an engaging while convincing conversation. What primarily distinguishes our system from other conversational agent systems is that the human-computer conversation takes place within the context of H5N1 pandemic crisis. A Crisis Communication Network, called CCNet, is established based on a novel algorithm incorporating natural language query and embodied conversation agent simultaneously. Another significant contribution of our work is the development of a Automated Knowledge Extraction Agent (AKEA) to capitalize on the tremendous amount of data that is now available online to support our experiments. What makes our system differs from typical conversational agents is the attempt to move away from strictly task-oriented dialogue.

THE ROLE OF GESTURE IN DOCUMENT EXPLANATION BY EMBODIED CONVERSATIONAL AGENTS

2008 ◽  
Vol 02 (01) ◽  
pp. 47-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
TIMOTHY BICKMORE ◽  
LAURA PFEIFER ◽  
LANGXUAN YIN
Keyword(s):  
Domain Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Evaluation Study ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agents ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Hand Gestures ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agent ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Low Levels

We describe two empirical studies of how professionals explain documents to lay clients who have varying levels of knowledge about the domain under discussion. We find that hand gestures, and in particular deictic gestures by the professional at various parts of the document play a major role in explanations of documents with clients in face-to-face settings. We describe a preliminary computational model of document explanation by an embodied conversational agent, in which appropriate form and location of hand gestures are used by the agent in explaining a document to a user. Results from a pilot evaluation study indicate that individuals with low levels of domain knowledge prefer receiving explanations from such an agent rather than from a human. Examples are drawn from the healthcare domain, in which research consent forms and hospital discharge instruction forms are used as the documents being explained, and health literacy is used as the measure of client domain knowledge.

scholarly journals The WOOL Dialogue Platform: Enabling Interdisciplinary User-Friendly Development of Dialogue for Conversational Agents

2022 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Tessa Beinema ◽  
Harm op den Akker ◽  
Dennis Hofs ◽  
Boris van Schooten
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Health Coaching ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
Steady Increase ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agents ◽  
Authoring Tools ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Domain Experts ◽  
Agent Development

Health coaching applications can include (embodied) conversational agents as coaches. The development of these agents requires an interdisciplinary cooperation between eHealth application developers, interaction designers and domain experts. Therefore, proper dialogue authoring tools and tools to integrate these dialogues in a conversational agent system are essential in the process of creating successful agent-based applications. However, we found no existing open source, easy-to-use authoring tools that support multidisciplinary agent development. To that end, we developed the WOOL Dialogue Platform. The WOOL Dialogue Platform provides the eHealth and conversational agent communities with an open source platform, consisting of a set of easy to use tools that facilitate virtual agent development. The platform consists of a dialogue definition language, an editor, application development libraries and a web service. To illustrate the platform’s possibilities and use in practice, we describe two use cases from EU Horizon 2020 research projects. The WOOL Dialogue Platform is an ‘easy to use, and powerful if needed’ platform for the development of conversational agent applications that is seeing a slow but steady increase in uptake in the eHealth community. Developed to support dialogue authoring for embodied conversational agents in the health coaching domain, this platform’s strong points are its ease of use and ability to let domain experts and agents technology experts work together by providing all parties with tools that support their work effectively.

scholarly journals Interaction Strategies for an Affective Conversational Agent

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 395-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Smith ◽  
Nigel Crook ◽  
Daniel Charlton ◽  
Johan Boye ◽  
Raul Santos de la Camara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Response Times ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
Evaluation Methodology ◽  
System Response ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agents ◽  
Conversational Agent ◽  
Conversational Agents

The development of embodied conversational agents (ECA) as companions brings several challenges for both affective and conversational dialogue. These include challenges in generating appropriate affective responses, selecting the overall shape of the dialogue, providing prompt system response times, and handling interruptions. We present an implementation of such a companion showing the development of individual modules that attempt to address these challenges. Further, to resolve resulting conflicts, we present encompassing interaction strategies that attempt to balance the competing requirements along with dialogues from our working prototype to illustrate these interaction strategies in operation. Finally, we provide the results of an evaluation of the companion using an evaluation methodology created for conversational dialogue and including analysis using appropriateness annotation.

Intersubjectivity in human–agent interaction

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Cassell ◽  
Andrea Tartaro
Keyword(s):  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Embodied Conversational Agents ◽  
Conversational Agents ◽  
Robot Interaction ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
Unconscious Communication ◽  
Agent Interaction ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
And Robotics

What is the hallmark of success in human–agent interaction? In animation and robotics, many have concentrated on the looks of the agent — whether the appearance is realistic or lifelike. We present an alternative benchmark that lies in the dyad and not the agent alone: Does the agent’s behavior evoke intersubjectivity from the user? That is, in both conscious and unconscious communication, do users react to behaviorally realistic agents in the same way they react to other humans? Do users appear to attribute similar thoughts and actions? We discuss why we distinguish between appearance and behavior, why we use the benchmark of intersubjectivity, our methodology for applying this benchmark to embodied conversational agents (ECAs), and why we believe this benchmark should be applied to human–robot interaction.

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