virtual agent Papers

This paper presents an architecture for an intelligent virtual agent that imitates human drumming behaviour. Through imitation, the agent models the user-specific variations that constitute the "groove" of the drummer. The architecture comprises a motor system that imitates arm movements of a human drummer, and a sound system that produces the sound of the human playing style. The presence of a sound system alleviates the need to use physical models that will create sound when... Read more

We present recent extensions for the intelligent virtual agent development platform Pogamut 3. These extensions are: the agent coordination language StorySpeak designed for the purposes of storytelling applications, support for gestures based on BML, the visual editor of reactive plans, connection of the cognitive architecture ACT-R, an educational application aimed at orientation in urban areas and finally an emotional model. Read more

Believable spatial behaviour is important for intelligent virtual agents acting in human-like environments, such as buildings or cities. Existing models of spatial cognition and memory for these agents are predominantly aimed at issues of navigation and learning of topology of the environment. The issue of representing information about possible objects' locations in a familiar environment, information that can evolve over long periods, has not been sufficiently studied. Here, we present a novel representation for "what-where"... Read more

Games and Virtual Environments populated with virtual agents are usually tested and evaluated assessing the player's experience and flow outside the game experience. However, with player enjoyment related to their sense of immersion, there is clear potential for immersing evaluation into game play. We have developed an immersive in-role evaluation approach and applied it to ORIENT (Overcoming Refugee Integration with Empathic Novel Technology), a role-playing game designed for intercultural training for 13-14 year olds.... Read more

Duarte Digital is an agent that engages in inquiry-oriented conversations about an art artifact. Since it was build for a Museum, interactions are supposed to be directed to different types of audience: an interaction with an art expert should be carried out in a different way than an interaction with a child; likewise, interactions with users interested in learning should be distinct from interactions with users having only entertainment goals. Being so, an agent needs... Read more

Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) systems are notoriously difficult to evaluate, particularly due to the subjectivity involved. From the various efforts to develop standard evaluation schemes for IVA systems the scheme proposed by Isbister & Doyle, which evaluates systems across five categories, seems particularly appropriate. To examine how these categories are being used, the evaluations presented in the proceedings of IVA '07 and IVA '08 are summarised and the extent to which the five categories in... Read more

The importance of sound and music in movies (Film Scoring) is undeniable. Film Scoring is used as a complement to the visual content helping to better understand it. The use of these artistic elements can be extended to interactive storytelling (IS) environments where stories are also told in a dynamic and interactive way. Because of IS particularities, such as the unpredictability of user actions and story development, this extension is not straightforward, and presents a... Read more

We present the Adaptive Mind Agent, an intelligent virtual agent that is able to actively participate in a real-time, dynamic environment. The agent is equipped with a collection of processing tools that form the basis of its perception from and action on the environment consisting of web documents, URLs, RRS feeds, domain-specific knowledgebases, other accessible virtual agents and the user. How these predispositions are finally shaped into unique agent behaviour depends on the agent's abilities... Read more

How do we construct credible personalities? The current SAL (Sensitive Artificial Listeners) characters were constructed intuitively and can be unconvincing. In addressing these issues, this paper considers a theory of personality and associated emotional traits, and discusses how behaviours associated with personality types in people may be adapted to develop characteristics of virtual agents. Our objective is to ensure that behavioural perceptions of a virtual agent credibly reflect the agent's 'actual' personality as prescribed. Read more

Our aim is to implement a motion capture database for the synthesis of virtual agents signing in French Sign Language (LSF), taking into account the semantic information implicitly contained in language data. The Gérard system is a first iteration along the path toward efficient and convincing animations of an LSF signer. Read more