Papers

This research investigates design guidelines to assist in choosing the appropriate conversational agents to act as assistants in interactive e-commerce applications. The first experiment evaluated the effectiveness and user acceptability of human-like agents in an electronic retail application. The second evaluated the same cast of agents in another application to explore application dependency effects on the users’ attitudes toward the cast of agents. The third experiment evaluated a cast of cartoon-like humanoid agents in an... Read more

This paper presents the results of an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness and user acceptability of a selection of animated agents in a multi-modal electronic retail application. Male and female versions of six animated agent technologies were repeatedly evaluated in the role of an interactive conversational sales assistant. The experiment involved participants eavesdropping on spoken dialogues between a ’customer’and each of the animated assistants. Participants then completed usability questionnaires and took part in a debriefing interview designed... Read more

Reearch into virtual environments on the one hand and artificial intelligence and artificial life on the other has largely been carried out by two different groups of people with different preoccupations and interests, but some convergence is now apparent between the two fields. Applications in which activity independent of the user takes place — involving crowds or other agents — are beginning to be tackled, while synthetic agents, virtual humans and computer pets are all areas... Read more

The design of embodied conversational agents puts many demands on system architecture. Therefore, we describe a conversational framework expressed as a list of conversational properties and abilities and then demonstrate how it can lead to a set of architectural design constraints. We describe an architecture that meets the constraints, and an implementation of the architecture that therefore exhibits many of the properties and abilities required for real-time natural conversation. We are currently developing an embodied conversational... Read more

This paper unfolds the various aspects of ongoing evolution of Intelligent User Interfaces. It provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the field. Read more

We describe the Virtual Standardized Patient (VSP) application, having a computerized virtual person who interacts with medical practitioners in much the same way as actors hired to teach and evaluate patient assessment, diagnosis, and interviewing skills. The VSP integrates technologies from two successful research projects conducted at Research Triangle Institute. AVATALK provides natural language processing, emotion and behavior modeling, and composite facial expression and lip-shape modeling for a natural patient-practitioner dialog. Trauma Patient Simulator provides... Read more

In this article I describe some of the features of human-human conversation that are being implemented in this new genre of embodied conversational agents. Then I describe an embodied conversational agent that is based on these features. I argue that, because conversation is such a primary skill for humans, and such an early-learned skill (practiced, in fact, between infants and mothers who take turns cooing and burbling at one another), and because the body is... Read more

The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a new breed of human computer interfaces that combines several human language technologies to enable humans to converse with computers using spoken dialogue for information access, creation, and processing. In this paper, we introduce the nature of these conversational interfaces, and describe the underlying human language technologies on which they are based. After summarizing some of the recent progress in this area around the world, we discuss... Read more

To explore the use of animated agents for task-oriented collaboration in virtual worlds, we have designed such an agent: Steve (Soar Training Expert for Virtual Environments). Steve is fully implemented and integrated with the other software components on which he relies (i.e., visual interface software, a simulator, and commercial speech synthesis and recognition products). We have tested Steve on a variety of naval operating procedures; he can teach students how to operate and maintain the... Read more

People are narrative animals. As children, our caretakers immerse us in stories: fairy tales, made-up stories, favorite stories, "Read me a story!" Even when barely verbal, we begin to tell our own proto-stories. "Phoebe! Pizza! Phoebe! Pizza!" was the excited story of a 2-year-old friend Addie when one of us happened to arrive simultaneously with the pizza delivery man. This story means, approximately, "Can you believe it? Phoebe and pizza came into the house at... Read more